If you got the resurrection stone who would you summon back just to say goodbye to or see again I would bring my grandpa, my aunt and some of my old teachers I had in school. I would be so happy if I had them back even if it was just for an hour.
If you got the resurrection stone who would you summon back just to say goodbye to or see again I would bring my grandpa, my aunt and some of my old teachers I had in school. I would be so happy if I had them back even if it was just for an hour.
77 Votes in Poll
Is it possible that Tom investigated the stone for possible powers or magical features, but it didn't work for him because he had no 'loved ones?
Does this make it impossible for him to become the 'Master of Death'?
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Chapter Thirty-Four: King’s Cross Station
He lay facedown, listening to the silence. He was perfectly alone. Nobody was watching. Nobody else was there. He was not perfectly sure that he was there himself.
A long time later, or maybe no time at all, it came to him that he must exist, must be more than disembodied thought, because he was lying, definitely lying, on some surface. Therefore he had a sense of touch, and the thing against which he lay existed too.
Almost as soon as he had reached this conclusion, Harry became conscious that he was naked. Convinced as he was of his total solitude, this did not concern him, but it did intrigue him slightly. He wondered whether, as he could feel, he would be able to see. In opening them, he discovered that he had eyes.
He lay in a bright mist, though it was not like mist he had ever experienced before. His surroundings were not hidden by cloudy vapor; rather the cloudy vapor had not yet formed into surroundings. The floor on which he lay seemed to be white, neither warm nor cold, but simply there, a flat, blank something on which to be.
He sat up. His body appeared unscathed. He touched his face. He was not wearing glasses anymore.
Then a noise reached him through the unformed nothingness that surrounded him: the small soft thumpings of something that flapped, flailed, and struggled. It was a pitiful noise, yet also slightly indecent. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he was eavesdropping on something furtive, shameful. For the first time, he wished he were clothed.
Barely had the wish formed in his head than robes appeared a short distance away. He took them and put them on. They were soft, clean, and warm. It was extraordinary how they had appeared just like that, the moment he had wanted them…
He stood up, looking around. Was he in some great Room of Requirement? The longer he looked, the more there was to see. A great domed glass roof glittered high above him in sunlight. Perhaps it was a palace. All was hushed and still, except for those odd thumping and whimpering noises coming from somewhere close by in the mist...
Harry turned slowly on the spot, and his surroundings seemed to invent themselves before his eyes. A wide-open space, bright and clean, a hall larger by far than the Great Hall, with that clear domed glass ceiling. It was quite empty. He was the only person there, except for—
He recoiled. He had spotted the thing that was making the noise. It had the form of a small, naked child, curled on the ground, its skin raw and rough, flayed-looking, and it lay shuddering under a seat where it had been left, unwanted, stuffed out of sight, struggling for breath.
He was afraid of it. Small and fragile and wounded though it was, he did not want to approach it. Nevertheless he drew slowly nearer, ready to jump back at any moment. Soon he stood near enough to touch it, yet he could not bring himself to do it. He felt like a coward. He ought to comfort it, but it repulsed him.
‘You cannot help.’
He spun around. Albus Dumbledore was walking toward him, sprightly and upright, wearing sweeping robes of midnight blue.
‘Harry,’ he spread his arms wide, and his hands were both whole and white and undamaged. ‘You wonderful boy. You brave, brave man. Let us walk.’
Stunned, Harry followed as Dumbledore strode away from where the flayed child lay whimpering, leading him to two seats that Harry had not previously noticed, set some distance away under that high, sparkling ceiling. Dumbledore sat down in one of them, and Harry fell into the other, staring at his old headmaster’s face. Dumbledore’s long silver hair and beard, the piercingly blue eyes behind half-moon spectacles, the crooked nose: Everything was as he had remembered it. And yet…
‘But you’re dead,’ said Harry.
‘Oh yes,’ said Dumbledore matter-of-factly.
‘Then…I’m dead too?’
‘Ah,’ said Dumbledore, smiling still more broadly. ‘That is the question, isn’t it? On the whole, dear boy, I think not.’
They looked at each other, the old man still beaming.
‘Not?’ repeated Harry.
‘Not,’ said Dumbledore.
‘But…’ Harry raised his hand instinctively towards the lightning scar. It did not seem to be there. ‘But I should have died—I didn’t defend myself! I meant to let him kill me!’
‘And that,’ said Dumbledore, ‘will, I think, have made all the difference.’
Happiness seemed to radiate from Dumbledore like light, like fire: Harry had never seen the man so utterly, so palpably, content.
‘Explain,’ said Harry.
‘But you already know,’ said Dumbledore. He twiddled his thumbs together.
‘I let him kill me,’ said Harry. ‘Didn’t I?’
‘You did,’ said Dumbledore, nodding. ‘Go on!’
‘So the part of his soul that was in me…’
Dumbledore nodded still more enthusiastically, urging Harry onward, a broad smile of encouragement on his face.
‘...has it gone?’
‘Oh yes!’ said Dumbledore. ‘Yes, he destroyed it. Your soul is whole, and completely your own, Harry.’
‘But then...’
Harry glanced over his shoulder to where the small, maimed creature trembled under the chair.
‘What is that, Professor?’
‘Something that is beyond either of our help,’ said Dumbledore.
‘But if Voldemort used the Killing Curse,’ Harry started again ‘and nobody died for me this time—how can I be alive?’
‘I think you know,’ said Dumbledore. ‘Think back. Remember what he did, in his ignorance, in his greed and his cruelty.’
Harry thought. He let his gaze drift over his surroundings. If this was indeed a palace in which they sat, it was an odd one, with chairs set in little rows and bits of railing here and there, and still, he and Dumbledore and the stunted creature under the chair were the only beings there. Then the answer rose to his lips easily, without effort.
‘He took my blood,’ said Harry.
‘Precisely!’ said Dumbledore. ‘He took your blood and rebuilt his living body with it! Your blood in his veins, Harry, Lily’s protection inside both of you! He tethered you to life while he lives!’
‘I live...while he lives! But I thought...I thought it was the other way round! I thought we both had to die? Or is it the same thing?’
He was distracted by the whimpering and thumping of the agonized creature behind them and glanced back at it yet again.
‘Are you sure we can’t do anything?’
‘There is no help possible.’
