Finally saw it! - Now Just the Ring.

[Carol]

Dave:
> Plus we have NO evidence that Tom is directly descended from any of the Three Brothers, the way Harry is from Ignotus. The Gaunts may be descended from another member of the Peverell family, which would make Harry and Tom's kinship even more distant.


Carol responds:
We know that there were three brothers, one of whom was (according to legend) killed shortly after "receiving" (actually, creating) the Elder Wand. Dumbledore deduces that the Invisibility Cloak passed from father to son and mother to daughter (I suspect from father to daughter and mother to son on occasion, too). It stands to reason that the same thing would have happened with the ring. Once a female descendant (whether or not her maiden name was Peverell) married into the Gaunt or Potter lines, her children would be named Gaunt or Potter.

There's no need to suspect another Peverell brother or sister who inherited the ring from their brother Cadmus. It's safe to assume that he passed the resurrection stone (perhaps not yet mounted into a ring) to one of his children just as Ignotus passed the Invisibility Cloak to one of his.

At some point, the knowledge that the Resurrection Stone was a Hallow seems to have been lost. Marvolo Gaunt certainly didn't know it; to him, the ring was just part of his Pure-blood heritage. Something similar seems to have happened with the Invisibility Cloak, which for James Potter was merely an aid to mischief like the Marauder's Map. Only a few "believers" like Xenophilius Lovegood and the young Grindelwald and Dumbledore thought that the Hallows were anything more than a legend.

Carol, who has strayed from the topic a bit but just followed her thoughts