Dumbledore had just managed to put Fudge, Dawlish, Shacklebolt, and Umbridge on the ground, unconscious, so that he can make his escape from Hogwarts. Harry, McGonagall, and himself remain conscious in the headmaster’s office, and the following occurs:
“Listen to me, Harry,” [Dumbledore] said urgently, “you must study Occlumency as hard as you can, do you understand me? Do everything Professor Snape tells you and practice particularly every night before sleeping so that you can close your mind to bad dreams – you will understand why soon enough, but you must promise me – ”
The man called Dawlish was stirring. Dumbledore seized Harry’s wrist.
“Remember – close your mind – ”
But as Dumbledore’s fingers closed over Harry’s skin, a pain shot through the scar on his forehead, and he felt again that terrible, snake-like longing to strike Dumbledore, to bite him, to hurt him –
” – you will understand,” whispered Dumbledore.
Harry is a wreck at this point, and Dumbledore knows it. He blames himself for Dumbledore’s having to leave Hogwarts, he’s having awful dreams, he’s seeing into Voldemort’s mind and emotions, and he’s forced to take lessons with a Professor who hates him.
Dumbledore reassures him, not once but twice, the second with a gentle whisper, “You will understand.”
I bring this scene up because this is, for me, a strike against the scar being a horcrux. When I first wrote, “Is Harry a Horcrux” last year, I was inclined against the idea primarily because of the fact that Dumbledore never told Harry that it was possible, and Dumbledore has done a lot of research into horcruxes and knows plenty about the oddity of Harry’s scar. I’ve since considered the possibility with more of an open mind, but I’m coming full circle on it again.
Based on this passage, if Harry’s scar is a horcrux, we’d have to conclude that by the time Dumbledore died, he still had not fulfilled his promise to Harry, “you will understand.” We’d probably have to conclude that Dumbledore tried to comfort Harry with words that were ultimately empty.
Of course, there may be some brilliant way for Rowling to write it that would counter this objection. The jury’s still out for me on this issue, and we still have the problem of there being no magic explained or even hinted at thus far in the series that would explain a mind-link except for horcruxes…but this dialogue, based on what we already know of Dumbledore’s character, is a damaging blow to the scarcrux theory.
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{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
But Dumbledore has been keeping things from Harry all along. At the end of Book 5 he says he has told Harry “everything” but this isn’t the case. Harry finds out in Book 6 that Snape was the one who overhead the prophecy and went to Voldemort with it. We still don’t know what Harry’s parents did to thrice defy Voldemort. And so on.
If Harry is a Horcux, I think Dumbledore knew it, and I doubt he’d tell Harry. Harry, being rash, might choose to kill himself to rid the world of one more Horcrux, whearas the journey of finding the other horcruxes might illuminate other ways to rid himself of that bit of Voldemort’s soul.
Either way, I think this will be in Book 6. Either Harry is actually a Horcrux, or Harry will think he is at some point, and have to figure out/be convinced that he isn’t.
I think Dumbledore meant he would tell Harry everything about his destiny as Voldemort’s vanquisher. That didn’t require telling Harry about Snape’s role in the prophesy and would have likely been disastrous since Harry will need Snape’s help. How Lily and James defied Voldemort three times has nothing to do with it at all.
I don’t think Dumbledore would have withheld information from Harry about the Horcruxes, and he certainly wouldn’t have told Harry that the remaining ones are the cup, locket, Nagini, and something that was once Ravenclaw’s or Gryffindor’s if he believed Harry had a chunk of Voldemort’s soul in him.
Dumbledore said Voldemort tranferred powers into Harry when the curse backfired, and that seems to be the explanation for Harry’s ability to speak Parseltongue. The scar connection to Voldemort’s mind has not been explained, but I don’t see how a soul fragment explains it.
Will Harry wonder if he has a chunk of Voldemort’s soul in him? Possibly, but I almost think that’s been taken care of. After the attack on Arthur, Harry thought he might be possessed by Voldemort, and Ginny had to straighten him out by explaining what it was like to be possessed by Voldemort, and Harry realized he wasn’t possessed. He now knows the Diary that had possessed Ginny was a Horcrux, so I don’t think he’s going to spend any serious time worrying that he’s a Horcrux himself.
