Resurrection Stone
From UnknowableWiki
The Resurrection Stone is a circular black stone with the ability to recall people from the dead. However, the recalled beings are neither dead nor alive, neither ghost nor human (DH34). The stone is the second of the Deathly Hallows, objects created by the Peverell brothers that purportedly make any who unites all three items the Master of Death; the Symbol of the Hallows is engraved on the stone. Cadmus Peverell created the Resurrection Stone. It is represented by a circle inscribed in a triangle and split in half by a vertical line in the symbol of the Hallows (DH21).
To use the Resurrection Stone, one rotates the stone three times in one's hand, thinking about the people whom one wishes to recall from death. The dead will then appear in their semi-corporeal forms, visible only to the possessor of the stone. The dead can act like humans, despite not being truly alive; however, they disappear the moment the possessor lets go of the stone (DH34).
A fantasized version of the Resurrection Stone's creation is found in The Tale of the Three Brothers, a story by Beedle the Bard, which tells the story of the Hallows. According to legend, the Resurrection Stone was given to a man (second of three brothers) who, having cheated Death, asked for the power to recall others from Death. Death supposedly gave the man the Resurrection Stone, which the man used to bring back his dead fiancée. However, as the returned form of his fiancée was not truly alive, the man killed himself to be united with his love (DH21).
For many years, the Resurrection Stone was set into a ring, which was passed down through Cadmus Peverell's descendents, eventually ending up with the Gaunts. Marvolo Gaunt claimed that the symbol of the Hallows was, in fact, the seal of the Peverells (HBP10); this may be true, as the symbol is found on Ignotus Peverell's grave in Godric's Hollow (DH16). Voldemort, after killing his father, turned the ring into a Horcrux and, placing it in a gold box, hid it in the decrepit Gaunt house (BLC, DH29), from which Albus Dumbledore recovered it in the summer of 1996. Dumbledore, blinded by his desire to possess the Resurrection Stone, put the ring on, activating a powerful curse that, without the help of Severus Snape, would have cost him his life (DH35). As it was, the curse was slowly killing Dumbledore—he would die within the year—and so he planned his own death, which came about during the Battle of the Astronomy Tower (DH33).
Dumbledore destroyed the Horcrux with Gryffindor's sword, causing the stone to crack down the middle (DH33). He then removed the stone from the ring and, some time before his death, he put the stone in the Golden Snitch which Harry Potter had caught in his first Quidditch match at Hogwarts. Dumbledore bequeathed the Snitch to Harry in his will. At Harry's touch, the words "I open at the close" appeared on the Snitch in Dumbledore's handwriting (DH7); Harry did not understand what this meant until he was about to enter the Forbidden Forest to die at Voldemort's hand, thus destroying the fragment of Voldemort's soul that was embedded in Harry's body. Just before entering the Forest, Harry said, "I am about to die"; the Snitch then opened, giving Harry the Resurrection Stone. Harry used the stone to recall Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and Lily and James Potter, who reassured him about death and gave him the courage to face Voldemort and his impending doom (DH34).
Harry dropped the stone in the Forest just before confronting Voldemort, and did not recover it; it was, in all likelihood, buried by the centaurs rushing out of the Forest to confront Voldemort in the final stage of the Battle of Hogwarts (DH36, BLC).
