It's a bit of a typical date-related JKR clusterfuck.

Remember that the Tales of Beedle the Bard was written in ancient runes. Since the Peverell brothers themselves must predate the mythologisation of their story, that means they must have lived at a time during which ancient runes were in use, which means before the founding of Hogwarts. Or at the very least, contemporary with it.

This works very well. You have the three brothers, pre-Hogwarts, and from two of those brothers eventually spring the Potter and Slytherin lines with appropriate heirlooms.

This then hits a snag, thanks to JKR: in the Tales of Beedle the bard, she writes that Beedle lived in the 15th century. Not only does this not fit well with the use of runes, but it also creates problems with ancestry.

The Gaunt family descends from the Slytherin family and has Slytherin herilooms, including the ring with the resurrection stone in it. For the Slytherin family to have the resurrection stone as their heirloom means that the Peverells have to predate the Slytherin family and leave them the stone/ring when the Peverell male line dies out. But now we hear that the Peverells postdate the founding of Hogwarts and the Slytherin family.

So that means that somehow we have the Slytherin family dying out and becoming the Peverells, who make the ring, who then die out themselves and somehow become the Slytherin family again, adopting the ring as their heirloom, who then leave it to the Gaunt branch of their family.

Like I say, clusterfuck.

 

Well, in that case, no one should get offended if I interpret it in a way I need for my stuff to work.

EDIT: One thing that interests me though: canon doesn't tell us that the Stone ever belonged to Slytherin. We know the locket did, but Marvolo only says this about the ring:

Centuries, but nothing about Slytherin having it. So, it kind of makes sense for Peverells to be descended from Slytherin, with Cadmus' senior line (since Antioch died childless) inheriting Slytherin heirlooms, but individual Hallows falling to subsequent separate family lines. Thus you'd have the locket and the Stone with Gaunts, who are descended from Slytherin as well as Cadmus Peverell and the Cloak with the Potters, descended from Ignotus (definitely) and Slytherin (possibly).

 

Even if the Peverells are direct descendants of Slytherin, I doubt that means that Harry is the next "heir" of Slytherin through Ignotus Peverell specifically. The Gaunts are relations of Cadmus Peverell, so that would mean the nearest known connection between Voldemort and Harry would be in the 1200s. Surely it would be whoever was next closely related to Morvolo Gaunt.

In any case, I always found the "Heir of Slytherin" title to be less about genetics (though it is at least partly there with the parselmouth requirements) and more about worldview and magical prowess. According to Pottermore, other Gaunts knew the location of the Chamber of Secrets (Corvinus Gaunt is said to have hidden the entrance to the chamber when indoor plumbing was installed in the 1700s) but it was only Tom Riddle who would open the chamber and use what was inside to fight for the pureblood cause.

 

I think of the Heir of Slytherin more in the way of:

1)relation to Slytherin?
2)found the Chamber?
3)speak Parseltongue?

If you can check all three, you can control the basilisk. Because of nr 1, I needed to make up Harry's relation to Slytherin, even a distant one. It may be dumbing down the lore a bit on my part, but what the hell, it's not an uber-important plot point anyway.

 

I think you need to be more than a relation of Slytherin to be "the heir". He lived so long ago that millions are probably related to him. You need to be the eldest of the most direct surviving line.

 

I don't know about that. Let's keep in mind that there aren't many wizards and probably never were. Then there's the fact that purebloods seem to have one or two kids at most (Weasleys being a notable exception) and Gaunts eventually started marrying their own siblings to keep the line pure. There may not be that many other descendants, if any.

 

Realise for a moment that the 'heir' is not an actual position. It's a rhetorical argument used to justify a pureblood supremacist's hatred of muggles. Probably every non-muggleborn (and quite a few of them) wizard in Britain have Slytherin and the Peverells as their ancestors, it's just that one line managed to inherit Slytherin's parselmouth abilities and another inherited the invisibility cloak.

There's no more to it than that.

 

^
That makes sense.

 

Here's another possibility:

One descendent of one of the Peverell brothers marries someone descended from Slytherin. Presto! Voldemort is descended from both lines without any of these pesky nuances.

 

The heir didn't signify any kind of specific heritage, I think, so much as a capacity for malice and anti-Muggle sentiment in addition to some shred of the lineage. Riddle wasn't even a Pureblood, and he came from the most backwater, inbred offshoot of Slytherin's line we see in the books.

What made Riddle the Heir of Syltherin was his singular skill and cruelty, not his bloodline.

Alternatively, Riddle also wasn't the first 'heir' of Slytherin to see the Chamber.

EDIT: woops ninja'd

 

And consequently it appears that Riddle was the only heir to enter and direct the basilisk to kill people. Or at least it appears so.

 

I have a question (or group of related questions): How expensive do you think it might be to buy a modest cottage in Hogsmeade? I mean relatively speaking: are the residents of Hogsmeade well-off, in comparison to other wizards? Would it be within the realm of possibility for someone who is averagely wealthy in the Muggle world to afford such property?

A final, related question: suppose an outsider (A Muggle-born, let's say) does have the money; would he or she even be able to buy a cottage/property in Hogsmeade, or would there be some resistance?

 

That was among the first points I brought up, on the previous page.

@Daidalos: We know that Hogsmeade is home to some of the better known establishments in Wizarding Britain. Zonko's was pretty much the only joke shop we've ever heard about before WWW and as such they probably had monopoly or were close. Honey Dukes fell into a similar category, with the only known contestant being Fortescue's ice cream parlor in Diagon Alley. The Three Broomsticks seems to be everyone's favorite hangout, including the Minister of Magic and even Hog's Head has a reputation. So I'd say, considering that wizards have golden coins in their currency system, that Hogsmeade would be someone between single family homes in the country (like the Burrow) and grand estates (like Malfoy Manor). Even the town's proximity to the only known and highly respected school in the country might affect property prices. I think of Hogsmeade as an upperclass neighborhood, the equivalent would be a muggle area where a lot of doctors, lawyers etc. live.

 

ITT: People who don't read Pottermore.

We are told in Pottermore that there was an heir of Slytherin before Voldemort and that he was the one to incorporate pipes.

And I quote:

 

redlibertyx already brought up Corvinus.

What's ITT?

 

It means 'In This Thread'.

 

Guess I deserved it

 

He must have been a pretty good student, to sneak into renovations, create a secret entrance, connect it to the existing one, and keep it hidden.

 

ITT: People who don't read the other posts ITT?

Anyway...strictly speaking must vanishing cabinets have a twin or could you simply just have a waste disposal cabinet that vanishes things? I seem to recall the fact that the vanishing cabinet at Hogwarts having a twin connected to it was unexpected but I could be misremembering things.