Over the course of a thousand years.
There had been many legends about the Resurrection Stone.
The most famous was naturally the tale of The Death and the Three Brothers. In that story, the Resurrection Stone had been a gift Death gave to Cadmus Peverell.
Legend claimed it possessed the miraculous power to transcend life and death. Of course, those who had truly obtained the Resurrection Stone had verified that it actually summoned an existence more real than a soul yet more illusory than a physical body, based on the user's memories and impressions of the deceased. It did not possess the power of true resurrection.
Perhaps ancient wizards had not realized this, or perhaps the author of The Tales of Beedle the Bard had misunderstood. Still, the story was not entirely wrong.
It truly seemed cursed, leading its owners toward death—the "spirit bodies" projected through the Resurrection Stone were, in the end, merely phantoms of the dead. Only their corresponding users could see them, and they would guide those users toward death in all sorts of ways.
Rather than saying the Resurrection Stone revived the people one longed for, it was more accurate to say that an evil spirit capable of peering into others' thoughts dwelled within it, and everything it did was merely meant to claim other people's lives.
That was why Ian had always viewed the Deathly Hallows rather rationally.
They were merely alchemical creations. Among the Deathly Hallows, only the Elder Wand possessed genuine practical value. Both the Resurrection Stone and the Cloak of Invisibility were somewhat undeserving of their reputations. Ian had stopped Helena from trying to destroy the Resurrection Stone to eliminate Tom only because he was curious about studying the principles behind its creation.
"The Resurrection Stone came from here?"
Ian stared at