Chapter 23 (“Horcruxes”) is one of the most important chapters in the book with great implications for what happens thereafter, especially the last novel. The Felix Felicis potion is wearing off as Harry arrives at the portrait of the Fat Lady, but not before he finds out from Nearly Headless Nick that Dumbledore arrived at the school an hour ago. How lucky indeed! Harry arrives at Dumbledore’s office and now both of them can finally see the true, unaltered memory of Slughorn. A few observations:
1. Tom Riddle is wearing Marvolo’s ring so he already killed his father and paternal grandparents prior to the memory. Slughorn’s comments that he has “never been wrong about a student yet” is interesting because the reader knows that he is in fact wrong about Tom Riddle. Perhaps the main reason why Slughorn says this is because of Tom’s “careful flattery of the people who matter…” We know Slughorn has a weakness in this regard, but perhaps Slughorn shouldn’t be faulted for this. Many people, with the exception of Dumbledore, were taken in by the charming and talented Slytherin student.
2. The fact that Tom has the ring calls into question whether he really needed to know what a horcrux was. Despite what Slughorn says about the availability of horcrux books at Hogwarts, there is one book as we discover in the last novel, Secrets of the Darkest Art, which gives explicit instructions on making a horcrux. It is possible that Tom Riddle had access to that book before speaking to Slughorn. While horcruxes was banned as a subject at Hogwarts as of Professor Dippet’s reign as headmaster, there is no indication that any books on horcruxes were immediately taken out of the library, at least until Professor Dumbledore took over as headmaster. All the questions Tom asks Slughorn are building up to the information that he really seeks: can someone split their soul into two or more fragments. Such information would not be found in any book because it was never attempted.
3. Harry responds to Dumbledore’s comment that Harry has a power the Dark Lord never had with “I can love!” and almost saying “Big Deal!” Dumbledore picks up on this and says, “Yes, Harry, you can love…Which, given everything that has happened to you, is a great and remarkable thing. You are still too young to understand how unusual you are, Harry.” Harry’s reaction is not unusual because up to this point, he has heard constantly that love conquers all and that love will defeat Voldemort in the end. Harry sees Voldemort as stronger and does not yet see or understand that he can defeat Voldemort because of his self-sacrificial love in the end.
This leads us to the last part of the chapter and probably the most useful for discussion, namely what is the role of free will in the whole prophecy business. Dumbledore says that Harry is “setting too much store by the prophecy” before essentially saying that if Voldemort never killed Harry’s parents, would that have given Harry the desire for revenge. Of course not. It is because Voldemort killed his parents and is seeking to kill him that Harry will have to face the Dark Lord in the end. As long as Voldemort sets store in the prophecy, Harry will not rest until he defeats him. How can we understand Harry’s choice in light of the prophecy? Does Dumbledore answer the question sufficiently? How about Harry’s choice to go to Voldemort in the Forest and give up his life in light of his knowledge that this scenario has been planned already by Dumbledore? Is free will still involved?
Finally it is only fitting to close this post with the quote that closes the very chapter we are about to discuss:
But he understood at last what Dumbledore had been trying to tell him. It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore knew – and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents – that there was all the difference in the world.
revgeorge on 
Jonathan on 
korg20000bc on 
Arabella Figg on 
Red Rocker on 
Dave the Longwinded on 
Fricka on 
Loading ...
{ 28 comments… read them below or add one }
Great post; I love this chapter! I did wonder though about the assertion above that since Tom is wearing the ring, he must already know about horcruxes. I don’t think that’s necessarily true. He could have decided to turn the ring into a horcrux later. Dumbledore eludes to this as well when he tells Harry that Voldemort decided it would be better to NOT keep the ring on his person once it was a horcrux in order to better protect it. And the book may have been kept in the headmaster’s office prior to Dumbledore holding that position.
I also thought that last paragraph of the chapter was a real turning point for Harry and his view of what he has to do now.
