A reflection on Horcruces and Dumbledore

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

I've argued before that Dumbledore knew from the start that Harry had become Tom's Horcrux.

But, if he were as smart as he thought he were, he should have realized that that fact alone proved that Riddle had others (or some other means of avoiding death when his body was destroyed, and Horcruces do seem to be the only known means).

He deduced that Riddle had planned to manufacture a Horcrux from the baby's death, right? Not either of the parents' deaths.

Therefore, the death that created the soul-fragment that landed in Harry, was Riddle's own from that reflected AK.

If he hadn't already been anchored to life by another Horcrux somewhere, he should have merely died.

So Dumbledore ought to have started looking for another Horcrux in 1981....

Comments

[lynn-waterfall.livejournal.com]

Dunno. If you can make horcruxes accidentally, why couldn't the soul-fragment have broken off during Lily's murder? I'm not saying that it happened that way, but it doesn't seem like an entirely unreasonable conclusion for Dumbledore to come to.

Of course, it would still be mind-bogglingly stupid for Riddle to confront his prophecied nemesis before creating a horcrux to protect himself, and even Riddle wasn't that stupid. Not *quite* that stupid. It'd be stupid to count on him being that stupid, anyway.

Maybe Dumbledore thought that Harry had to find the horcrux, in order to fulfill the prophecy. Or that Harry would need to see the destruction of a horcrux in order to believe that he, Harry, needed to die to kill Riddle. Dumbledore *might* have known about the locket for a while, or the ring (without knowing exactly what it was).

...Now I'm wondering if Dumbledore might have originally planned for Harry to die in getting the locket, or something, with Dumbledore surviving to destroy it and (perhaps) be the one to kill Riddle.

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

"If you can make horcruxes accidentally, why couldn't the soul-fragment have broken off during Lily's murder? I'm not saying that it happened that way, but it doesn't seem like an entirely unreasonable conclusion for Dumbledore to come to."

I may be making this up, but I was under the impression that Voldemort's sould only split because it was already so damaged after making the previous ones. IOW, if Voldemort didn't have any other Horcruxes, his soul wouldn't have broken apart like that and he'd have been killed properly. Although OTOH Voldemort is allegedly the only person to make that many Horcruxes, so I could understand DD not knowing that.

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

Dunno. If you can make horcruxes accidentally, why couldn't the soul-fragment have broken off during Lily's murder? I'm not saying that it happened that way, but it doesn't seem like an entirely unreasonable conclusion for Dumbledore to come to.

If this were the case, any mass-murderer would spontaneously create a Horcrux at the moment of death. Unless that's the case (in which case one of the people in the Malfoys' cellar should have become Wormtail's Horcrux), we can probably assume that it's creating Horcruxes rather than simply committing murder that destabilises the soul in that way.

[lynn-waterfall.livejournal.com]

That's certainly a reasonable point about mass murderers, and it wouldn't have to happen only at the point of death. So, the Harrycrux was only possible because Riddle *did* intend to make a horcrux, even though at the time of casting the spell he hadn't yet detached a fragment of his soul to use? It's contrived, but this *is* the Potterverse.

I guess Dumbledore "shouldn't" have automatically concluded that Voldemort would've already had a horcrux because no one had ever created more than one. According to that reasoning, if Harry had become a horcrux, then Voldemort was therefore stupid enough to try to create his first horcrux with his nemesis' death.

Except that then Voldemort's survival can't be explained, and there's not only the Harrycrux, but Severus' Dark Mark to support that.

So, yes, Dumbledore should have come to the conclusion that there was more than one horcrux. His failure to act on that knowledge doesn't make a *lot* of sense, but there could be an explanation, possibly along the lines of the ones I suggested above.

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

it wouldn't have to happen only at the point of death.

I think it would - the way I understood it, the Harrycrux soul fragment fell out because it had been dislodged from his body when he died, not because he'd attempted murder.

So, the Harrycrux was only possible because Riddle *did* intend to make a horcrux, even though at the time of casting the spell he hadn't yet detached a fragment of his soul to use?

Sorry, I should have been clearer. The Harrycrux, in my theory, happened because he'd already made n Horcruces, where n is the minimum necessary to destabilise his soul to this extent. Unless Horcruxification requires preparation beforehand, but since this was an interesting aspect of Potterverse magic it went entirely unexplained.