‘Then explain…more,’ said Harry, and Dumbledore smiled. ‘You were the seventh Horcrux, Harry, the Horcrux he never meant to make. He had rendered his soul so unstable that it broke apart when he committed those acts of unspeakable evil, the murder of your parents, the attempted killing of a child. But what escaped from that room was even less than he knew. He left more than his body behind. He left part of himself latched to you, the would-be victim who had survived. And his knowledge remained woefully incomplete, Harry! That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend. Of house-elves and children’s tales, of love, loyalty, and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing. Nothing. That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped. He took your blood believing it would strengthen him. He took into his body a tiny part of the enchantment your mother laid upon you when she died for you. His body keeps her sacrifice alive, and while that enchantment survives, so do you and so does Voldemort’s one last hope for himself.’
Dumbledore smiled at Harry, and Harry stared at him.
‘And you knew this? You knew—all along?’
‘I guessed. But my guesses have usually been good,’ said Dumbledore happily, and they sat in silence for what seemed like a long time, while the creature behind them continued to whimper and tremble.
‘There’s more,’ said Harry. ‘There’s more to it. Why did my wand break the wand he borrowed?’
‘As to that, I cannot be sure. I studied wand lore to an extent, but even so in this topic my knowledge is limited in comparison to the original Ollivander wand maker over twenty-three centuries ago.’
‘Have a guess, then,’ said Harry, and Dumbledore laughed. ‘What you must understand, Harry, is that you and Lord Voldemort have journeyed together into realms of magic hitherto unknown and unprecedented, and no wandmaker could, I think, ever have predicted it or explained it to Voldemort. Without meaning to, as you now know, Lord Voldemort doubled the bond between you when he returned to a human form. A part of his soul was still attached to yours, and, thinking to strengthen himself, he took a part of your mother’s sacrifice into himself. If he could only have understood the precise and terrible power of that sacrifice, he would not, perhaps, had dared to touch your blood...But then, if he had been able to understand, he could not be Lord Voldemort, and might never have murdered at all. Having ensured this two-fold connection, having wrapped your destinies together more securely than ever two wizards were joined in history, Voldemort proceeded to attack you with a wand that shared a core with yours. And now something very strange happened, as we know. The cores reacted in a way that Lord Voldemort, who never knew that your wand was twin of his, had never expected.’
Dumbledore paused for a moment, then continued.
‘He was more afraid than you were that night, Harry. You had accepted, even embraced, the possibility of death, something Lord Voldemort has never been able to do. Your courage won, your wand overpowered his. And in doing so, something happened between those wands, something that echoed the relationship between their masters. I believe that your wand imbibed some of the power and qualities of Voldemort’s wand that night, which is to say that it contained a little of Voldemort himself. So your wand recognized him when he pursued you, recognized a man who was both kin and mortal enemy, and it regurgitated some of his own magic against him, magic much more powerful than anything Lucius’ wand had ever performed. Your wand now contained the power of your enormous courage and of Voldemort’s own deadly skill: What chance did that poor stick of Lucius Malfoy’s stand?’
‘But if my wand was so powerful, how come Tracey was able to accidentally break it?’ asked Harry.
‘My dear boy, its remarkable effects were directed only at Voldemort, who had tampered so ill-advisedly with the deepest laws of magic. Only toward him was that wand abnormally powerful. Otherwise it was a wand like any other…though a good one, I am sure,’ Dumbledore finished kindly.
Harry sat in thought for a long time, or perhaps seconds. It was very hard to be sure of things like time, here.
‘He killed me with your wand.’
‘He failed to kill you with my wand,’ Dumbledore corrected Harry. ‘I think we can agree you are not dead—though, of course,’ he added, as if fearing he had been discourteous, ‘I do not minimize your sufferings, which I am sure were severe.’
‘I feel great at the moment, though,’ said Harry, looking down at his clean, unblemished hands. ‘Where are we, exactly?’
‘Well, I was going to ask you that,’ said Dumbledore, looking around. ‘Where would you say that we are?’
Until Dumbledore had asked, Harry had not known. Now, however, he found that he had an answer ready to give.
‘It looks,’ he said slowly, ‘like King’s Cross station. Except a lot cleaner and empty, and there are no trains as far as I can see.’
‘King’s Cross station!’ Dumbledore was chuckling immoderately. ‘Good gracious, really?’
‘Well, where do you think we are?’ asked Harry, a little defensively.
‘My dear boy, I have no idea. This is, as they say, your party.’
Harry had no idea what this meant; Dumbledore was being infuriating. He glared at him, then remember a much more pressing question than that of their current location.
‘The Deathly Hallows,’ he said, and he was glad to see that the words wiped the smile from Dumbledore’s face.
‘Ah, yes,’ he said. He even looked a little worried.
‘Well?’
For the first time since Harry had met Dumbledore, he looked less than an old man, much less. He looked fleetingly like a small boy caught in wrongdoing.
‘Can you forgive me?’ he said. ‘Can you forgive me for not trusting you? For not telling you? Harry, I only feared that you would fail as I had failed. I only dreaded that you would make my mistakes. I crave your pardon, Harry. I have known, for some time now, that you are the better man.’
‘What are you talking about?’ asked Harry, startled by Dumbledore’s tone, by the sudden tears in his eyes.
‘The Hallows, the Hallows,’ murmured Dumbledore. ‘A desperate man’s dream!’
‘But they’re real!’
‘Real, and dangerous, and a lure for fools,’ said Dumbledore. ‘And I was such a fool. But you know, don’t you? I have no secrets from you anymore. You know.’
‘What do I know?’
Dumbledore turned his whole body to face Harry, and tears still sparkled in his brilliantly blue eyes.
‘Master of death, Harry, master of Death! Was I better, ultimately, than Voldemort?’
‘Of course you were,’ said Harry. ‘Of course—how can you ask that? You never killed if you could avoid it!’
‘True, true,’ said Dumbledore, and he was like a child seeking reassurance. ‘Yet I too sought a way to conquer death, Harry.’
‘Not the way he did,’ said Harry. After all his anger at Dumbledore, how odd it was to sit here, beneath the high, vaulted ceiling, and defend Dumbledore from himself. ‘Hallows, not Horcruxes.’
‘Hallows,’ mumbled Dumbledore, ‘not Horcruxes. Precisely’
There was a pause. The creature behind them whimpered, but Harry no longer looked around.
‘Grindelwald was looking for them too?’ he asked. Dumbledore closed his eyes for a moment and nodded.
‘It was the thing, above all, that drew us together, more than love,’ he said quietly. ‘Two clever, arrogant boys with a shared obsession. He wanted to come to Godric’s Hollow, as I am sure you have guessed, because of the grave of Ignotus Peverell. He wanted to explore the place the third brother had died. He only stayed because of me, but only for a brief time.’