Horcruxes “a soul container”
In a JKR Interview about Horcruxes 17 December 2007
SU: Oh, Jo, but those “Horcruxes”, though, I tell you, they’re so much to ask still about those, you know?… I mean, who, okay, we have to know. Who created the first Horcrux? Was it Grindelwald? Salazar? Who did that?
JKR: D’you know what, I’ve got a feeling it was Herpo, which is H-E-R-P-O.
SU: Herpo the Foul?
JKR: … Herpo the Foul, exactly, yeah. Yeah. But you know wizards would’ve been looking for ways to do exactly what Voldemort did for years, and some of the ways they would’ve tried would’ve killed them, so I imagine it… well, there’s huge parallels. Splitting the atom would be a very good parallel in our world. Something that people imagined might be able to be done, but couldn’t quite bring it off, and then… and then people started doing it with sometimes catastrophic effects. So that’s how I see the Horcrux.
SU: Right, because you said that Tom Riddle said there would’ve been, or Dumbledore did, somebody said that there was only one person–
MA: Slughorn.
JKR: Yeah, but I would imagine that other people, you know, other people are going to have tried. I think it would be naive not to think that people have been trying for a long time, and thought they succeeded and hadn’t, or else, or else you know maim themselves or kill themselves in the attempt. It’s such a dangerous thing to do.
SU: Oh. Evil thing. You know, just…
JKR: Yeah.
MA: What is the process? Do you– Is there a spell? Is there a– What do you have to do?
JKR: I see it as a series of things you would have to do. So you would have to perform a spell. But you would also– I don’t even know if I want to say it out loud, I know that sounds funny. But I did really think it through. There are two things that I think are too horrible, actually, to go into detail about. One of them is how Pettigrew brought Voldemort back into a rudimentary body. ‘Cause I told my editor what I thought happened there, and she looked as though she was gonna vomit. And then– and the other thing is, how you make a Horcrux. And I don’t even like– I don’t know. Will it be in the Encyclopedia? I don’t know if I can bring myself to, ummm… I don’t know.
1. Herpo the Foul was an Ancient Greek Dark Wizard best known as the first wizard to hatch a Basilisk. He was also the first wizard to create a Horcrux and was one of the earliest Parselmouths.
In Greek, ??????? (pronounced “herpeton”) means “creeping animal”.
2. The creation of a Horcrux doesn’t always require the spell to create one (inadvertently created for example, Harry Potter) It does require a murder.
3. Tom Riddle speaks about the significance of the number (7) seven about splitting one’s soul into seven Horcruxes within Slughorn’s memory
From Wizard of the Month Archive Bridget Wenlock (1202 – 1285) Famous Arithmancer. First to establish the magical properties of the number seven. Arithmancy is Hermione’s favorite subject! By using complicated number charts with the belief that number patterns existing in real life can be calculated to give information regarding the future.
Voldemort is very superstitious about things. The number 7 holds an attraction for him. The supposed powers of articles from the Four Founders too. For someone who’s supposed to be so very intelligent & above common feelings, he does have quite a few quirks. Maybe insanity does that to you.
Prophecy, I have some problems understanding Dumbledore explanation about prophecy and freewill. What bothers me may be totally unrelated but in the POA it is clear that Hermine and Harry had to use the time turner because they had already seen the results. They had no choice no freewill in the matter they had already benefited and were in fact alive because they were predestined to do exactly what they did. Now this might be a totally isolated instance where JKR allows freewill to be subverted but can we be sure of that?
From Rowling’s 2007 post-DH Leaky Cauldron interview:
Lady Bella: Whose murders did voldemor use to create each of the horcruxes
J.K. Rowling: The diary – Moaning Myrtle. The cup – Hepzibah Smith, the previous owner. The locket – a Muggle tramp. Nagini – Bertha Jorkins (Voldemort could use a wand once he regained a rudimentary body, as long as the victim was subdued).
