Dumbledore continued:
"At the time, I didn't realize it had anything to do with Tom. I simply thought someone had placed a powerful curse on it to keep anyone else from obtaining the Resurrection Stone."
"It wasn't until you solved the mystery of the Diary and the Chamber of Secrets that I realized it was also one of Tom's Horcruxes."
"But clearly, Tom never realized that the stone set into it was the Resurrection Stone. Otherwise, he wouldn't have simply left it in the Gaunt Shack."
Hermione understood.
That explained it.
However powerful Voldemort was, no curse he laid could possibly withstand Dumbledore and Grindelwald working together.
At that thought, Hermione suddenly frowned.
She had realized something.
Both men were perfectly fine, still at the height of their powers, and the Witch Cult's influence was immense.
Which raised a question.
"Wait, that doesn't add up."
Hermione looked from one man to the other.
"If one of you was out in the open and the other was working in the shadows, and you were both alive and kicking..."
"Then what was the deal with Voldemort?"
She asked the crucial question.
"When Voldemort rose to power and replaced you as the next Dark Lord, the two of you could have joined forces and wiped the floor with him, couldn't you?"
"With your abilities, even if he had Horcruxes, a few decades should have been enough to find most of them, if not all."
"By all rights, that Noseless Freak should have been dead long ago. How did he get to terrorize the Wizarding World for so long? Why did it finally take a newborn baby bouncing his spell back at him to kill him?"
After all, Voldemort and the Death Eaters causing trouble everywhere would inevitably interfere with the Witch Cult's covert