[snapes-witch.livejournal.com]

Unexplained because it's too horrible according to JKR.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

More like because she doesn't know. I suspect that she never thought that it was necessary to figure out how a Horcrux was made because she never intended to share it with the reader. Which is all very well, but is just one more indication that it takes more than throwing in a unicorn to make a work a fantasy, and she's never realized that, because she doesn't *care* how fantasy works.

Really, acto Rowling one might as well create a Horcrux by committing a murder while wishing *really hard*.

Our own problem is that what Albus has to say on the matter simply does not stack up against the backstory. And Albus is our main source of information. Yes, it makes perfect sense that he might claim that Tom wanted artifacts of great distinction for his Horcruxes, since we know by then that Tom had been sucessfully collecting artifacts related to the founders--until you remember that the one he *says* put him on the track of there being a series of them was the Diary, which was nothing of the sort.

He also claims that Harry survived because his mother died to save him. How is he supposed to know that? He wasn't there. He also claims that Tom wanted to kill Harry and make a Horcrux from the death. We get NO indication of that in the flashback in DHs. Was Albus wrong, or did Rowling simply forget? Or did she decide to sneak it past us because *she hasn't a clue about how a Horcrux is made?* And pretend it doesn't matter.

That Albus was a flannel-mouthed liar is about the only way of justifying some of the discrepancies. But there are still major gaps, regardless, and no way of guessing when Albus *really* realized that there were Horcruxes, plural, in the equation. I suspect that his claim that the Diary is what convinced him may be a misrepresentation, because the Diary is the only one which he could point to after the fact as *proof*. He may have suspected for years. He may have suspected before the Potters even went into hiding.

I'm not sure that Albus hadn't been made suspicious when he saw the state Tom was in when he came and requested the DADA post. There are probably as few procedures which could result in that general effect as there are monsters that are stone-turners. But Rowling seems to think that waving a hand and claiming that Albus was all-knowing and never very wide of the mark is enough to cover all the ommissions of not ever having built a solid backstory.

I did draft out a workable theory for how Horcruxes might be made over on Red Hen (it's the last iteration of The Changeling Hypothesis in the Potterverse Unhallowed collection). It was directly contradicted in the flashback in DHs but I'll have to admit that I'm so reluctant to accept *anything* we were told or shown in DHs that I can't be much fussed over that. It's only by sheer luck that Rowling didn't contradict *herself* three chapters later. And as it was she managed to contradict Albus.

[lynn-waterfall.livejournal.com]

no way of guessing when Albus *really* realized that there were Horcruxes, plural, in the equation. I suspect that his claim that the Diary is what convinced him may be a misrepresentation, because the Diary is the only one which he could point to after the fact as *proof*. He may have suspected for years. He may have suspected before the Potters even went into hiding.

If we can assume that Dumbledore recognized the Diary as a horcrux immediately, then that indicates that Dumbledore knew there were multiple horcruxes no *later* than that.

If he knew it was a horcrux, saw that it was destroyed, and did not conclude that Voldemort was gone, then he must have known/believed that Voldemort had something else keeping him not-dead, and that the "something else" would be more horcruxes.

Since he didn't tell people that Voldemort was gone, we can be... *fairly* sure that he didn't think that Voldemort was gone. Right?

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Well, once again we're up against the fact that what Albus *says* isn't necessarily what Albus knew. Or at least suspected.

Since it seems evident that Albus had *always* held the belief that Harry was one, then he knew there had to be *one*, and that one was Harry. However, since it is unlikely in the exterme that one can create a properly functioning Horcrux at the point of one's own death (and why would anyone want to). Then the very fact of a soul fragment having lodged in Harry was circumstantial evidence that there was probably another one out there *somewhere*, or all available portions of Tom's soul--however tattered-- would have simply gone through the Veil with nothing to stop it.

Albus may very well have thought that Harry was singularly qualified for destroying the original Horcrux. A hypothesis which Harry's managing to so handily deal with the Diary would have only enforced. But it does not explain his own blunder with the Ring.

We don't know when Albus finally went collecting memories of Tom Riddle. We assume that it was some time fairly soon after Hepzibah Smith was murdered, since Hokey was already *quite* old when it happened and I don't suppose she would have lasted long in Azkaban. But we don't *know* that. Caractacus Burke was still alive and running his business himself, too. But although that suggests that Albus started trying to piece together Tom's backtrail by the late '40s or early '50s we don't know that for sure. He may not have done squat until after Tom came to ask for the DADA post and his transformation was enough to make Albus wonder what he'd been up to.