J.K. Rowling: The diadem – an Albanian peasant. The ring – Tom Riddle snr.
______________
Rowling’s list implies that by the time Riddle spoke to Slughorn he’d already created the ring horcrux (since he killed Riddle Sr at the same time he stole the ring). However, Dumbledore says he thinks that after Riddle turned the ring into a horcrux he didn’t want to wear it anymore. That implies that it would have to have been someone else Riddle murdered to turn it into a horcrux. These contradictory statements (Dumbledore’s and Rowling’s) can be resolved if Riddle did in fact use Riddle Sr. to create the ring horcrux but did not put the powerful spell on it right away and wore it until he decided to return to the Gaunt shack to hide it; Dumbledore’s statement would just be incorrect speculation. This still doesn’t explain why Riddle gives the impression that he’s never made a horcrux when he talks to Slughorn, but maybe it’s just a clever bit of acting/reliving what he did to get at his real question of whether he can make more then one. In “A Sluggish Memory,” Dumbledore tells Harry that during the summer of Riddle’s sixteenth year (i.e., between Riddle’s fifth and sixth years at Hogwarts), Riddle left the orphange and killed the Riddles and stole the ring. This means the conversation with Slughorn about horcruxes took place during Riddle’s sixth year. There is a bit of a problem with the timeline, however: in COS, Riddle from the diary is sixteen, which implies either 1) the conversation with Slughorn and the opening of the Chamber/killing of Myrtle took place before New Years in Riddle’s sixth year, BUT that is inconsistent with the return to June 13th when Riddle shows Harry his memory in COS (and also why would Riddle have been asking to stay at Hogwarts during summer vacation so early in the year)? OR 2) the Chamber opening/murder of Myrtle/creation of the diary horcrux happened at the end of Riddle’s fifth year, before he killed the Riddles. If 2) is the case, then he would already have made TWO horcruxes before he approached Slughorn. In which case, he might have been trying to figure out if what he did worked or if he could make even more.
OR (third option), we choose to ignore what Rowling said about what murders were used to make the horcruxes and assume that for the ring and diary Riddle used other murders committed later (other tramps for example) and that while the Chamber of Secrets and murder of the Riddles preceded the conversation with Slughorn, the diary and ring were not yet horcruxes.
R.Ross, it’s not clear to me whether Voldemort had cast the horcrux spell or not when he tried to kill Harry. We don’t see him casting it when he/Harry relive Voldemort’s memory after Harry escapes from Godric’s Hollow, but it’s possible it can be done non-verbally. We’re not really given any information about the nature of the spell. It would make more sense that some of his soul was blasted off when the killing curse rebounded on him if he had already said a spell to rip his soul (which was unstable anyway from the previous rippings), but I suppose the spell is not necessary for it to have happened.
Yes, he could have been planning to use Harry’s murder to make a horcrux (it would have been a significant murder, after all) and so may have said (verbal or non-verbal) the incantation.
It seems like I recall JKR saying in an interview that Harry was not a true horcrux (though I cannot seem to find the actual quote, just a lot of people quoting it on various forums.) At least I’m not the only one with that memory. It appears she claimed to have used the word “Horcrux” for convenience, but that it isn’t precisely accurate. A piece of LV’s soul broke off and attached itself to the only living thing in the room. With Harry being more than a mere container, and without the accomplishment of the disgusting process required (which she says she can’t bring herself to describe out loud) the strict definitions of the word don’t apply, though he certainly served the purpose of one.
My apologies again for not having proper citation…. I had to google ‘Harry “not a true Horcrux”‘ to get that much.
I love this chapter; it’s a favorite because of that last part about the prophecy and choice. Good post, Behold a Phoenix.
Great post with good grist for discussion.
