The Yak Shack Forum

After dashing through the HBP on the first day in case anyone told me the plot, I have now gone back to reading it with more attention to detail.

You will recall that towards the end of the book, Dumbledore is wearing a large ring with a black stone which is damaged?  The ring doesn't seem to appear until after Dumbledore has damaged his hand.

Earlier in the book, when Dumbledore is showing Harry Voldemort's lineage in the pensieve, Gaunt brandishes a ring with a large black stone under the nose of Ogden, the Ministry of Magic official.  He calls it the Peverell ring.  I don't recall the name mentioned any other time.  Does anyone else?

The pendant, we know, is retrieved by Voldemort but what about the ring?  If Dumbledore inherited the ring that would mean he was related to Voldemort through the Gaunt family.

As far as I know, there is no reference to Dumbledore' house at Hogwarts.  He seems to favour Griffindor but probably because Harry's in it.  It could be that he is a Slytherin by descent.  He did attend Hogwarts as a pupil as Madam Marchbanks points out in OOTP.

Anyone had any thoughts on this?

I could be mistaken (it certainly wouldn't be the first time ::) ), but I think Dumbledore told Harry that he went to the Gaunt house and found the ring in the ruins.  He suspected it could be a Horcrux and took it.  His hand was damaged when he destroyed the piece of Voldemort's soul inside the ring.

Back to the drawing board!

Why would Dumbledore continue to wear the ring, do you suppose?

So that Harry could see it maybe.

I also think this is dead fishy.  I mentioned it in another thread but I think this could be quite significant.  Unless DD had only just found the ring when they went to Slughorns there was no need for him to wear it.  Indeed I would have thought it would have been risky carrying around a piece of Voldemorts soul.

Of course maybe I am just too suspicious for my own good  ;)

Well the soul was gone when we first met DD, as the ring was cracked and his hand withered.

True I hadn't thought of that  :-[

But why would he wear a souless ring?  He was wearing it on his good hand which still seems a bit fishy to me.  What if a death eater had seen it and told Voldemort that DD was wearing a strange ring.  That would have tipped Voldemort off that his horcrux had been found.  Not only that it would have let Voldemort know that DD knew (I'll stop there before this turns into an episode of Friends  ;D )

I can't remember but wasn't the ring cracked when Gaunt had it  ???

Yeah true sharon. I don't think it was cracked, I think that happened when the soul was extracted.

The ring Gaunt was wearing had Slytherin's family crest I think. I wasn't cracked.  DD said he'll tell Harry the story later, probably in Book 7. As ofr him wearing it, DD may have thought it looked pretty cool *shrugs*

I was just rereading this part of the book yesterday, and Dumbledore told Harry that the ring had quite a curse on it.  The curse must have destroyed DD's hand and arm while he was trying to destroy the piece of Voldemort's soul.  DD also said that if it hadn't been for his quick thinking and Snape's help, he could have been killed.