Summary
- Voldemort never knew that the ring he turned into a Horcrux was the Resurrection Stone or part of the Deathly Hallows, as the symbol and legend of the Hallows were not widely known.
- The Resurrection Stone remained hidden and unused as a ring because its activation requires specific movements that would be difficult to accidentally perform while wearing it.
- Voldemort would not have cared that the ring was a Hallow, as his main interest was the Elder Wand and he saw his Horcruxes as a means to achieve immortality rather than relying on the Hallows.
The stone from one of Voldemort’s Horcruxes wound up being the Resurrection Stone of the Deathly Hallows, and the Harry Potter movies left out the explanation for how this came to be. This means a lot of questions, such as how Voldemort was connected to the Hallows, as well as why he would turn such a powerful object into a Horcrux, unanswered. Of course, the Harry Potter books dived much further into the history of the Dark Lord’s Horcruxes, as well as that of his magical family.
Before Harry entered the Forbidden Forest to hand his life to Voldemort in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, he found the Ressurection Stone hidden within the Golden Snitch Dumbledore had left him after his death. He immediately recognized it as the stone that had once sat in the ring Voldemort had used as a Horcrox. In a big way, this proved that it had always been Harry’s destiny to find it since he likely wouldn’t have had it not been defiled by Voldemort’s soul. Still, this doesn’t explain why the Dark Lord would do this to such a powerful object.
Voldemort Never Knew About The Resurrection Stone Or The Deathly Hallows
In truth, Voldemort had no idea that the ring he used to house his soul was a legendary magical artifact. To him, the ring was simply proof that he had magical blood and wasn’t a Muggle-born as he had feared. It was also a trophy for a rather significant murder. The young Tom Riddle had hunted down his mother’s family, the Gaunts, and in doing so, learned of his Muggle father, who had left him before he was born. The future Dark Lord then murdered Tom Riddle Sr (as well as his Muggle grandparents) and pinned the crime on his mother’s brother, Morfin, after stealing his ring.
Though the Harry Potter movies didn’t make this clear, the quest for the Deathly Hallows was a great wizarding world secret. Very few witches and wizards knew anything about it, and, as Xenophilius Lovegood explained, the symbol had begun to be used to help questers identify one another. The Tale of the Three Brothers, which described the legend of how the magical items were made, never actually included the words “Deathly Hallows,” and even if they had, Tom Riddle was raised by Muggles and would have had no interest in reading children’s stories once he joined the wizarding world. So, he had no reason to question turning the ring into a Horcrux.
Voldemort’s Mother Was Unknowingly A Descendent Of The Hallows’ Creator
Aside from knowing nothing about the Deathly Hallows, Voldemort had every reason to be confident that the ring was nothing more than a family heirloom. In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Harry saw a Pensive memory of a Ministry official sent to the Gaunt family home years before Riddle was born. Here, Harry saw Voldemort’s grandfather, Marvolo Gaunt, wearing the ring, claiming that it had etched upon it the Peverell coat of arms—therefore proving that he was the descendant of the powerful Peverell family of Harry Potter.
Antioch, Cadmus, and Ignotus Peverell are believed to be the three brothers from the old story and, therefore, are considered the creators of the Deathly Hallows. What Marvolo thought to be a coat of arms was the Deathly Hallows symbol—again, something not many people would have recognized as anything particularly magical. Still, the old man had been right. He, and Voldemort by extension, were descendants of the Peverells—specifically, Cadmus Peverell, the creator of the Resurrection Stone. Sometime after his death, one of Cadmus’ descendants set the stone in a ring, likely not knowing what it was.
Why No One Ever Accidentally Activated The Resurrection Stone Ring
So, the Resurrection Stone was passed on for centuries in a ring, with few, if any, of its wearers knowing what it truly was. The same thing happened to the Cloak of Invisibility, which had been passed down Ignotus’ line all the way to Harry Potter (proving Harry is a distant relative of Voldemort). Still, the difference between these two forgotten Hallows is that the Invisibility Cloak was still used for its designated purpose—Harry and his ancestors just didn’t realize how completely powerful the cloak was. How did Voldemort, the Gaunts, and all those before them never activate the Resurrection Stone?
Ultimately, the fact that the Resurrection Stone had been turned into a ring is precisely what kept it from being used accidentally. To activate the stone, the user must turn it over in their hand three times. This would be less likely to happen accidentally anyway, but it would be nearly impossible to do correctly as a ring. Therefore, it was worn by its owners year after year, without any of them realizing that the stone had the power to bring their deceased loved ones back from the dead.
Dumbledore Guessed Voldemort Wouldn’t Have Cared That His Ring Was A Hallow
Though Voldemort never realized it, he had possessed two of the Deathly Hallows at one time or another—something that countless wizards over the years would have been desperate to claim. Gellert Grindelwald had established his entire political movement based on the Deathly Hallows search, yet he had only ever possessed one. Regardless, Dumbledore guessed that even if Voldemort had heard the Tale of the Three Brothers and learned about the Deathly Hallows quest, he would have only been interested in the Elder Wand.
Given the Death Stick’s bloody history, it was the least secretive of the three Hallows. Many witches and wizards had heard legends of an unbeatable wand, even if they hadn’t heard about the Peverells and their other inventions. Voldemort learned about it as he searched for a way to overcome the connection between his and Harry’s wands and ultimately tracked it down to Dumbledore’s tomb. Had he heard about the Cloak of Invisibility and the Resurrection Stone, he would have swept the idea away. He didn’t need a cloak to be invisible, and he had no loved ones he would want to bring back from the dead.
So, Voldemort never bothered himself with the Hallows and would have taken little interest in learning that the ring he had turned into a Horcrux was an object capable of bringing back the dead. In fact, he likely would have only felt this made it more deserving of housing his soul. To the Dark Lord, being the Master of Death meant living forever, and the Deathly Hallows weren’t the most effective method of immortality in Harry Potter. It was only Harry who understood that to master Death, one had to accept and greet it like an old friend.