My mind boggles at your timelines, Lily Luna, but I do believe Tom had made at least one Horcrux before approaching Slughorn. And why would he ask this question of a Potions professor, of all people (why would a Potions professor know this)? Tom chose Slughorn becuase he could “spin him” in a web of flattery, appealing to his ego, as the naive, admiring grasshopper to the Jedi master (oops, wrong franchises). After “disarming” Slughorn, Tom easily ply him for information; he hit a lucky jackpot there. I’m surprised the loose-lipped Slughorn lived another six months instead being fodder for the next Horcrux.
As for the ring, once Tom had made it into a Horcrux, he certainly would remove himself from his soul fragment so that, if he were in danger, part of himself would be safe. And of course he didn’t know the ring was a Hallow. Imagine if he did!
9089ssb, I think you’ve got the argument backwards. Harry and Hermione didn’t need to use the time-turner because they had “seen” the results. They didn’t know how they were rescued, except by a Patronus, and Harry thought it was his dad. He continued to think so until the last minute time-turned minute. They used the TT with free will to change the past/future–rescue Sirius and possibly Buckbeak. No predestination involved. This is one of those time-travel conundrums that cramps your brain.
Re #3. I don’t think Harry can wrap his mind around how he can defeat LV with love. I mean, did we grasp it the first six books? You can nod the head that it’s true, because Dumbledore says so…but how, exactly, would he do this? It’s using a subjective amorphism to defeat an objective known. That’s why I think he doesn’t regard this as highly as he could or should–he can’t understand. He’s like Ron in this; he believes there must be a conceivable weapon or spell.
LV would like the number 7 because it represents fullness or completion; having seven Horcruxes would mean life eternal.
I was under the impression that Voldemort was merely trying to get Slughorn’s opinion on having 7 horcruxes, whether or not they’d be more powerful.
It seems like LV already knew how to make horcruxes & had already done so when he killed his father & grandparents. So all he was missing was information on making more than one horcrux because nobody had apparently ever done that before & Slughorn was someone he knew he could manipulate.
But admittedly I’m getting in on this conversation a bit late & have just skimmed the other comments. There does seem to a lot of questions about this topic. But then JKR was never too good on timelines, it seems.
Library Lily July 1, 2009 at 10:05 pm, I know I have read or seen what you have remembered – me too! Is this the quote?
Transcript of Part 1 of PotterCast’s JK Rowling Interview (excerpt)
Dec. 23, 2007
… MA:After we got back from Carnegie Hall, we brought back your message of “Harry is kind of not really a Horcrux.” (SU: Oh, yeah.) And I don’t want to dwell too long on Horcruxes, but I’d love to hear you talking about how he is or isn’t, or wasn’t.
JKR: Well, I’ll tell you- do you know what? This will not end the discussion. (MA:Yeah.) (laughs) I know that, and you know that, but here is the thing: for convenience, I had Dumbledore say to Harry, “You were the Horcrux he never meant to make,” but I think, by definition, a Horcrux has to be made intentionally. So because Voldemort never went through the grotesque process that I imagine creates a Horcrux with Harry, (SU: Mm-hm.) it was just that he had destabilized his soul so much that it split when he was hit by the backfiring curse. And so this part of it flies off, and attaches to the only living thing in the room. A part of it flees in the very-close-to-death limbo state that Voldemort then goes on and exists in. I suppose it’s very close to being a Horcrux, but Harry did not become an evil object. He didn’t have curses upon him that the other Horcruxes had. He himself was not contaminated by carrying this bit of parasitic soul. The only time he ever felt it stirring and moving was in Order of the Phoenix, when he himself goes through a very dark time. And there’s a moment where he’s looking at Dumbledore, and he feels something rear like a snake inside him, and of course, at those times, it’s because the piece of soul inside him is feeding off his emotions. He’s going through a dark time, and that piece of soul is enjoying it, and making its presence felt, but he doesn’t know what he’s feeling, of course. Also, I always imagine that the Sorting Hat detected the presence of that piece of soul (JN: Yeah!) when Harry first tried it on, because it’s strongly tempted to put him in Slytherin. So that’s how I see it. (JN: Wow.) Now, I know that won’t end the debate, but I do think that the strict definition of “Horcrux,” once I write the Scottish Book, will have to be given, (SU: Yeah.) (JN: Yes.) and that the definition will be that a receptacle is prepared by Dark Magic to become the receptacle of a fragmented piece of soul, and that that piece of soul was deliberately detached from the master soul to act as a future safeguard, or anchor, to life, and a safeguard against death. So that doesn’t really clear anything up. Well, I think it- (JN: It does quite a bit.) It at least states what I believe,(MA laughs) but I don’t think it’s necessarily going to convince people who have a strong feeling one way or the other on the matter. You know what? That’s been the case with most of Harry Potter. (JN laughs) I give my explanation, and it just fuels more debate.
