Slytherin family

The Slytherin family was a pure-blood family with several notable members, particularly Salazar Slytherin, one of the four original founders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, who lived over one-thousand years ago and is the earliest known member of Slytherin house.

Not much is known about this family, but it is possible that they. like their relations and several other pure-blood families, had a tendency for marrying their cousins to keep their blood pure and to retain the traits of their ancestors (most notably, the ability to speak Parseltongue). Many dark witches and wizards came from this family, including Salazar Slytherin himself, Voldemort, and their last descendant, Delphini.

Early history
The Slytherin family was a prominent one in the wizarding world, as demonstrated by their famous ancestor, although over time their gene pool became unstable due to a habit of inbreeding. They slowly squandered their wealth, which was completely non-existant by the time their last descendants, the House of Gaunt, came to be.

Recent history
By the early twentieth century, when the family was extinct in the male line, Marvolo Gaunt, their last known descendant from the female line, had only two children, Merope, and her brother Morfin. While Morfin regularly used magic to terrorize Muggles, and spoke almost exclusively in Parseltongue, his sister exhibited no dark qualities and was in fact so traumatized by emotional abuse inflicted upon her by her father and brother that she was barely able to use magic and often presumed to be a squib.

Merope later ended the pure-blood line of her family by marrying a Muggle from a nearby town, Little Hangleton, and having a half-blood son, Tom Riddle, who later became the infamous Dark Wizard, Lord Voldemort. The female line of the Slytherin family continued for several years, seemingly ending with the death of Riddle. However, twenty-two years later, the Ministry of Magic discovered the existence of Delphini, the secret daughter of Voldemort and Bellatrix Lestrange, a scion of the House of Black.

Slytherin family

 * Salazar Slytherin - a great wizard of Medieval times who was one of the four founders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Descendants

 * House of Gaunt - a once-promineint pure-blood wizarding family which had exhausted their wealth by the twentieth century; gave rise to Lord Voldemort and Isolt Sayre

Family tree
==Heirlooms== The family held onto Salazar Slytherin's possessions for many generations, such as his basilisk horn wand and his locket. In later years, Marvolo Gaunt was in possession of a signet ring passed on from his Peverell ancestors. However, the locket left the family when Merope sold it to Borgin and Burkes in order to support herself while she was pregnant. It later came into the possession of Hepzibah Smith, whom a teenage Tom RIddle killed and stole from. Riddle eventually turned both the ring and locket into horcruxes; the locket was stolen from its hiding place by Regulus Black II and later destroyed by Ron Weasley, while the ring was destroyed by Albus Dumbledore with Godric Gryffindor's sword. The ring also contained the Resurrection Stone.

Etymology

 * Slytherin may refer to the words "sly" as well as "slithering", which is the form of locomotion of snakes, possibly referring to their rare ability to talk to snakes, known as Parseltongue.