D isintegration
There was always madness in the Gaunts, something wild around the eyes. Pride amidst so much poverty was just the thing to bring it out into full-fledged mania. There was always an enclosed feeling to the family. Parseltongue was just the thing to seal its confinement, as snug as a coffin. There was always something dangerous about the Gaunts. A burst of new spirit and ambition was just the thing to make their heir a terror.
Even in their flower of success, even in their fine clothes and great manor, even in the height of their power, there was always something unstable about the Gaunts. Clinging to the past rather than looking at the present was enough for their house to collapse about itself.
The members of the Gaunt family were doomed to repeat a terrible cycle of ambition, feigned importance, and desperation that led them to do all kinds of drastic things: kill a father, attack an Auror, seduce a Muggle, defy death…
There was only one who ever regretted her actions, but she paid the same price as the unrepentant.
The Gaunts were always a tinder box, that might blow up at any moment on the unsuspecting victims around them, and the blaze of their madness left them with nothing but ashes.