JN: Okay, I was thinking, as you were talking about that just a second ago, I’ve just been reading Philosopher’s Stone. There was a chapter when Harry goes to sleep for the first time, and he’s in his dormitory, and he has a dream that you wrote he never remembers again, and it was being tempted, “Go to Slytherin.” I thought maybe at that point that might have also been that little piece of Voldemort in there, wreaking havoc on his dreams really early on.
JKR: Well, of course the pain he feels whenever Voldemort’s particularly active is this piece of soul seeking to rejoin the master soul. When his scar is hurting him so much, that’s not scar tissue hurting him. That’s this piece of soul really wanting to get back out the way it entered. It really wants to- it entered this boy’s body through a wound, and it wants to rejoin the master. So when Voldemort’s near him, when he’s particularly active, this connection, (JN: Oh, my gosh!) it was always there. That’s what I always imagined this pain was. Yes, so there you go. There’s a moment when Dumbledore casts a charm, and you see a two-headed snake split. (SU: Yes!) Do you remember that? …
http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2007/12/23/transcript-of-part-1-of-pottercast-s-jk-rowling-interview
R.R. Terrific quote you found. Sure explains a lot, thanks.
Thanks for the quote. I went and read the interview in full. Rowling’s interviews are rather frustrating because she contradicts herself. For example, the very last bit of what you quoted about the snake splitting in two. In that interview she goes on to say in essence divided referred to Voldemort having split himself into several parts. In another interview she says that in essence divided referred to Nagini and that her essence was divided- part snake part Voldemort. (And in the interview you cited she says Harry doesn’t go back to finish his last year, he, Ron and Neville go directly to the auror dept for training (even though they want 5 Newts? doesn’t make sense to me), but in another interview she implies Harry does finish his seventh year but Ron doesn’t because he goes into business with George.)
Given what she says about the bit of soul attached to Harry wanting to get back out through the scar, I’m surprised it doesn’t do that back in the graveyard in GOF when Voldemort puts his finger to Harry’s scar. I guess that’s why it pains him so much when Voldemort does that.
Also need to point out in HBP, p. 357, Dumbledore describes what he thinks Riddle did after stunning Morfin and stealing his wand and says that after killing the Riddles he returned to the shack, did the complex modification of Morfin’s memory, pocketed the ring and left. That implies he didn’t steal the ring until after killing the Riddles, which would mean he couldn’t have used the murder of Riddle Sr. to make the horcrux, IF Dumbledore was correct. However, Dumbledore has nothing to support exactly when in the sequence of events Riddle took the ring. He could have taken it at the same time as the wand instead of later, which means he could have used the Riddle murder to make the horcrux.
I don’t agree that he wouldn’t have worn the ring if it was a horcrux – no one would dare steal from him, and if something had happened to his body, the horcrux would work just as well on him as hidden. By carrying it on him he could be sure of its safety, in fact. It would be hard to destroy the ring. Who would think to hit it with Gryffindor’s sword if they didn’t know it was a horcrux?
