Today, The Fosters and The Grandma have announced that they found and destroyed Marvolo Gaunt's Ring, another Horcrux, last week. With this, they have already destroyed four of a total of seven. They continued helping Harry Potter, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley in their search.
Marvolo Gaunt's Ring is a golg ring, an heirloom of the House of Gaunt, descendants of Salazar Slytherin and Cadmus Peverell.
Marvolo Gaunt's Ring is an heirloom of the House of Gaunt, descendants of Salazar Slytherin and Cadmus Peverell.
It is a gold ring inset with a black stone, actually the Resurrection Stone, but neither Marvolo Gaunt nor Lord Voldemort were aware of its existence, engraved with what Marvolo Gaunt called the Peverell coat of arms, having come into the Gaunt line from an heiress of the Peverells, not the Slytherin family, which is actually the symbol of the Deathly Hallows.
The signet ring passed through the male Gaunts, generation to generation, until it was stolen from Morfin Gaunt by Tom Riddle while Riddle framed Morfin for the murders of the Riddle family.
While at Hogwarts, Riddle openly wore the ring. He later made the ring into his second Horcrux. Riddle did not enchant the ring right away, as he was seen wearing it while asking Horace Slughorn about Horcruxes, as seen through Slughorn's memories in a pensieve.
Albus Dumbledore retrieved the ring, eventually destroying it with Godric Gryffindor's Sword.
The
ring's story begins and ends with its black stone. The stone happened
to be the Resurrection Stone, one of the Deathly Hallows of legend, and
had the symbol of the Deathly Hallows engraved on its surface.
According to The Tale of the Three Brothers, Cadmus Peverell,
the middle brother, asked Death for the power to return people from the
dead. Death supposedly picked up a black stone from the nearby river
bank and gave it to Cadmus, promising him that it contained the power he
had requested.
Once Cadmus returned to his home, he took out the Resurrection Stone and turned it over in his hand three times. In doing so, he brought back his lover who had suffered an untimely death. While
she did return from the dead, she was not truly alive and wished to go
back to the world of the dead since she no longer belonged in the living
world. For Cadmus, it was like being able to see her but not able to
touch her or truly be with her. Seeing the stone's limitations drove
Cadmus to madness, and he took his own life to truly join his love in
death.
The stone passed down Cadmus' family line. At some point, it was placed into a gold setting and made into a ring. The ring continued to be passed down the family line, eventually ending up in the hands of the Gaunts.
Marvolo Gaunt, the family's patriarch at the time, prized this ring, along with Salazar Slytherin's Locket, more than anything, even his own daughter, Merope.
When the family was
visited by Ministry of Magic official Bob Ogden, Marvolo waved the ring
in front of his face in an attempt to impress and intimidate Ogden. When
Marvolo and his son Morfin Gaunt were arrested and imprisoned for
assaulting Muggles and Ministry officials, his daughter Merope Gaunt
abandoned the family to escape the mental torture her father
continuously employed against her, taking Salazar Slytherin's Locket
with her.
When Marvolo returned
home, he had foolishly expected to find his daughter dutifully awaiting
his return with a hot meal ready for him. What he found however was an
abandoned house covered with an inch of dust and a note from Merope
explaining what she had done and why.
Marvolo died shortly thereafter, either due to his inability to take care of himself or the weakening of his strength from Azkaban. The signet ring passed to Morfin when he was finally released from Azkaban, and he continued to wear it in his delusional state for several years afterward.
Some years later, Tom
Marvolo Riddle returned to Little Hangleton to seek out his family. He
had been expecting to meet Marvolo, but instead found the half-crazed
Morfin in the Gaunt shack.
Morfin remarked how
Riddle looked very much like the muggle that had married his sister, Tom
Riddle Snr. He told Riddle how Riddle Snr had left Merope and returned
to his parents' home, the Riddle House. Upon learning of his
father's escape and thus feeling that he had caused Merope's death and
him going to an orphanage, Riddle stunned Morfin and took his wand. He
then proceeded to the Riddle House to confront his father.
Frank Bryce, the Riddle's gardener, remarked later that he had seen Riddle ascending the hill toward the house. Riddle used a common spell to unlock the door and entered the house.