Good thoughts, from Travis and Felicity. I’ll be posting something later today, I promise!
Well – to me, the story only makes sense if Harry is a horcrux, and I will be disappointed if he is not. Remember that Dumbledore said that, when he made mistakes, they were huge ones. We are all meant to think his huge mistake was trusting Snape, but that was not a mistake at all, IMHO. What was, then? Perhaps refusing to acknowledge, or accept, or even recognize, that Harry is carrying one of the horcruxes within himself.
Why do I say the story only makes sense if this is the case? Because, to me, it explains so much in a simple and elegant stroke. As Jodel has said, Harry’s having ‘extra soul’ explains both why he is so attractive to the dementors, and so vulnerable to them. He has a trace memory of Tom Riddle’s name. He could destroy a horcrux without taking any physical harm from it, while doing the same thing, in effect, killed the headmaster. It even explains Harry’s extraordinary power, and why it seems particularly strengthened by hate and anger – and, IMHO, it explains why Snape hates him so much. Finally, it makes sense of the constant references to Lily’s eyes if Harry has to sacrifice himself to destroy the horcrux within him. And I think he will do exactly that.
Just one more thing – after introducing a major new magical concept (horcruxes) in book 6, I think it would be sloppy writing on Jo’s part to come up with a completely new and different theory to explain the link between Harry and Voldemort. But we’ll see -
Mary, you’ve summarized very well some of the reasons that the scarcrux theory is still on the table, most notably the Dumbledore “big mistake potential.” Yet I can’t help thinking Felicity has a point that Dumbledore learned some significant lessons by the end of Book 5 that he would be highly unlikely to repeat in Book 6.
It just seems impossible to me that Dumbledore would not have considered, or “refused to accept” that Harry’s scar might be a horcrux if the potential were there. His love for Harry would prevent a blunder of that magnitude.
Scarcrux or not, I’m guessing you won’t be disappointed in Book 7, even if you can’t see it playing out any other way but “scarcrux” being true. Now, if some of Jodel’s theories come true…there will be weeping and wailing disappointment over here at SoG
I hope you’re right, Travis, but I can see many, many ways in which book 7 could disappoint me. And I am *not* one of the people who will be weeping and wailing if some of Jodel’s theories come true. On the contrary, I think I’ll be weeping and wailing if some of them *don’t* come true. Things that would irritate me hugely:
1. These really are just ‘kid’s books’ with Harry being the ‘good guy’ and hero (in spite of some of his appalling actions and attitudes), all the Gryffindors being good, all the Slytherins being bad, Harry killing Voldemort – well, you get the picture. How boring, and what a morally dubious lesson!
2. Book 7 is a huge horcrux hunt, plus the above.
3. Dumbledore is not dead. Grr! How cheap, and what a cruel stunt to pull on the younger readers.
4. Snape is evil. The worst disappointment of the lot, and one which would require a *lot* of explaining by Rowling to make it seem even possible, let alone convincing and necessary, given Snape’s role in the story (as I see it so far) and all the Christ symbolism she has surrounded him with.
If Dumbledore did not know that Harry was a horcrux, or refused to entertain the idea, I don’t see how that would negate his love for Harry. Also, I have a feeling that, in Rowling’s view, there are some things Dumbledore could not tell Harry, even if he wanted to, because having Dumbledore tell him too early would negate Harry’s spiritual growth. It’s sort of like Dumbledore letting Hagrid stew rather than marching down to talk him out of his depression. There are some things people have to discover on their own, and this feels like one of them.
I’m afraid this isn’t awfully clear, but I hope it makes some kind of sense.
Mary, it makes a lot of sense, and I completely agree with you on those four points. I guess I didn’t see any of those four as *original* Jodel theories. When I think of original Jodel theories, I think of things like Dumbledore leaking the prophecy.
I am quite confident that (1) these aren’t just kids books, (2) Book 7 will not be Raiders of the Lost Horcruxes, (3) Dumbledore is dead, and (4) Snape is good.
Argument 1: Harry’s having ‘extra soul’ explains both why he is so attractive to the dementors, and so vulnerable to them.