And yet, it’s odd that if Riddle had already made one and possibly two horcuxes before approaching Slughorn he had not lost his good looks. By the time he approaches Hebzibah Smith his cheeks are hollowed, implying he’s made at least one horcrux between when we see him with Slughorn and when we see him with her, but again that doesn’t seem to fit with the other info we have. Oh, well, I think the answer is that Rowling herself has thoroughly confused up the timelines.
Arabella, good question about why Riddle chooses to approach Slughorn. On p. 431 of HBP Dumbledore mentions that Slughorn was the teacher with whom Riddle was on the best terms. As you say, he was the most susceptible to flattery and manipulation and was his head of house, and Riddle cultivated him assiduously. Doubtless he felt more comfortable approaching Slughorn with a dangerous question than anyone else. Certainly he could not have asked the Transfiguration teacher (Dumbledore)!
Very thorough & good analysis, Lily Luna. I think why we sometimes get confused on these things is 1) we assume Dumbledore is right in his guesses when he is, after all, just guessing in many cases, & 2) we pay too much attention to what the author says outside the text when as you so well point out the author isn’t necessarily the most reliable commentator.
I know this is totally off-topic, but later in the interview cited above, Rowling says in response to a question about thrice defied, that Voldemort had tried to get Lily and James to join him and they had turned him down, that this was established in Philospher’s Stone. Anyone know to what she is referring? The closest I come to this is a passage that says the opposite. In hut-on-the-rock, Hagrid tells Harry:
“Now, yer mum an’ dad were as good a witch an’ wizard as I ever knew. Head boy an’ girl at Hogwarts in their day! Suppose the myst’ry is why You-Know-Who never tried to get ‘em on his side before . . . probably knew they were too close ter Dumbledore ter want anythin’ to do with the Dark Side.
“Maybe he thought he could persuade ‘em . . . maybe he just wanted ‘em outta the way. All anyone knows is, [he turned up on Halloween ten years ago and killed them].”
I reread the showdown with Voldemort at the end of SS and it didn’t say anything like what Rowling said, so I’m perplexed.
Do we know the amount of time that can lapse between a murder and the making of a Horcrux? If that’s not a critical issue (i.e., the murder doesn’t “go bad” if not used by the “freshness date stamp”), then Tom could have made the diary Horcrux after speaking with Slughorn. He may have probed Sluggo to determine how much soul to put in his Horcrux(es); he wouldn’t want to divide his soul into only two if more Horcruxes could be made.
Perhaps making the first one had no visible alterations.
As for Tom wearing the Horcrux. No, it couldn’t be destroyed, but it could be stolen from an injured or dead Tom. If it was stolen, Tom would be dead/”dead,” because the thief wouldn’t know it was a Horcrux.
Rowling says about the soul piece in Harry, “And so this part of it flies off, and attaches to the only living thing in the room.” Since all the Horcruxes (and historically so) except Nagini were inatimate objects, all prepared, why would LV’s fragment automatically attach itself “to the only living thing in the room”? An unprepared one at that? Kind of weak to me…but it made for a great story!!
I understood the smoke snake to represent Harry and LV–one via soul connection, but in essence divided–different hearts and intent.
In the interview above, Rowling says, “…but here is the thing: for convenience…,” I think we want too much to pin down everything, when the author admits herself that she occasionally might do a plot point for convenience (thus perhaps Dumbledore’s risking students to keep Draco on track?).
Arabella, you hit upon a good point. Maybe the problem is we’re over-analyzing some of these questions. Maybe they don’t really have a good solution because they were put in for plot devices & not meant to bear a lot of scrutiny.
The prophecy, for instance. Did JKR have in mind the exact wording of the prophecy at the time she wrote HPPS? Is she misremembering what she wrote in HPPS, thinking she had made the point more clearly but having it be somewhat ambiguous because she hadn’t yet fully realized the prophecy or certainly couldn’t introduce the prophecy as early as the first book?