‘So it’s true?’ asked Harry. ‘All of it? The Peverell brothers—‘
‘—were the three brothers of the tale,’ said Dumbledore, nodding. ‘Oh yes, I think so. Whether they met Death on a lonely road…I think it more likely that the Peverell brothers were simply gifted, dangerous wizards who succeeded in creating those powerful objects. The story of them being Death’s own Hallows seems to me the sort of legend that might have sprung up around such creations. The Cloak, as you know now, traveled down through the ages, father to son, mother to daughter, parent to first born, right down to Ignotus’s last living descendant, who was born, as Ignotus was, in the village of Godric’s Hollow.’
Dumbledore smiled at Harry.
‘Me?’
‘You. You have guessed, I know, why the Cloak was in my possession on the night your parents died. James had showed it to me just a few days previously. It explained so much of his undetected wrong-doing at school! I could hardly believe what I was seeing. I asked to borrow it, to examine it. I had long since given up my dream of uniting the Hallows, but I could not resist, could not help taking a closer look…It was a Cloak the likes of which I had never seen, immensely old, perfect in every respect…and then your father died, and I had two Hallows at last, all to myself!’
His tone was unbearably bitter.
‘The Cloak wouldn’t have helped them survive, though,’ Harry said quickly. ‘Voldemort knew where my mum and dad were. The Cloak couldn’t have made them curse-proof.’
‘True,’ sighed Dumbledore. ‘True.’
Harry waited, but Dumbledore did not speak, so he prompted him.
‘So you’d given up looking for the Hallows when you saw the Cloak?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Dumbledore faintly. It seemed that he forced himself to meet Harry’s eyes. ‘You know what happened. You know. You cannot despise me more than I despise myself.’
‘But I don’t despise you—‘
‘Then you should,’ said Dumbledore. He drew a deep breath. ‘You know the secret of my sister’s ill health, what those Muggles did, what she became. You know how my poor father sought revenge, and paid the price, died in Azkaban. You know how my mother gave up her own life to care for Ariana. I resented it, Harry.’
Dumbledore stated it baldly, coldly. He was looking now over the top of Harry’s head, into the distance.
‘I was gifted, I was brilliant. I wanted to escape. I wanted to shine. I wanted glory. Do not misunderstand me,’ he said, and pain crossed the face so that he looked ancient again. ‘I loved them. I loved my parents, I loved my brother and my sister, but I was selfish, Harry, more selfish than you, who are a remarkably selfless person, could possibly imagine. So that, when my mother died, and I was left the responsibility of a damaged sister and a wayward brother, I returned to my village in anger and bitterness. Trapped and wasted, I thought! And then, of course, he came…’
Dumbledore looked directly into Harry’s eyes again.
‘Grindelwald. You cannot imagine how his ideas caught me, Harry, his personality infatuated me, his ideals, inflamed me. Muggles forced into subservience. We wizards triumphant. Grindelwald and I, the glorious young leaders of the revolution, ruling side by side. Oh, I had a few scruples. I assuaged my conscience with empty words. It would all be for the greater good, and any harm done would be repaid a hundredfold in benefits for wizards. Did I know, in my heart of hearts, what Gellert Grindelwald was? I think I did, but I closed my eyes. If the plans we were making came to fruition, all my dreams would come true. And at the heart of our schemes, the Deathly Hallows! How they fascinated him, how they fascinated both of us! The unbeatable wand, the weapon that would lead us to power! The Resurrection Stone—to him, though I pretended not to know it, it meant an army of Inferi! To me, I confess, it meant the return of my parents, and the lifting of all responsibility from my shoulders. And the Cloak…somehow, we never discussed the Cloak much, Harry. Both of us could conceal ourselves well enough without the Cloak, the true magic of which, of course, is that it can be used to protect and shield others as well as its owner. I thought that, if we ever found it, it might be useful in hiding Ariana, but our interest in the Cloak was mainly that it completed the trio, for the legend said that the man who united all three objects would then be truly master of death, which we took to mean “invincible.”’
Dumbledore emphasized that word with a lot of self hatred.
‘Invincible masters of death, Grindelwald and Dumbledore! Two months of insanity, of blinding love, of cruel dreams, and neglect of the only two members of my family left to me. And then…you know what happened. Reality returned in the form of my rough, unlettered, and infinitely more admirable brother. I did not want to hear the truths he shouted at me. I did not want to hear that I could not set forth to seek Hallows with a fragile and unstable sister in tow. The argument became a fight. Grindelwald lost control. That which I had always sensed in him, though I had pretended not to, now sprang into terrible being. And Ariana…after all my mother’s care and caution…lay dead upon the floor.’
Dumbledore gave a little gasp and began to cry in earnest. Harry reached out and was glad to find that he could touch him: He gripped his arm tightly and Dumbledore gradually regained control.
‘Well, Grindelwald fled, as anyone but I could have predicted. He vanished, with his plans for seizing power, and his schemes for Muggle torture, and his dreams of the Deathly Hallows, dreams in which I had encouraged him and helped him. He ran, while I was left to bury my sister, and learn to live with my guilt and my terrible grief, the price of my shame. Years passed. There were rumors about him. They said he had procured a wand of immense power. I, meanwhile, was offered the post of Minister of Magic, not once, but several times. Naturally, I refused. I had learned that I was not to be trusted with power.’
‘But you’d have been better, much better, than Fudge or Scrimgeour!’ burst out Harry.
‘Would I?’ asked Dumbledore heavily. ‘I am not so sure. I had proven, as a very young man, that power was my weakness and my temptation. It is a curious thing, Harry, but perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well. I was safer at Hogwarts. I think I was a good teacher—‘
‘You were the best—‘
‘—you are very kind, Harry. But while I busied myself with the training of young wizards, Grindelwald was raising an army. They say he feared me, and perhaps he did, but less, I think, than I feared him…’
‘Oh, not death,’ said Dumbledore, in answer to Harry’s questioning look. ‘Not what he could do to me magically. I knew that we were evenly matched, perhaps that I was a shade more skillful. It was the truth I feared. You see, I never knew which of us, in that last, horrific fight, had actually cast the curse that killed my sister. You may call me cowardly: You would be right. Harry, I dreaded beyond all things the knowledge that it had been I who brought about her death, not merely through my arrogance and stupidity, but that I actually struck the blow that snuffed out her life. I think he knew it. I think he knew what frightened me. I delayed meeting him until finally, it would have been too shameful to resist any longer. People were dying and he seemed unstoppable, and I had to do what I could. Well, you know what happened next. I won the duel. I won the wand.’
Another silence. Harry did not ask whether Dumbledore had ever found out who struck Ariana dead. He did not want to know, and even less did he want Dumbledore to have to tell him. At last he knew what Dumbledore would have seen when he looked in the Mirror of Erised, and why Dumbledore had been so understanding of the fascination it had exercised over Harry.