Lupin said the dementors affected Harry more than the others because Harry had horros in his past that the others didn’t have. In PoA when the dementor entered the train compartment, Harry was the most shaken (and passed out), but Ginny was also strongly affected. Harry fell to the floor and twitched, and Ginny was “shaking like mad.†Both had a terrible event behind them (James’s and Lily’s death and Ginny’s possession). In the Quidditch pitch, hundreds of dementors were getting antsy at not being allowed on the castle grounds and they went after Harry, who at the time was flying high above the pitch and was vulnerable. When two dementors attacked Harry and Dudley at the beginning of OotP, they didn’t both go after Harry—one went after Harry and one went after Dudley. So I don’t see Harry’s reaction to dementors as being in any way related to or explained by Harrycrux and Scarcrux theories.
Argument 2: He has a trace memory of Tom Riddle’s name.
Harry seemed to recall the name T.M. Riddle when he was looking at the diary. But I think the explanation for that is that Riddle had placed a charm on the book so that whatever student it got planted on would feel a connection to it, would not want to part with it, and would eventually start writing in it, which would trigger the magic that would allow the memory/soul to become corporeal again. Harry carried it around with him for several weeks before writing in it, and only started writing in it out of curiosity because the ink spilled on it seemed to have disappeared.
Because when Harry was experiencing the memory of the framing of Hagrid, he didn’t recognize Tom Riddle or have any sense of deja vu–nothing. The soul/memory placed in the diary had experienced that event already, so if a chunk of Voldemort’s soul was transferred into Harry forty years later and it was only because of the soul fragments that Harry seemed to have a vague memory of a childhood friend named TM Riddle, then Harry should have had some sense of recognition in the memory of Hagrid’s framing. But he didn’t, and at one point, when he was with Riddle waiting in the dungeon for Hagrid and Aragog, Harry wanted to go back to his room rather than stand there any longer because he was so bored out of his wits.
So I think the vague name recognition was part of the magic placed on the diary so that a student would feel a friendly connection to it. We never had an opportunity to find out if Ginny had felt the same sense of recognition, but I suspect she did. We do know that she was writing in the diary “No one’s ever understood me like you, Tom . . . It’s like having a friend I can carry around in my pocket.” The repetition of the word “friend†is key IMO. Harry had a vague sense that T.M. Riddle had been a childhood friend, and Ginny described Tom as a friend. This magical “hook†also explains how Ginny was drawn into the diary magic so deeply that she continued writing in it even after she began to believe it was evil.
Argument 3: He could destroy a Horcrux without taking any physical harm from it, while doing the same thing, in effect, killed the headmaster.
In the first place, you can’t make an argument like this stick if more than one variable is involved, and that’s the case here. The variables are the actors (Harry versus Dumbledore), the nature of the Horcruxes (ring as hidden Horcrux anchor versus diary as intended-to-be-used Horcrux weapon), and the tools used to destroy the Horcrux (wand magic versus basilisk fang).
If both Dumbledore and Harry had attempted to destroy a similar Horcrux with identical protections, and Harry was unharmed while Dumbledore was nearly killed, then you would have an argument that Harry, by some special power he got from Voldemort, is able to destroy Horcruxes with no harm to himself whereas Dumbledore, not having this power, suffers injury. Then you could speculate that the special powers involve a soul fragment (and even that wouldn’t be an airtight argument).
But that is not the situation since these were very different Horcruxes. While each was a repository for a part of Voldemort’s soul, the diary was additionally intended to be used as a weapon by being planted on an unsuspecting Hogwarts student who would need to use it, so not only could it not be covered with a curse against anyone who would touch it, it would need to be charmed so that a student would want to use it as has been argued.
According to Dumbledore, there was a “terrible curse†upon Marvolo’s ring that Voldemort had hidden it in the Gaunt ruins, “protected by many powerful enchantments.†Voldemort didn’t want anyone to get near the Peverell ring, and from Dumbledore’s account of its destruction, it was the curse upon the Horcrux that nearly killed him, not the Horcrux itself.
The diary was (I surmise) protected by magic that would prevent it from being torn, burned, ripped, destroyed by various spells, etc., since Riddle would have anticipated that the student would catch wind that something was wrong with the diary as Ginny did. But Riddle wouldn’t have anticipated that someone would use a poisoned fang from Slytherin’s basilisk, and IMO, Fawkes knew that the fang was perhaps the only thing that could destroy it (after all, Fawkes didn’t try to claw the pages apart; he dropped it in Harry’s lap when Harry had the fang next to him).