The same could go for the horcruxes, as to their exact nature, how they work, when they were created. She simply didn’t have an exact explanation for all of it because she never expected it to be examined in such detail. Or because the exact details of horcruxes are supposed to be ambiguous because they are strange & unusual magic that don’t necessarily have hard & fast rules to them but she’s muddied the topic by trying to provide explanations.
Arabella, according to Slughorn, in making the horcrux one is supposed to be taking advantage of the ripping of one’s own soul caused by a murder to cause a piece to split off and be encased in the prepared receptacle. Doesn’t sound like there’s much time if any he can wait and certainly not the months between when he kills Riddle Sr and talks to Slughorn.
Interesting question raised as to what percent Voldemort is splitting off each time. Was he able to create 7 roughly equal pieces (ignoring the piece in Harry)? Or did he have to divide in half each time, which would leave him with only 1/32 of his original soul when he came to ask Dumbledore to be allowed to teach and when he tried to kill Harry. If Harry got half of that (1/64 of the original), he’d be down to only 1/128 of his original soul at the time of his rebirth, equal with Nagini. Yikes! No wonder he looked like a demon in the end. It also means that, if the order of creation was: diary, ring, cup, locket, diadem, (Harry), Nagini, then when Harry was escaping from Godric’s Hollow (and they had their mind meld reliving Vol’s murder of Harry’s parents), there had been an unusual conjunction of a combined 3/32 (just over 1/3) of Vol’s soul. It also might explain the power of the diary (1/2 of Vol’s soul), which was able to take over Ginny and almost escape by sucking the life out of her, and to a lesser extent the locket (1/16 of Vol’s soul), which magnified their fears and blossomed out of the locket to taunt Ron.
R. Ross, thank you, yes–that must have been the quote I was referring to. I heard that Pottercast interview with Rowling, but couldn’t remember enough of the exact wording to search for it.
Arabella Figg, I wondered the same thing about time elapsing between murder and Horcrux making. I also think you’re right about some plot points being done for convenience. Creating a story and preserving the inner logic is hard work, after all.
Lily Luna, I can’t think of a time in PS where we learn that Lily and James had any contact with Voldemort whatsoever before he killed them. As a matter of fact, it seems to me that the first time I heard anything about their having “thrice defied him” was in OotP when Dumbledore tells Harry of Trelawney’s prophecy. I might just be missing it.
Not that she needs a defense, but just because the thought came to mind: As far as clear recollection of the story’s details and logic goes, Rowling is at a disadvantage against those of us who read and re-read the books. As I know from dabbling in fiction myself, a writer’s mind is a mess of nebulous backstory and potential plot lines and directions that happened in chapter 25 that meant going back and changing details in chapter 2. The best mind-maps in the world aren’t insurance enough against confusion.
Sorry I wasn’t clear with what I was trying to say about the mind meld – just that a conjunction of 3/32 of Vol’s soul in one location (though in different containers) might have caused the intense mind meld. Hermione won’t tell Harry what he was doing while he wasn’t himself, but a few days later Dumbledore is worried Vol will read Harry’s mind when Snape brings him the sword, which suggests that for once that year Vol was aware of Harry and may even have been looking through his eyes at Hermione. After this Harry is bothered by the fuzzy images he’s getting of what Vol is doing, suggesting Vol is practicing Occlumency against Harry again, but loses control while interrogating Grindelwald.
Such interesting speculations! I like the idea that his soul split in half each time he made a horcrux, which would make each successive horcrux sooo much worse than the first, and would better explain why nobody else had dared do it before Voldy.
Would it have made the successive Horcruxes worse? Or weaker? I think LV’s diminished being, power and capacity after zapping infant Harry vs. the strong diary Hcrx indicates that the soul fragments became weaker as each time a smaller soul was split, supporting Lily Luna’s brilliant suggestion and math work.