They sat in silence for a long time, and the whimperings of the creature behind them barely disturbed Harry anymore.
At last he said, ‘Grindelwald tried to stop Voldemort going after the wand. He lied, you know, pretended he had never had it. I think…I think he was trying to protect your resting place, or at the very least stopping another dark wizard from becoming all powerful.’
Dumbledore nodded, looking down at his lap, tears still glittering on the crooked nose.
‘They say he showed remorse in later years, alone in his cell at Nurmengard. I hope that it is true. I would like to think he did feel the horror and shame of what he had done. Perhaps that lie to Voldemort was his attempt to make amends, either to me, the wizarding world, or both…to prevent Voldemort from taking the Hallow…’
Dumbledore dabbed his eyes. After another short pause Harry said, ‘You tried to use the Resurrection Stone.’
Dumbledore nodded.
‘When I discovered it, after all those years, buried in the abandoned home of the Gaunts—the Hallow I had craved most of all, though in my youth I had wanted it for very different reasons—I lost my head, Harry. I quite forgot that it was now a Horcrux, that the ring was sure to carry a curse. I picked it up, and I put it on, and for a second I imagined that I was about to see Ariana, and my mother, and my father, and to tell them how very, very sorry I was…’
‘I was such a fool, Harry. After all those years I had learned nothing. I was unworthy to unite the Deadly Hallows. I had proved it time and again, and here was the final proof.’
‘Why?’ said Harry. ‘It was natural! You wanted to see them again. What’s wrong with that?’
‘Maybe a man in a billion could unite the Hallows, Harry. I was fit only to possess the meanest one of them, the least extraordinary. I was fit to own the Elder Wand, and not to boast of it, and not to kill with it. I was permitted to tame and to use it, because I took it, not for gain, but to save others from it. But the Cloak, I took out of vain curiosity, and so it could never have worked for me as it works for you, its true owner. The stone I would have used in an attempt to drag back those who are at peace, rather than to enable my self-sacrifice, as you did. You are the worthy possessor of the Hallows.’
Dumbledore patted Harry’s hand, and Harry looked up at the old man and smiled; he could not help himself. How could he remain angry with Dumbledore now?
‘Why did you have to make it so difficult?’
Dumbledore’s smile was tremulous.
‘I am afraid I counted on Miss Davis and Mr Nott to slow you up, Harry. I was afraid that your hot head might dominate your good heart. I was scared that, if presented outright with the facts about those tempting objects, you might seize the Hallows as I did, at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons. If you laid hands on them, I wanted you to possess them safely. You are the true master of death, because the true master does not seek to run away from Death. He accepts that he must die, and understands that there are far, far worse things in the living world than dying.’
‘And Voldemort never knew about the Hallows?’
‘I do not think so, because he did not recognize the Resurrection Stone when he turned into a Horcrux. But even if he had known about them, Harry, I doubt that he would have been interested in any except the first. He would not think that he needed the Cloak, and as for the stone, whom would he want to bring back from the dead? He fears the dead. He does not love.’
‘But you expected him to go after the wand?’
‘I have been sure that he would try, ever since your wand beat Voldemort’s in the graveyard of Little Hangleton. At first, he was afraid that you had conquered him by superior skill. Once he had kidnapped Ollivander, however, he discovered the existence of the twin cores. He thought that explained everything. Yet the borrowed wand did no better against yours! So Voldemort, instead of asking himself what quality it was in you that had made your wand so strong, what gift you possessed that he did not, naturally set out to find the one wand that, they said, would beat any other. For him, the Elder Wand has become an obsession to rival his obsession with you. He believes that the Elder Wand removes his last weakness and makes him truly invincible. Poor Severus…’
‘If you planned your death with Snape, you meant him to end up with the Elder Wand, didn’t you?’
‘I admit that was my intention,’ said Dumbledore, ‘but it did not work as I had intended, did it?’
‘No,’ said Harry. ‘That bit didn’t work out.’
‘About Snape…his Patronus was a doe, as is Allison’s, and I think my mother’s?’
‘Correct.’
‘How can all three share the same? It’s curious, don’t you think?’
‘Actually if I think about it, it doesn’t seem curious at all.’
And perhaps that was true. Despite their differences Lily loved James and it turned out that their Patronus’ reflected one another, stag and doe, as did Harry and Allison’s, but Snape loved Lily more than life itself and so his was identical to hers.
With that answered another question popped into Harry’s head that he had been wondering for nearly seven years, and while it had been partially answered before, now felt like the time for the full truth.
‘Why was I Sorted into Slytherin? Was it because I had a piece of Voldemort’s soul, or because for a split second I agreed with what the Sorting Hat was saying, or something completely different?’
‘It might be an unsatisfactory answer, but the truth of the matter is that the Sorting Hat is simply old,’ said Dumbledore with a twinkle in his eye.
‘Old?’ repeated Harry in astonishment.
‘Yes, the Hat was created nearly a millennium ago, it is from a different time where witches and wizards thought differently about a lot of things. All the founders but Helga Hufflepuff believed people are set apart by traits and fit neatly into boxes, and all four believed who a person is and always will be can be determined at the ripe old age of eleven. This just isn’t really the case, people grow, evolve, or sometimes decline, and who they are at eleven isn’t the same person as they are at seventeen, or fifty, or a hundred and fifteen. That and people have multiple qualities, some might be more prevalent than others but that doesn’t mean the other qualities aren’t there. And of course there are stereotypes that have formed over the centuries which just aren’t accurate, I am sure you have met cowardly Gryffindors, closed-minded Ravenclaws, traitorous Hufflepuffs, and of course you yourself are a kind Slytherin.’
Harry thought about all this and knew that each of Dumbledore’s words on this matter were true.
‘To be a little more simple, you Harry are equally brave, loyal, wise, and cunning, and the Hat just chose which one you were leaning towards that day. Perhaps if things had been a little different you would have ended up in any of the other Houses, but while it took me a little while to understand, I am glad you ended up in Slytherin.’
‘Why?’
‘Because slowly you got to influence the rest of your House, you inspired others to bring their best traits to the surface, and furthermore your friendships between the different Houses brought the whole school together at a time where it needed it most.’
The creature behind them jerked and moaned, and Harry and Dumbledore sat without talking for the longest time yet. The realization of what would happen next settled gradually over Harry in the long minutes, like softly falling snow. ‘I’ve got to go back, haven’t I?’
‘That is up to you.’
‘I’ve got a choice?’
‘Oh yes,’ Dumbledore smiled at him. ‘We are in King’s Cross, you say? I think that if you decided not to go back, you would be able to...let’s say...board a train.’