Argument 4: It even explains Harry’s extraordinary power, and why it seems particularly strengthened by hate and anger – and, IMHO, it explains why Snape hates him so much.
Harry was full of hate (to a degree he’d never felt before) when he tried to Crucio Bellatrix, but he couldn’t make the curse work because he didn’t have the intent, so I don’t see how hate and anger strengthen Harry’s power. And you would think that having a chunk of Voldemort’s soul in him would make casting Unforgivable Curses a piece of cake for Harry. And I think there are more plausible reasons for Snape’s hatred of Harry (his resemblance to James, his being Dumbledore’s favorite, the way he’s practically worshiped in the WW, etc.).
Argument 5: Finally, it makes sense of the constant references to Lily’s eyes if Harry has to sacrifice himself to destroy the Horcrux within him. And I think he will do exactly that.
I see no reason why having Lily’s eyes means Harry is going to sacrifice his own life to vanquish Voldemort. I think it means Harry must be willing to sacrifice himself, and Harry may even attempt to sacrifice himself (that’s where Snape might come in as a proxy). But IMO, there is every reason to believe Rowling is planning for Harry to vanquish Voldemort and survive.
I’ll be disgusted if Lily’s sacrifice turned baby Harry into the “wickedest of magical inventions†(although I’ll live with it). That, to me, would go against the whole idea that Lily’s sacrifice invoked a deep, ancient magic that protected her baby.
And I just don’t follow the argument that “there’s no other explanation†for Harry’s powers than that he was accidentally made into a Horcrux. I don’t think it’s possible to make a Horcrux accidentally for one thing (and Dumbledore would know if it were possible). The explanation was given at the end of CS when Dumbledore told Harry that some of Voldemort’s powers had been transferred into Harry that night. Powers are neutral, not evil, and that’s what we’ve seen with Harry’s ability to speak Parseltongue; he uses the ability for “good†purposes, even to defeat Diarymort. I’ve argued in my own essays that Rowling is following a mind plus soul plus body anthropology, so the scar’s mental connection with Voldemort and Harry’s having Voldemort’s signature powers have an explanation that has nothing to do with soul fragments. The Harrycrux and Scarcrux theories are not elegantly simple at all IMO. A mind/powers transfer is canon, and that’s the Occam’s razor explanation.
And I completely agree with Travis on this:
“I am quite confident that (1) these aren’t just kids books, (2) Book 7 will not be Raiders of the Lost Horcruxes, (3) Dumbledore is dead, and (4) Snape is good.”
I agree that it is not a horcrux. That would just really defeat the purpose of the prophecy. If Harry, or rather his scar, is a horcrux he must die as well and that’s just not fair. Again there is no evidence supporting that theory. I do think that it is a mind link though, why else would Harry have been able to see and feel things Voldemort could?
Felicity, you say: “I’ll be disgusted if Lily’s sacrifice turned baby Harry into the “wickedest of magical inventions†(although I’ll live with it). That, to me, would go against the whole idea that Lily’s sacrifice invoked a deep, ancient magic that protected her baby.” No arguments from me! And that is why I argue, not that Harry *is* a horcrux, but that he is carrying one within him. Harry is an entirely different person from Voldemort, and Lily’s sacrifice conferred a particular blessing on him – *not* on Voldemort. On the contrary.
This is the way I see the “Harry as horcrux” theory. As I said before, the scar, which I believe to be the horcrux, is like the mark of original sin, and Harry is an everyman. Harry is not original sin *himself* – he is merely stained by it. Lily, through her sacrifice, saved his life. Voldemort wanted to destroy Harry and replace him, using the innocent child’s life for his own purposes- (and I still think he may be after that. He may have abandoned the idea of killing Harry because he wants to use him, body and soul.) Because of Lily’s sacrifice, Voldemort’s plan failed. Instead of destroying Harry and then preserving a part of his own soul in some other object, Voldemort partially destroyed himself and gave the little boy a special weapon – the ability to destroy the horcruxes – which is the seed of his own destruction. Thus evil works against itself, because of the power of love which it can’t anticipate and can’t defeat. Harry – because he is *not* Voldemort, but an ordinary human boy – has this power. It is the power of love which will teach Harry how best to use the weapon Voldemort has unwittingly given him.
