Dumbledore himself said that no spell can reawaken the dead. Isn't that the main objective of the resurrection stone? If one can't reawaken the dead then what is the use of the stone? Surely then one of the Hallows is flawed?

  • All three of the Hallows were flawed. None of them lived up to the hype... Mad-Eye could see through Harry's "perfect" cloak of invisibilty, and the wizards with the "unbeatable" Elder wand mostly got killed some way or another.
    – wyvern
    Mar 1 '16 at 0:51
  • @sumelic - that's to be expected if Death himself was the giver. Mar 1 '16 at 12:29

The Resurrection Stone exploits a loophole in the rule: you can't actually bring people back to life, but you can sort of fake it. Harry and Hermione speculate as much:

All right, even if you want to kid yourself the Elder Wand's real, what about the Resurrection Stone?" Her fingers sketched quotation marks around the name, and her tone dripped sarcasm. "No magic can raise the dead, and that's that!"

"When my [Harry's] wand connected with You-Know-Who's, it made my mum and dad appear...and Cedric..."

"But they weren't really back from the dead, were they?" said Hermione. "Those kind of - of pale imitations aren't the same as truly bringing someone back to life."

"But she, the girl in the tale, didn't really come back, did she?

Deathly Hallows Chapter 22: "The Deathly Hallows"

When he uses the Stone, Harry also notes a similarity to the memory-Riddle from Chamber of Secrets, which was nearly alive but not quite:


Deathly Hallows Chapter 34: "The Forest Again"

Although we don't know exactly how it works, it's not a totally unprecedented use of magic.

So in a sense yes, the Hallow is flawed. That's kind of the point, actually, and the moral of the Tale of the Three Brothers story.

  • 1
    but the resurrected people are more livelier than the "prioro incancated" ones'? aren' they? So we wouldn't call them exactly alive but they nearly would be?? Jan 23 '16 at 7:01
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    @prakharlondhe I don't agree; the priori incantatem shades acted very much alive, responding to stimulus and interacting with Harry. Aside from being tethered to the spell, there didn't seem to be a lot separating them from the Resurrection Stone shades Jan 23 '16 at 7:02
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    Additionally they took independent action to keep Voldemort occupied
    – Escoce
    Feb 8 '16 at 19:18