‘And where would it take me?’
‘On,’ said Dumbledore simply.
Silence again.
‘Voldemort’s got the Elder Wand.’
‘True. Voldemort has the Elder Wand.’
‘But you want me to go back?’
‘I think,’ said Dumbledore, ‘that if you choose to return, there is a chance that he may be finished for good. I cannot promise it. But I know this, Harry, that you have less to fear from returning here than he does.’
Harry glanced again at the raw-looking thing that trembled and choked in the shadow beneath the distant chair.
‘Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and above all, those who live without love. By returning, you may ensure that fewer souls are maimed, fewer families are torn apart. If that seems to you a worthy goal, then we say good-bye for the present.’
Harry nodded and sighed. Leaving this place would not be nearly as hard as walking into the forest had been, but it was warm and light and peaceful here, and he knew that he was heading back to pain and the fear of more loss. He stood up, and Dumbledore did the same, and they looked for a long moment into each other’s faces.
‘Tell me one last thing,’ said Harry. ‘Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?’
Dumbledore beamed at him, and his voice sounded loud and strong in Harry’s ears even though the bright white mist was descending again, obscuring his figure.
‘Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?’
First half of book:
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003829962
Previous Chapters:
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003833123
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003838588
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003840013
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003841380
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003842029
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003842653
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003843726
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003844089
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003844089/r/4400000000017564493
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003844352
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003844924
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003845391
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003845905
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003846382
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Chapter Thirty-Three: Mars Shining Bright Over the Forbidden Forest
Finally, the truth. Answers that Remus and Sirius had never known themselves. Lying with his face pressed into the dusty carpet of the office where he had once thought he was learning the secrets of victory, Harry understood at last that he was not supposed to survive. His job was to walk calmly into Death’s welcoming arms. Along the way, he was to dispose of Voldemort’s remaining links to life, so that when at last he flung himself across Voldemort’s path, and did not raise a wand to defend himself, the end would be clean, and the job that ought to have been done in Godric’s Hollow would be finished:
Neither would live, neither could survive.
He felt his heart pounding fiercely in his chest. How strange that in his dread of death, it pumped all the harder, valiantly keeping him alive. But it would have to stop, and soon. Its beats were numbered. How many would there be time for, as he rose and walked through the castle for the last time, out into the grounds and into the forest?
Terror washed over him as he lay on the floor, with that funeral drum pounding inside him. Would it hurt to die? All those times he had thought that it was about to happen and escaped, he had never really thought of the thing itself: His will to live had always been so much stronger than his fear of death. Yet it did not occur to him now to try to escape, to outrun Voldemort. It was over, he knew it, and all that was left was the thing itself: dying.
If he could only have died on that summer’s night when he had left number four, Privet Drive, for the last time, when the noble phoenix-feather wand had saved him! If he could only have died like Hedwig, so quickly he would not have known it had happened! Or if he could have launched himself in front of a wand to save someone he loved…He envied even his parents’ deaths now. This cold-blooded walk to his own destruction would require a different kind of bravery. He felt his fingers trembling slightly and made an effort to control them, although no one could see him; the portraits on the walls were all empty.
Slowly, very slowly, he sat up, and as he did so he felt more alive and more aware of his own living body than ever before. Why had he never appreciated what a miracle he was, brain and nerve and bounding heart? It would all be gone…or at least, he would be gone from it. His breath came slow and deep, and his mouth and throat were completely dry, but so were his eyes.
Dumbledore’s betrayal was almost nothing. Of course there had been a bigger plan; Harry had simply been too foolish to see it, he realized that now. He had never questioned that his own assumption: that Dumbledore wanted him alive. Now he saw that his life span had always been determined by how long it took to eliminate all the Horcruxes. Dumbledore had passed the job of destroying them to him, and obediently he had continued to chip away at the bonds tying not only Voldemort, but himself, to life!
How neat, how elegant, not to waste any more lives, but to give the dangerous task to the boy who had already been marked for slaughter, and whose death would not be a calamity, but another blow against Voldemort.
And Dumbledore had known that Harry would not duck out, that he would keep going to the end, even though it was his end, because he had taken trouble to get to know him, hadn’t he? Dumbledore knew, as Voldemort knew, that Harry would not let anyone else die for him now that he had discovered it was in his power to stop it. The images of Remus, Tonks, Fred, and Colin lying dead in the Great Hall forced their way back into his mind’s eye, and for a moment he could hardly breathe: Death was impatient…
But Dumbledore had overestimated him. He had failed: The snake survived. One Horcrux remained to bind Voldemort to the earth, even after Harry had been killed. True, that would mean an easier job for somebody. He wondered who would do it…Tracey, Allison, and Theodore would know what needed to be done, of course…That would have been why Dumbledore wanted him to confide in three others…so that if he fulfilled his true destiny a little early, they could carry on…
Like rain on a cold window, these thoughts pattered against the hard surface of the incontrovertible truth, which was that he must doe. I must die. It must end.
Canini, Theodore, Allison, and Tracey seemed a long way away, in a far-off country; he felt as though he had parted from them long ago. There would be no good-byes and no explanations, he was determined of that. This was a journey they could not take together, and the attempts they would make to stop him would waste valuable time. He looked down at Sirius’ gold watch with the silver trim he had received from Remus on his seventeenth birthday. Nearly half of the hour allotted by Voldemort for his surrender had elapsed. He stood up. His heart was leaping against his ribs like a frantic bird. Perhaps it knew it had little time left, perhaps it was determined to fulfill a lifetime’s beats before the end. He did not look back as he closed the office door.
The castle was empty. He felt ghostly striding through it alone, as if he had already died. The portrait people were still missing from their frames; the whole place was eerily still, as if all its remaining lifeblood were concentrated in the Great Hall where the dead and the mourners were crammed.
Harry pulled the Invisibility Cloak over himself and descended through the floors, at last walking down the marble staircase into the entrance hall. Perhaps some tiny part of him hoped to be sensed, to be seen, to be stopped, but the Cloak was, as ever, impenetrable, perfect, and he reached the front doors easily.
Then Neville nearly walked into him. He and Lavender Brown were carrying a body in from the grounds. Harry glanced down and saw it was Tracey’s teacher for Ancient Studies Professor Camelia Magia, he was fairly certain he had never even met in person this instructor and yet she had fought and died for him.
‘You should take a break Neville, rest and heal up before the next wave,’ said Lavender after they gently put the body down just within the entrance to the Great Hall.
Neville did not go to get healed however, instead he leaned against the door frame for a moment and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. He looked like an old man. Then he set off down the stops again into the darkness to recover more bodies.