I don’t see anything evil, immoral or disappointing in this message, if that is indeed where Rowling is going. And I think the evidence I have given *could* concievably point that way. There is no firm evidence against it, at this point. But, as I said above, there are many ways Rowling could mess up this story, and I’m not all that hopeful I’ll be happy with the ending.
Please note: although I think Harry’s death is close to inevitable, I can imagine one or two ways for him to survive, and I would be delighted if he did. But we must also remember that, as much as Tolkien’s LOTR, these books are ultimately about death, and how we cope with it. So Rowling may ask Harry to cope with his own death. I wouldn’t be surprised.
Well, I’ve made this argument several times before, and I’ll make it again now. Turning an object into a Horcrux does not damage the object physically. The gold locket at 12 GP that we believe is Slytherin’s locket Horcrux was undamaged. The diary was intact when it was a Horcrux, and after Harry plunged the basilisk fang into it, the damaged book was no longer a Horcrux. We saw the ring undamaged on Riddle’s finger in Slughorn’s Horcrux memory, and when Dumbledore said it was no longer a Horcrux, the stone was cracked. So it seem clear to me that Rowling is telling us that turning an object into a Horcrux does not physically harm the object, but the object must be broken open in some way to release the soul fragment so that the object is no longer a Horcrux.
Now consider the scar on Harry’s forehead. The backfired curse cut Harry’s head open as is clear from several passages, and the cut healed into a scar by a natural process (not by a Healer at St. Mungo’s).
Baby Harry was described as having “a curiously shaped cut, like a bolt of lightening†when Hagrid dropped him off at Privet Drive (PS1).
Hagrid said he took baby Harry out of the ruins of Godric’s Hollow with “a great slash across his forehead†(PA10).
Draco said “I don’t want a foul scar right across my head, thanks. I don’t think getting your head cut open makes you that special, myself.†(CS6).
So it seems to me that by telling us three times that baby Harry’s forehead was cut open by Voldemort’s backfired curse, she provided more evidence that Harry is not a Horcrux. What happened to Harry at Godric’s Hollow is what happens when a Horcrux is destroyed, not when one is made.
Moreover, for the Scarcrux theory to work, a piece of Voldemort’s soul would have had to split from its source, zoom toward baby Harry’s head, and then stay there in place right on the edges of an open wound for the week or so it took for scar tissue to encase it–all of this happening without the soul fragment either flying away or entering Harry’s body. And on top of that, this soul fragment, even though it supposedly isn’t actually inside Harry, nevertheless gives Harry powers like the ability to speak Parseltongue.
Rowling said Ginny is no longer able to speak Parseltongue; she could only speak it when she was being possessed by Voldemort’s soul fragment, and during those times she blacked out. Harry, on the other hand, doesn’t black out when he’s using Voldemort/Slytherin’s signature power (because he’s not possessed by Voldemort’s soul as was made clear in OotP). Harry’s ability to speak and understand Parseltongue is an ability he personally “owns,†which fits with Dumbledore’s explanation that Voldemort transferred some of his powers into Harry.
Felicity — woah. How can not telling Harry *who* heard the prophesy and what his parents did to provoke Voldemort not be relevant? Both are relevant — they are in fact *reasons* why Voldemort tried to kill Harry.
polymorphously–
At the end of OotP, Dumbledore told Harry the entire prophesy and explained that an eavesdropper outside Trelawney’s door had heard the first half and reported it to Voldemort, who acted on it by attacking the Potters at Godric’s Hollow. That’s what Harry needed to know.
The identity of the eavesdropper and the way the Potters defied Voldemort are not relevant to Harry’s future face-off with Voldemort. So Harry has been told that the prophesy is the reason Voldemort wants to kill Harry and that Harry’s destiny is that he needs to kill Voldemort or be killed by him. But Harry’s situtation relative to Voldemort (at the time Dumbledore explained it in 1996) wouldn’t have been changed by Harry’s knowing the identity of the eavesdropper. Now that we and Harry know it was Snape, the drama is cranked up since many of us think Snape is going to play a critical role in helping Harry vanquish Voldemort, but Snape’s role as eavesdropper was not information Dumbledore needed to tell Harry at the end of OotP. Relative to Harry’s destiny, it doesn’t matter if the eavesdropper had been Snape or someone else.
