Gaunt's Ring: The Horcrux That Doomed Dumbledore

This ring killed the most powerful wizard of his time, and Voldemort wasn't even there. All he had to do was leave it hidden in a ruined house, with a curse on it, and wait. The worst part is that the man who fell into the trap knew it was a trap. He put it on anyway.

The Gaunts

The Gaunts were the last descendants of Salazar Slytherin, and they had nothing left but that. They lived in a rotting shack on the outskirts of Little Hangleton. Dumbledore shows Harry what they were like through the memory of Bob Ogden, a Ministry official who visited them (Half-Blood Prince, ch. 10).

There's Marvolo, the father, boasting about a ring with a black stone that he claims bears the Peverell coat of arms. There's Morfin, the son, who speaks Parseltongue and nails snakes to the door. And there's Merope, the daughter, whom both of them treat like garbage. Merope is the future mother of Tom Riddle.

The Crime That Paid for the Second Piece

As a teenager, Tom went looking for his mother's family. At the shack he found only Morfin. The memory Dumbledore pulls from Morfin's mind (Half-Blood Prince, ch. 17) reconstructs the night: Tom stunned him, took his wand and the ring, and went to the Riddle house. There he killed his Muggle father and grandparents.

Then he planted a false memory in Morfin. Morfin confessed to crimes he hadn't committed and died in Azkaban. The only thing he regretted was losing his father's ring.

Dumbledore believes Tom used those deaths to turn the ring into a Horcrux (Half-Blood Prince, ch. 23). We don't see it on the page. It's a deduction, but it fits everything else.

A Stone Nobody Knew How to Read

What Marvolo boasted about as a simple family crest was something else. The stone in the ring was the Resurrection Stone, one of the three Deathly Hallows from the tale of the three brothers. Harry starts to suspect it in Deathly Hallows (ch. 22) and Dumbledore confirms it at the end (ch. 35).

Voldemort never knew. He held one of the most powerful objects in the world in his hand and used it as a trophy of his bloodline.

Dumbledore's Mistake

Voldemort hid the ring in the old Gaunt shack. In the summer before Harry's sixth year, Dumbledore found it. And put it on.

Why would someone so intelligent do that? He confesses it himself in Deathly Hallows (ch. 35): he recognized the stone and thought of his family. His mother, his sister Ariana. For a moment he forgot he was looking at a Horcrux and saw only a chance to ask them for forgiveness.

The curse blackened his hand. Snape managed to trap it in that hand so it wouldn't spread, but couldn't stop it. In the memory Harry sees in Deathly Hallows (ch. 33), Snape gives Dumbledore roughly a year to live.

A Death Already Decided

That year changes everything. Dumbledore knew he was going to die anyway, and that Voldemort had ordered Draco Malfoy to kill him. So he asked Snape to do it himself when the time came. So Draco wouldn't tear his soul. So the death would serve a purpose.

The tower scene in Half-Blood Prince (ch. 27) looks like a betrayal. It's the end of a plan that began the day Dumbledore put on a ring.

How It Was Destroyed

Dumbledore split the ring with Gryffindor's sword, which had absorbed basilisk venom years earlier. Harry learns it from Phineas Nigellus in Deathly Hallows (ch. 15), and that is exactly what tells the trio the sword can destroy Horcruxes.

The stone, split but intact, survived. Dumbledore hid it inside the first Snitch Harry ever caught and left it to him in his will, with a phrase engraved on it: "I open at the close." Harry opens it in the forest, on his way to die (ch. 34).

Book vs. Movie

The Gaunts don't exist in the movie. Half-Blood Prince on screen skips Ogden's and Morfin's memories, so the ring appears almost out of nowhere.
Dumbledore's hand is in the movie, but nobody explains what happened to it until much later.
Dumbledore's confession about Ariana and his family is heavily trimmed in the movie's King's Cross scene.

What Almost Nobody Notices

Voldemort didn't put that curse there with Dumbledore in mind. He put it there for anyone who touched the ring. There was no plan, no duel, no cunning. What killed Dumbledore was something Voldemort never understood: the longing to see someone you love again.

And there's another irony. Voldemort turned a stone made for speaking with the dead into the anchor of his immortality. The same stone that Harry finally uses to walk toward death without fear.

Where It Fits in the Series

Five pieces remain. The next is a locket, and the story of how it ended up out of its hiding place is one of the saddest in the saga. Its protagonist isn't even Harry. Continue with Regulus Black and Slytherin's Locket: The Forgotten Hero. If you missed the first part, start with Tom Riddle's Diary: Voldemort's First Horcrux Explained.

Which house would you be in? Find out in the house quiz.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why did Dumbledore put on the ring?

Because he recognized the Resurrection Stone and wanted to use it to see his dead family, above all his sister Ariana. He confesses it in Deathly Hallows, ch. 35.