Once inside, Riddle found his father, as well as his grandparents, Thomas Riddle and Mary Riddle, in the drawing room. Riddle then used the Killing Curse on his father and Muggle grandparents.
It is unknown if there
were any words exchanged between them before the actual murders took
place, but what is certain is that the Riddles were found dead in their
drawing room, with looks of extreme fear on their faces. Riddle returned
to the Gaunt shack and modified Morfin's memory to make him believe
that he had killed the Riddles himself.
Riddle
replaced Morfin's wand on his person but absconded with the ring. When
Morfin was arrested by the Ministry and found guilty of the Riddle
murders, he was carted off to Azkaban for good this time. As he was
being taken away, he continuously remarked that his father would kill
him for losing the ring.
Riddle
openly wore the ring at Hogwarts after these events, likely as a
trophy, as seen on his hand in a memory provided by Potions Master
Horace Slughorn. Riddle then questioned Slughorn about Horcruxes,
particularly what would happen to the wizard that created more than one.
By this point, Riddle
had already created his first Horcrux, his childhood diary, with the
murder of a fellow student named Myrtle Warren. At some point shortly before or
after his graduation from Hogwarts, Riddle used the murder of his
father, Tom Riddle Snr to turn the ring into a Horcrux.
After
that, he lost interest in wearing it any longer and chose to return it
to the very place he had stolen it from: the Gaunt shack. He placed the
ring inside a golden box and hid it beneath the shack's rotting
floorboards.
He
then set up many protective enchantments to deter outsiders from
entering the shack and finding the ring. He also placed a powerful curse
on the ring as well, one that would quickly lead to the death of the
ring's wearer if not stemmed.
The ring was left there
in the ruin of the Gaunt shack for many decades to come. In his entire
time of possessing the ring, Riddle either never knew its powers or
status as the Resurrection Stone, or simply did not have any use for it,
as he feared the dead and did not wish to bring back anyone.
Albus Dumbledore
continued investigating Riddle's obsession with immortality and
suspected correctly that Riddle had created up to six Horcruxes.
Dumbledore suspected that a good place to look for one of Riddle's
Horcruxes would be the Gaunt shack, considering its importance to
Riddle's past.
Dumbledore
travelled to Little Hangleton and found the remains of the shack,
hidden amongst many weeds and brush. Dumbledore succeeded in passing
through the enchantments protecting the shack and discovered the golden
box holding the ring beneath the shack's floorboards.
He brought the sword of Godric Gryffindor with him as it now had the power to destroy Horcruxes since Harry Potter had used it to kill the Basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets, which imbued the blade with the Basilisk's venom.
However, Dumbledore recognised the symbol of the Deathly Hallows on the ring's black stone and recognised it as the Resurrection Stone,
something for which Dumbledore had searched for the greater part of his
life. Hoping to revive his dead family members, particularly his sister
Ariana Dumbledore, he disregarded the ring's status as a Horcrux and put it on.
This
enacted the ring's deadly curse, and it began to quickly spread through
Dumbledore's body, starting with the hand on which he had put the ring. After Dumbledore returned to Hogwarts, he used Godric Gryffindor's Sword to crack the Resurrection Stone so as to destroy it as a Horcrux.
While the act did destroy the ring as one of Riddle's Horcruxes, it did not stop the fatal curse. The curse gave Dumbledore's hand a withered black look, as though it had died. Severus Snape managed to stop the curse in his right hand, but warned him that he had only a year to live.
After the Horcrux was destroyed, Dumbledore continued to wear the ring for several more days. Most notably, he wore it when he picked up Harry Potter from Privet Drive and took him to persuade Horace Slughorn to teach at Hogwarts.
After Lord Voldemort discovered that Harry was hunting his Horcruxes, Lord Voldemort decided to make sure that each of his Horcruxes
was still safe and to increase their protection. He decided that the
ring was perhaps the least safe, and thus visited the shack first. Upon
discovering that the ring had in fact disappeared, Lord Voldemort let out a scream of fury and quickly left to check the security of his other Horcruxes.
See this? See this? Know what it is?
Know where it came from?
Centuries it's been in our family,
that's how far back we go, and pure-blood all the way!
Know how much I've been offered for this,
with the Peverell coat of arms engraved on the stone?
Marvolo Gaunt
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