We know that he was aware that Tom had managed to make off with the cup and the locket. We don't know that he suspected Tom of any more sinister motive for doing that than general larceny. But he may have.

Actually, given that he did *not* witness the Diary in action and only had Harry's account of what it had been capable of suggests to me that he had already concluded that Tom had at least one Horcrux other than Harry. For otherwise I don't think he'd have been so quick to conclude that the Diary had been one. The possibility of multiple Horcruxes already was *not* unthinkable to him. The question was *how many*.

He already knew about the locket and the cup having been acquired by Tom years earlier, he might have assumed that Tom had made one from one of those. The discovery of the Diary threw a major spanner in the works insofar as that if *that* was a Horcrux, then the probability was that *both* the locket and the cup had been converted into Horcruxes. And he didn't know how many others might be floating around as well. Tom had had close to 50 years to create and hide them.

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

He also claims that Harry survived because his mother died to save him. How is he supposed to know that? He wasn't there.

Um - yes. This is exactly why I and at least one other (former) fan (CMWinters) were convinced that Albus was told by someone who was there - namely, young Severus, who risked his life again by leaving the school and trying to warn James and Lily. Too bad we weren't right! Or - maybe we were; there's not a lot in the text that contradicts such a reading.

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

"He also claims that Harry survived because his mother died to save him. How is he supposed to know that? He wasn't there."

Um - yes. This is exactly why I and at least one other (former) fan (CMWinters) were convinced that Albus was told by someone who was there - namely, young Severus, who risked his life again by leaving the school and trying to warn James and Lily. Too bad we weren't right! Or - maybe we were; there's not a lot in the text that contradicts such a reading.

How do we know for sure that Albus wasn't there? He did still have James' Invisibility Cloak, after all.

Lily's sacrifice

[oryx_leucoryx]

He also claims that Harry survived because his mother died to save him. How is he supposed to know that? He wasn't there.

I don't think he really knew immediately. I think when he realized the Fidelius Charm was broken he told Hagrid to bring Harry to his Muggle relatives initially for reasons not related to the supposed blood protection - to keep him away from Sirius (the believed traitor), to keep him away from the Ministry, to prepare him for grooming as prophesied savior etc. But he may have picked up clues during the missing 24 hours. If he investigated the crime scene himself or received a report from a member of the Magical Catastrophes cleanup team (there had to be one, or else Muggles might have found suspicious objects such as wands, a toy broomstick and other charmed toys and household items) he could verify the following: That James, and significantly, Lily, were dead (so Lily wasn't being kept hostage for Severus or anything). That James died by the front door, but his wand was on the couch. That Lily died by Harry's crib, her wand not on her person. That she attempted to barricade the room.

Additionally he knew of Severus' request to Tom and the fact that Severus' Dark Mark indicates that Tom is still in existence but much weakened.

So the evidence is that the last events before Tom disappeared involved a scene including Tom, Lily and Harry. And Lily was not using magic for defense. I think even without knowing the exact details it would be logical that Lily was somehow Harry's last protection. And knowing that Harry survived while Tom was hit allowed to reverse engineer the idea of sacrificial magic. This idea is based enough in magical principles that 16-year-old diary!Tom recognized it once presented to him. I think Albus had a very strong hypothesis once he saw or received a detailed description of the crime scene. Though it is possible the hypothesis only received its final confirmation when he saw Quirrellmort being burned from Harry's touch.

Re: Lily's sacrifice

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

It works well enough from the general outline of what we were given, but it still seems to conflict with the details. Are we really supposed to believe that a mother tearfully begging for her child's life was sufficient to create a magical shield that has *never* been seen before? And that a one year old baby, who at least in the early books was shown to have a normal, though not exceptional, amount of empathy as a boy wouldn't have been crying/screaming his head off if he was awake to hear his mother weeping and pleading like she was supposed to have been?

I think the best explanation from a Watsonian perspective is that Voldemort's memory is *not reliable.* Especially in regard to the events shortly preceding and following the complete disintegration of his body. Which makes sense. Humans are known to experience amnesia of the time surrounding traumatic injury. Humans are also exceptionally good at filling in the blanks of their perceptions, even creating memories whole-cloth.

If that's so, then what was presented to us may have been a mish-mash of memories (some belonging to different people) that Tom has incorporated into what he thinks is a cohesive whole. For example, it is my personal canon that the image we get of baby Harry in the crib expecting some kind of nice surprise/game is actually one of *Lily's* memories. She held it in her mind as a symbol of what she was fighting for while confronting him, and Voldemort gleaned it from her using Legilimancy. When he recalled it later though, he could pull up the image, but not the emotional resonance Lily attached to it. Which is how he overlayed it with his own contempt when thinking it was his.