Harry doesn’t need to know how the Potters and Longbottoms defied Voldemort three times. It’s not relevant to Harry’s current situation even though it would be interesting to know. I’ll be surprised if Rowling tells us. And Voldemort didn’t try to kill Harry only because the Potters defied him three times; that was only relevant because of the conditions of the prophesy, and Voldemort had to make a choice between Neville and Harry, both of whom fulfilled the terms of the prophesy. It was Voldemort alone who decided that Harry was the prophesied child, and his choice was based on Harry’s being a half-blood like himself. So while the “defied three times” condition narrowed down the choice between Harry and Neville, Voldemort’s choice to go after Harry had nothing to do with “how” the Potters had defied him.
And I don’t see how Dumbledore is at fault for not giving Harry this information. Harry never asked for the identity of the eavesdropper nor did he ask how his parents had defied Voldemort three times. Harry had many chances to ask Dumbledore these questions from the end of OotP to the end of HBP. Harry could also have asked Lupin about the history between his parents and Voldemort, so Dumbledore wasn’t the only person who could have told Harry how the Potters had defied Voldemort.
So I just don’t see why Dumbledore is to be faulted for not telling Harry that Snape was the eavesdropper or how the Potters had defied Voldemort three times. And I don’t at all see this as evidence that Dumbledore would have withheld information about Harry’s being a Horcrux.
Honestly it seems unlikely that Harry could be a horcrux being that Voldemort was not able to touch harry before he was brought back with Harry’s blood. If part of his soul was in fact in Harry touching him would not have been a problem. My own theory would be that Harry was being made a horcrux Voldemort using James’ death and during the process Lily’s sacrifice had stopped the spell from being completed, which left the intended horcrux being broken open, hence the scar and not allowing the soul to enter which also being as powerful a spell as it is an interruption would cause the backfire that left Voldemort in the state that he was in, and explains why Harry has some link to Voldemort be that part of him may have been in Harry for a short while. The scar being the so called broken open part of the remains of a destroyed horcrux. So it wasnt the death curse that harry survived but the horcrux spell. Of course this is just my own guess.
Harry is a horcux…That night when harrys parents died..voldemnort did the horcux spell and turned harry into a horcux and that made him terribly weak..he needed to recover…thats why harry has dreams where hes voldemort. Of ocurse noone else was there that night. People would think harry was “the boy who lived” they would think voldemort tried to kill him and they would make him famous. Even dummbledore wouldnt see this coming. DUmbledore would protect harry with his life because he thought harry could defeat lord voldemort. But even if harry did…lord voldemort would still live on in him. VOldemort knew of the prophecy. He knew seeing as Harry was Lily and James kid…he had to be loving and good at magic. Why would anybody want to kill harry. The whole amgic world is protecting him…whilel voldemorts paln is working. Voldemeort doesnt waant harry to die….yet. Harry needs to kill voldemort first and all of his horcuxes….excpet the one in harry body. Then voldemort can come back and kill harry…..He will fulfill the proehecy…..VOLDEMORT has a great mind…a great mind that even dumbledore couldnt figure out. I think in HBP dumbledore was beginning to figure this out…and he was killed for even having the slightest chance. from this we can see….as long as harrys alive so is voldemort. in book 7….will harry kill himslef for the poeple??
Harry dreams he’s Voldemort. Harry “sees” himself as Nagini biting Mr. Weasley. Harry speaks parseltongue. The Sorting Hat told Harry the answer was “in his head.” Harry had some magical protection when the Dark Lord tried to kill him. Harry’s scar’s a horcrux. Has to be. Now we know Voldemort didn’t create it there on purpose and indeed may not know Harry has it. So who created it? Harry’s mother, Lily, I believe. How? Well, who told Voldemort about horcruxes? Slughorn, the potions teacher. And wasn’t Lily a potions expert? My theory is to create a horcrux you use a potion … and she did so and wiped it on Harry’s forehead, so, if it came to the last desperate chance, she could sacrifice her life, creating the necessary murder that creates a horcrux … protecting Harry from the curse. There’s more, if you’re interested here: http://stealmyideasplease.com/2007/06/01/a-bloody-better-theory-about-how-lily-potter-saved-harry/