Harry took one glance back at the entrance of the Great Hall. People were moving around, trying to comfort each other, drinking, kneeling beside the dead, but he could not see any of the people he loved, no hint of Canini, Theodore, Allison, or any of the Weasleys, no Tracey and Terence, no Luna. He felt he would have given all the time remaining to him for just one last look at them; but then, would he ever have the strength to stop looking? It was better like this.
He moved down the steps and out into the darkness. It was nearly four in the morning, and the deathly stillness of the grounds felt as though they were holding their breath, waiting to see whether he could do what he must.
Harry moved toward Neville, who was bending over another body.
‘Neville.’
‘Blimey, Harry, you nearly gave me heart failure!’
Harry had pulled off the Cloak: The idea had come to him out of nowhere, born out of a desire to make absolutely sure.
‘Where are you going, alone?’ Neville asked suspiciously.
‘It’s all part of the plan,’ said Harry. ‘There’s something I’ve got to do. Listen—Neville—‘
‘Harry!’ Neville looked suddenly scared. ‘Harry, you’re not thinking of handing yourself over?’
‘No,’ Harry lied easily. ‘Course not…this is something else. But I might be out of sight for a while. You know Voldemort’s name, Neville? He’s got a huge snake…Calls it Nagini…’
‘I’ve heard, yeah…What about it?’
‘It’s got to be killed. Tracey, Allison, and Theodore know that, but just in case they—‘
The awfulness of that possibility smothered him for a moment, made it impossible to keep talking. But he pulled himself together again; This was crucial, he must be like Dumbledore, keep a cool head, make sure there were backups, others to carry on. Dumbledore had died knowing that four people still knew about the Horcruxes; now Neville will take Harry’s place. There would still be four in the secret.
‘Just in case they’re—busy—and you get the chance—‘
‘Kill the snake?’
‘Kill the snake,’ Harry repeated.
‘All right, Harry,’ whispered Neville. ‘You’re okay, are you?’
‘I’m fine. Thanks, Neville.’
But Neville seized his wrist as Harry made to move on.
‘We’re all going to keep fighting, Harry. You know that?’
‘Yeah, I—‘
The suffocating feeling extinguished the end of the sentence; he could not go on. Neville did not seem to find it strange. He patted Harry on the shoulder, released him, and walked away to look for more bodies.
Harry swing the Cloak back over himself and walked on. Someone else was moving not far away, stooping over another prone figure on the ground. He was feet away from her when he realized it was Allison.
He stopped in his tracks. She was crouching over a girl who was whispering for her mother.
‘You are ok,’ Allison was saying in one of the softest tones Harry had ever heard. ‘I’m going to get you inside of the castle and Madam Pomfrey will fix you to be all better.’
‘But I want to go home,’ whispered the girl. ‘I don’t want to fight anymore! I shouldn’t have stayed!’
‘I-I’ll,’ Allison tried to begin, but her voice broke. Harry watched as she shoved her emotions back down and forced herself to be stoic again. ‘I’ll make sure you get home. Just let me bring you inside first.’
Ripples of cold undulated over Harry’s skin. He wanted to shout out to the night, he wanted Allison to know that he was there, he wanted her to know where he was going. He wanted to be stopped, to be dragged back, to be sent back home…
Allison was kneeling beside the injured girl now, holding her hand. With a huge effort Harry forced himself on. He thought he saw Allison look around as he passed, and wondered whether she had seen someone walking nearby, but he did not speak, and he did not look back.
Hagrid’s hut loomed out of the darkness. There were no lights, no sound of Fang scrabbling at the door, his bark booming in welcome. All those visits to Hagrid, and the gleam of the copper kettle on the fire, and rock cakes and giant grubs, and his great bearded face, and celebrating Quidditch victories, and Tracey helping him save Norberta…
He moved on, and now he reached the edge of the forest, and he stopped.
A swarm of dementors was gliding amongst the trees; he could feel their chill, and he was not sure he would be able to pass safely through it. He had no strength left for a Patronus. He could no longer control his own trembling. It was not, after all, so easy to die. Every second he breathed, the smell of the grass, the cool air on his face, was so precious: To think that people had years and years, time to waste, so much time it dragged, and he was clinging to each second. At the same time he thought that he would not be able to go on, and knew that he must. The long game was ended, the Snitch had been caught, it was time to leave the air…
The Snitch. His nerveless fingers fumbled for a moment with the pouch at his neck and he pulled it out.
“I open at the close.”
Breathing fast and hard, he stared down at it. Now that he wanted time to move as slowly as possible, it seemed to have sped up, and understanding was coming so fast it seemed to have by-passed thought. This was the close. This was the moment.
He pressed the golden metal to his lips and whispered, ‘I am about to die.’
The metal shell broke open. He lowered his shaking hand, raised Draco’s wand beneath the Cloak, and murmured, ‘Lumos.’
The black stone with its jagged crack running down the center sat in the two halves of the Snitch. The Resurrection Stone had cracked down the vertical line representing the Elder Wand. The triangle and circle representing the Cloak and the stone were still discernible.
And again Harry understood without having to think. It did not matter about bringing them back, for he was about to join them. He was not really fetching them: They were fetching him.
He closed his eyes and turned the stone over in his hand three times. He knew it had happened, because he heard slight movements around him that suggested frail bodies shifting their footing on the earthly, twig-strewn ground that marked the outer edge of the forest. He opened his eyes and looked around.
They were neither ghost nor truly flesh, he could see that. They resembled most closely the Riddle that had escaped from the diary so long ago, and he had been memory made nearly solid. Less substantial than living bodies, but much more than ghosts, they moved toward him, and on each face, there was the same loving smile.
James was exactly the same height as Harry. He was wearing the clothes in which he had died, his hair was untidy and ruffled, and his glasses were a little lopsided, like Mr Weasley’s.
Sirius was tall and handsome, and younger than Harry remembered him being at the time of his death, but still sported his shoulder length hair and short shaggy beard. He loped with an easy grace, his hands intertwined with the partner he just regained.
Remus was younger too, his numerous scars had vanished, and his hair was thicker and darker. He looked happy to be back with his love, and to be surrounded by old friends.
Tonks looked identical to how she did just hours before, short spiky bubblegum pink hair and all. Out of all of them, Harry had expected her to be the most unhappy, and yet she too smiled brightly when Harry looked at her.
Lily’s smile was widest of all. She pushed her long hair back as she drew close to him, and her green eyes, so like his, searched his face hungrily, as though she would never be able to look at him enough.
‘You’ve been so brave.’
He could not speak. His eyes feasted on her, and he thought that he would like to stand and look at her forever, and that would be enough.