L.L. I think we should not try and describe the soul in terms of 4 dimensional physics. For all we know the soul is always equal in size no matter how many times it is ripped. Maybe that it looses it humanity as it is divided. And then all pieces might loose equally. Even modern physics is starting to show evidence of particles having an influenced on particles on levels faster than the speed of light and totally outside the 4 known dimensions.
Lily Luna, perhaps JKR was referring to what Draco said in PS/SS after Harry refused his assistance in making friends with the ‘right’ sort:
‘I’d be careful if I were you, Potter,’ he said slowly. ‘Unless you’re a bit politer you’ll go the same way as your parents. They didn’t know what was good for them, either. You hang around with riff-raff like the Weasleys and that Hagrid, and it’ll rub off on you.’
There is another inconsistency concerning horcruxes, I think.
After his death, Dumbledore tells Harry: ‘You were the seventh Horcrux, Harry, the Horcrux he never meant to make. He had rendered his soul so unstable that it broke apart when he committed those acts of unspeakable evil, the murder of your parents, the attempted killing of a child. But what escaped from that room was even less than he knew. He left more than his body behind. He left part of himself latched to you, the would-be victim who had survived.’
In the Bloomsbury Live Chat JKR also calls Harry ‘the last and unintended Horcrux’.
But Harry wasn’t the last Horcrux, Nagini was. Whether Voldemort made it by killing Frank Bryce (as Dumbledore suggests) or Bertha Jorkins (as Rowling says) – it was about 13 years later and Voldemort was not in a healthy condition. But this time his evil deed did not weaken him at all, it seems.
Arabella and Revgeorge, you are probably right in that we should not try to nail the author down to every detail she wrote or said. It’s not all important to the story. It just seems to be to those who read the books dozens of times and think there must be a meaning that can be decoded in every single bit. And we all tend to be like that to some degree or another
908ssp, you have a good point. Rather than a mathematical weakening, there was likely a humanity weakening (if you can consider a psychopath as having humanity). With each Horcrux, Riddle became physically less human, and with his unintended last one–Harry, he even lost human physicality. But he became, as an evil soul, no less weakened in mental ability, determination or emotion.
All interesting comments. About Frank Bryce vs. Bertha Jorkins. Bertha Jorkins makes more sense b/c Vol would have had time to prepare whatever he needed to prepare to make a horcrux with her b/c she was under his power; also it was an important killing to him as it was his first after he came back to a rudimentary body and she also had played an important informational role in his plan to regain a real body. Frank was a spur-of-the-moment killing, so we’re back to the question of whether he would have needed to prepare Nagini first or if he can do it after the killing. I don’t know why Dumbledore thinks of Frank instead of Bertha for the horcrux; seems arbitrary.
Note: Jo is talking about Free Will at the end of the saga in Deathly Hallows, she gives her take on Harry’s choice (from the same interview cited earlier).
JKR: One of the things on there was- it’s about the end, and how Harry survived right at the end, when he doesn’t fight, and Voldemort uses the Killing Curse on him. Well, it was important for me to say on the website, I never saw this- as in the finale, the denouement, the moment when Harry faces Voldemort, is prepared to die, and yet doesn’t die- that isn’t like a scientific equation. Harry- it’s not guaranteed. There has to be space, to make Harry truly heroic, for free will. It has to be his choice. The whole thing’s his choice. He chooses to sacrifice himself, just as Lily chose to sacrifice herself. He chooses to pull himself back to life. And that’s his own will and courage. So ultimately, those things, all of them were more important than the magic.
Since I came upon it soon after reading HBP, I put this quote on a slip of paper in the Horcrux chapter; I forgot to share it earlier. It kind of gave me chills when I read it, because it is so in line with Rowling’s Horcruxes.
“We scatter parts of our soul when we sin, and if we don’t stop, soon we will find our souls empty.” —author Angela Hunt