Ominous Gaunt is a fifth-grade student, and a direct descendant of Salazar Slytherin. By choosing this house in Hogwarts Legacy, you will also be able to meet him more often in the common room, but it is mainly thanks to the relationship quests with Sebastian Pallow that you will get to know him. Trying not to spoil you too much, here are 3 reasons why Ominis [Présage en latin] is the best character in the game.
He speaks Parseltongue like You-Know-Who
We know that Ominis is a direct descendant of Salazar Slytherin, one of the four founders of Hogwarts, just like Tom Riddle, the future You-Know-Who.
Indeed, Tom was born to a Muggle father, also called Tom Riddle, and a pure-blooded mother. Mérope Gaunt. Since the Gaunts wanted to keep the pure blood at all costs, it was quite common in the past for members of the same family to conceive children together. It’s unclear if Ominis is Voldemort’s great-great-great-grandfather, for example, or if he’s a distant relative.
Anyway, Ominis has a rare ability, typical of the descendants of Salazar Slytherin: just like Voldemort he is able to speak Fourchelangthe tongue of snakes!
Blind, it is his wand that guides him!
In case you haven’t noticed yet, Ominis is blind. This is from birth, and because of this, he knows extremely well how to move around without sight, thanks to magic. Using his wand, he uses some sort of system ofecholocation like bats to locate and identify the elements around him. His hearing then seems much more developed than other wizards and witches of Hogwarts, which allows him to hear conversations in the distance as you will notice during one of Sebastian’s quests!
In short, he may not be Batman, but his way of moving through the halls of the school is downright stylish.
He refuses to use black magic despite his heritage
Various childhood traumas made him pessimistic, paranoid and sarcastic. That doesn’t stop him from being best friends with Sebastian Pallow, who tries to convince him to help him in his quest for a cure for the curse that afflicts his twin sister, Anne. But Ominis is allergic to black magic! You will understand this soon enough thanks to Sebastian’s various quests and can also choose to be on Sebastian’s side by learning the forbidden spells, or on Ominis’ side.
In one of the missions, we also learn the whole story of his past. Totally disagreeing with his family’s use of dark magic, he was very close to his aunt, Night Gaunt, also allergic to this obscure form of magic. The latter wanted at all costs to change the traditions of her family by learning more about the heritage of Slytherin but she died trying to open the Scriptorium.
We also learn that when he was a child, he refused to perform the Cruciatus spell on Muggles, a sort of mandatory step to becoming an accomplished Gaunt. As a result, his own family used the curse on him. When asked to cast the hex again, he relented so as not to inflict further anguish on himself, and struggled to forgive himself.