‘You are nearly there,’ said James. ‘Very close. We are…so proud of you.’
‘Does it hurt?’
The childish question had fallen from Harry’s lips before he could stop it.
‘Dying? Not at all,’ said Sirius. ‘Quicker and easier than falling asleep.’
‘And he will want it to be quick. He wants it over,’ said Remus.
‘I didn’t want you to die,’ Harry said. These words came without his volition. ‘Any of you. I’m sorry—‘ He addressed Tonks more than any of them, beseeching her. ‘—right after you got married and had your son...Tonks, I’m sorry—‘
‘It is alright Harry, I am sorry too that I won’t get to watch by Tulip’s side as he grow up, but I don’t regret a single choice I have made. She, my mother, Canini, and others will tell him why I died. That I was trying to ensure he’d be free from the pain and suffering of war.’
Harry then turned to Remus, he choked on his words as he spoke.
‘Canini…she has lost so much tonight…I don’t know if I can go knowing she still needs me,’ said Harry.
‘I am sorry I had to leave her tonight too,’ said Remus. ‘And I’m sorry I will not get to see the woman she fought so hard to become, but I know how strong she is and that after tonight she will eventually be alright. We did our part Harry, there is nothing else we can do.’
A thought popped into his head, a pretty selfish one considering so many lost loved ones were already surrounding him, but it slipped out before he could stop himself.
‘And what about Fred, Colin, and even Paw-Paw Lyle?’
‘Each of them and others you have met who are now gone wanted to be here too,’ said Sirius simply, ‘but there are others right now that more desperately need to be watched over by them. Colin for Theodore and Dennis, Fred for the Weasley’s, and Lyle for Canini. When you eventually join us we will watch over them all together my son.’
A chilly breeze that seemed to emanate from the heart of the forest lifted the hair at Harry’s brow. He knew that they would not explicitly tell him to go, that it would have to be his decision. ‘You’ll stay with me?’
‘Until the very end,’ said James.
‘They won’t be able to see you?’ asked Harry.
‘We are part of you,’ said Sirius. ‘Invisible to anyone else.’
Harry looked at his mother.
‘Stay close to me,’ he said quietly.
And he set off. The dementors’ chill did not overcome him; he passed through it with his companions, and they acted like Patronuses to him, and together they marched through the old trees that grew closely together, their branches tangled, their roots gnarled and twisted underfoot. Harry clutched the Cloak tightly around him in the darkness, traveling deeper and deeper into the forest, with no idea where exactly Voldemort was, but sure that he would find him. Beside him, making scarcely a sound, walked James, Sirius, Remus, Tonks, and Lily, and their presence was his courage, and the reason he was about to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
His body and mind felt oddly disconnected now, his limbs working without conscious instruction, as if he were passenger, not driver, in the body he was about to leave. The dead who walked beside him through the forest were much more real to him now that the living back at the castle: Canini, Theodore, Tracey, and Allison, and all the others were the ones who felt like ghosts as he stumbled and slipped toward the end of his life, toward Voldemort…
A thud and a whisper. Some other living creature had stirred close by Harry stopped under the Cloak, peering around, listening, and his mother and father, his adoptive fathers, and Tonks stopped too.
‘Someone there,’ came a rough whisper close at hand. ‘He’s got an Invisibility Cloak. Could it be—?’
Two figures emerged from behind a nearby tree; Their wands flared and Harry saw Yaxley and Dolohov peering into the darkness, directly at the place Harry and his loved ones stood. Apparently they could not see anything.
‘Definitely heard something,’ said Yaxley. ‘Animal, d’you reckon?’
‘That head case Hagrid kept a whole bunch of stuff in here,’ said Dolohov, glancing over his shoulder.
Yaxley looked down at his watch. ‘Time’s nearly up. Potter’s had his hour. He’s not coming.’
‘And he was sure he’d come! He won’t be happy.’
‘Better go back,’ said Yaxley, ‘Find out what the plan is now.’
He and Dolohov turned and walked deeper into the forest.
Harry followed them, knowing that they would lead him exactly where he wanted to go. He glanced sideways, and his mother smiled at him, and the three men Harry had called father all nodded in encouragement.
They had traveled on mere minutes when Harry saw light ahead, and Yaxley and Dolohov stepped out into a clearing that Harry knew had been the place where the monstrous Aragog had once lived.
The remnants of his vast web were there still, but the swarm of descendants he had spawned had been driven out by the Death Eaters, to fight for their cause. A fire burned in the middle of the clearing, and its flickering light fell over a crowd of completely silent, watchful Death Eaters.
Some of them were still masked and hooded; others showed their faces. Two giants sat on the outskirts of the group, casting massive shadows over the scene, their faces cruel, rough-hewn like rock. Harry saw Bellatrix, skulking, sharpening a new knife; the great blonde Rowle was dabbing at his bleeding lip. He saw Lucius Malfoy, who looked defeated and terrified, and Narcissa, whose eyes were sunken and full of apprehension.
Every eye was fixed upon Voldemort, who stood with his head bowed, and his white hands folded over the Elder Wand in front of him. He might have been praying, or else counting silently in his mind, and Harry, standing still on the edge of the scene, thought absurdly of a child counting in a game of hide-and-seek. Behind his head, still swirling and coiling, the great snake Nagini floated in her glittering, charmed cage, like a monstrous halo.
When Dolohov and Yaxley rejoined the circle, Voldemort looked up.
‘No sign of him, my Lord,’ said Dolohov.
Voldemort’s expression did not change. The red eyes seemed to burn in the firelight. Slowly he drew the Elder Wand between his long fingers.
‘My Lord—‘
Bellatrix had spoken; She sat closest to Voldemort, disheveled, her face a little bloody but otherwise unharmed.
Voldemort raised his hand to silence her, and she did not speak another word, but eyed him in worshipful fascination.
‘I thought he would come,’ said Voldemort in his high, clear voice, his eyes on the leaping flames. ‘I expected him to come.’
Nobody spoke. They seemed as scared as Harry, whose heart was now throwing itself against his ribs as though determined to escape the body he was about to cast aside.
His hands were sweating as he pulled off the Invisibility Cloak and stuffed it beneath his robes, with his wand. He did not want to be tempted to fight.
‘I was, it seems…mistaken,’ said Voldemort.
‘You weren’t.’
Harry said it as loudly as he could, with all the force he could muster. He did not want to sound afraid.
The Resurrection Stone slipped from between his numb fingers, and out of the corner of his eyes he saw all four of his parents and Tonks vanish as he stepped forward into the firelight. At that moment he felt that nobody mattered but Voldemort. It was just the two of them.
The illusion was gone as soon as it had come. The giants roared as the Death Eaters rose together, and there were many cries, gasps, even laughter. Voldemort had frozen where he stood, but his red eyes had found Harry, and he stared at Harry moved toward him, with nothing but the fire between them.
Then a voice yelled, ‘HARRY! NO!’
He turned: Hagrid was bound and trussed, tied to a tree nearby. His massive body shook the branches overhead as he struggled, desperate.
‘NO! NO! HARRY, WHAT’RE YEH—?’
‘QUIET!’ shouted Rowle, and with a flick of his wand Hagrid was silenced.
Bellatrix, who had leapt to her feet, was looking eagerly from Voldemort to Harry. The only things that moved were the flames and the snake, coiling and uncoiling in the glittering cage behind Voldemort’s head.
Harry could feel his wand against his chest, but he made not attempt to draw it. He knew that the snake was too well protected, knew that if he managed to point the wand at Nagini, fifty curses would hit him first. And still, Voldemort and Harry looked at each other, and now Voldemort tilted his head a little to the side, considering the boy standing before him, and a singularly mirthless smile curled the lipless mouth.
‘Harry Potter,’ he said very softly. His voice might have been part of the splitting fire. ‘The Boy Who Lived, come to die.’
None of the Death Eaters moved. They were waiting: Everything was waiting. Hagrid was struggling, and Bellatrix was panting, and Harry thought about how he hoped his actions would save all those he cared about, and his mind then inexplicably focused on Allison, and her soft but strong look, and the feel of her lips on his—
Voldemort had raised his wand. His head was still tilted to one side, like a curious child, wondering what would happen if he proceeded. Harry looked back into the red eyes, and wanted it to happen now, quickly, while he could still stand, before he lost control, before he betrayed fear—
He saw the mouth move and a flash of green light, and everything was gone.
Did you know that, ironically, the Resurrection Stone is the only Deathly Hallow not to appear in the Philosopher's Stone?
The Elder Wand Appears
The Invisibility Cloak (obviously) appears...
...but no Resurrection Stone.
But you ask: What ironic part?
Resurrection Stone. Philosophers Stone. Gedit?
44 Votes in Poll
So i have a theory that all 3 of the deathly hallows have some connection with thestrals, because that would be interesting. There's not much basis for this theory, but i think it can make sense a little bit.
The first hallow is the elder wand. It obviously has a core of thestral hair, so that's that.
Second hallow is the resurrection stone. Now i thought it would be interesting if the stone was a stomach stone. Some animals have those and they help grind food. I have no idea if horses have them or if thestrals would be the kind of animal to have them. But regardless the second hallow is from a thestral, and perhaps would have been enchanted by Cadmus Peverell to function as a resurrection stone. I know in the tale, the stone was just picked up by death, but i like Dumbledore's idea that the hallows were created by the brothers themselves.
The third hallow is of course the cloak. It's unknown what the cloak is constructed from and how it's enchanted, or why it's worked without losing power for so many centuries. But other invisibility cloaks can be made from demiguise hair. That beast can of course become invisible. What if the cloak has thestral hair woven in it. It would fit with the death theme, as thestrals are invisible to those who haven't seen death.
So that's about it. What do you think of this theory?
82 Votes in Poll
60 Votes in Poll
118 Votes in Poll
60 Votes in Poll
I
I am a crafty Ravenclaw and a collector of replicas of items in my favorite series of books or movies but other then Marvolo Gaunt Ring from the Nobel collection i have not really seen a replica of just the resurrection stone on its own in the style when Dumbledore hide it inside the golden snitch which it meant if i can’t buy one I’ll make one, here is a photo of my elder wand, the cloak of invisibility and the resurrection stone i made.
75 Votes in Poll
We have seen the toxic effects of the Curse that Lord Voldemort Slytherin placed on it, and I strongly believe that Harry was only able to wear it due to being a fellow horcrux to the ring. If anyone tracked down the resurrection stone and tried to use it, they would die from the necrotic curse, thus encouraging any future treasure hunters to leave it alone.
50 Votes in Poll
I promise, there wouldn’t be any JoJo refrences in this one
This article is movie related, although many of the points I make here could be applied to the books
I’m breaking this article into two parts
If you had watched the second part of the adaptation of the finale, you might had remebered a original scene where Harry snaps the elder wand. In the source material, he just decides to bury it in Dumbledore’s grave.
This scene is highly divided around us fans. While I think it would make more sense to break the wand rather than bury it in the grave considering that the grave is literally in the middle of a small island and very noticeable , there are some problems associated with it.
The most common problem is that we never saw Potter fix his wand, however that problem could be quickly resolved by basically assuming that he did fix his wand off screen, even though that was kind of a wasted potential for a magical scene.
However someone in the replies in my most recent poll about best movie altered scenes made a new question: How did Harry destroy a wand that was more than a thousand years old and belong to the same guy who created the Invisibility Cloak that has high durability?
Well, here is part of my answer:
The elder wand was never implied in canon to be more durable than an ordinary wand, and as the movies are inspired by canon, it also applies here.
Death made the deathly hallows powerful, but not god level amounts of craziness. They all had a catch, and all of them are fueled by a human desire. The elder wand was the answer to the first brother’s desire for power, the resurrection stone was made for the second brother’s desire to bring back a lost one, and the invisibility cloak was made to hide. All of them if combined will make the user able to be the master of death.
Now about the catches. I seriously doubt that death wanted anyone to be immortal because he’s death, and it’s implied that the master of death means to accept one’s one fate.
So not the hallows were just some pieces of cool rare items, he, if death actually made all of the items involved, have some flaws. For example, the resurrection stone only pulled spirits from the afterlife, and i would be hella annoyed if someone did that to me after my death. Also, it’s small and insignificant appearance made it never used by the gaunt family for a couple of centuries and Potter only used it for a final goodbye before his “death”, before throwing it in the forest, making it lost forever. The invisibility cloak was a cloak, making the user need to cover him or herself for a long period of time, and evantually die. It might be more powerful because the third brother accepted fate and not power, and death, if he actually created it, found him reasonable.
The elder wand was only designed to do epic magic tricks. I doubt Death, or the 1st brother if he actually made it actually considered making the wand unbreakable because it was only meant for the user to be undefeatable.
So it’s basically a glass cannon. But what made it stand for around 1000 years? The answer is simple: The wand represents our human ego to be the best, a trait that all of us hold. Only Harry managed to realise that the wand managed to cause more harm than good even when the user had good intentions for it.
I will elaborate more in part 2. I hope you like my first theory.
110 Votes in Poll