The rest of the sequence is also called into question. However, if we want an end result that is consistent with the result shown in DH (Lily and James dead, neither with their wands on their persons) then there actually several ways to approach the situation.

It might be the case that James did initially have his wand when confronting Voldemort, but had it quickly blown out of his hand and onto the couch (possibly by Expelliarmus) since he had been caught so off-balance/V was actually just that good at the time. James might even have been able to get off a couple impressive rounds in even a short duel, which would tally with what V claimed to Harry in PS. (His later omission of even a short duel may have been due to further mental deterioration from creating the Nagini!crux or as an unforeseen side-effect of the resurrection potion.)

Or James was an idiot who left his wand on the sofa.

Horcrux making

[oryx_leucoryx]

He also claims that Tom wanted to kill Harry and make a Horcrux from the death. We get NO indication of that in the flashback in DHs. Was Albus wrong, or did Rowling simply forget?

Canon never specifies whether the making of a Horcrux had to happen immediately at the time of the murder with which that particular rip was generated, or whether the Horcrux making can be done at a later time (perhaps including a ceremony that selects a particular rip in the soul for complete section). The interview answer (that mentioned, among other things, that the ring was Horcruxified with the death of Tom Sr) implies the latter. If that is the case then Tom's plan may have been: Kill Harry. Order Severus to steal the sword of Gryffindor from Hogwarts and bring it to him. Use the rip from Harry's death to make the sword into a Horcrux.

In any case, Albus learned in OOTP that Nagini was a Horcrux. This meant that Tom believed he had yet to complete his entire set of Horcruces. This conclusion stands regardless of Tom's intentions regarding Harry.

I'm not sure that Albus hadn't been made suspicious when he saw the state Tom was in when he came and requested the DADA post. There are probably as few procedures which could result in that general effect as there are monsters that are stone-turners.

Tom was the first to make that many Horcruxes. When he had only one Horcrux he looked almost his normal self, though his eyes flashed red when he got angry.

Re: Horcrux making

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately that interview answer flies in the face of any logic, so I tend to reject it. And while you are right about canon never specifying, the very fact that you even can assign a specific murder to a specific Horcrux would tend to establish that the death and the creation of the Horcrux have to be concurent. Rowling has contradicted herself no shortage of times, but (no, I don't have a link, I can't remember when I read it, but I think it would have been between 2005 and 2007) she did also state that an item to be turned into a Horcrux has to be "prepared" first. We get little indication of any opportunity for such preparation from the account of the Riddle Massacre. Unless we are to assume that a 15-year-old Riddle had already found and studied the procedure for creating a Horcrux before he went to confront his uncle Morfin Gaunt.

I suppose one *might* spin a theory that he went prepared to create a Horcrux from Morfin's death. But he didn't know about the Peverill ring until he actually met Morfin, and only learned his own father's identity from Morfin so the claim that he used his father's death to create the Ring really doesn't sound very convincing to me. And unless such "preparation" is something that can be done on the fly, I don't see much chance that he *could* have done it on the spur of the moment that evening without any pre-planning or materials. The Tom Riddle we were introduced to was never much for improvasation. Elaborate Byzantine plots were more his speed.

The claim that the Diary was created from Myrtle's death is similarly full of holes. I seriously doubt that once an item has become a Horcrux you can continue to add data to it, and yet *all* of the visions that the Diary revenant shares with Harry took place *after* Myrtle had been killed.

Now, I could about believe that Myrtle's death created the *Ring*. We know he had taken possession of that ring by the start of his 5th year--which was the same year in which he later found the entrance of the Chamber. The conversation with Slughorn *could* have taken place during that year rather than the next. All we are given to work with is that he was still wearing the Peverill ring during the conversation, so it had not yet been converted into a Horcrux yet. And Tom could have found the Room of Requirement that year while looking for the Chamber. We do not know just what all those banned, or stolen, and graffittied books stored in that room are. But that he turned the Diary into a Horcrux and then *still kept recording his memories into it* I do not believe. Acto Albus, he found the Ring unwearable after he turned that into a Horcrux. I cannot believe that he would have found the Diary any more cooperative.

Albus only learned of Nagini's existence when Snape reported back after the meeting in the graveyard, if then. It is possible that he only really became aware of her after the attack on Arthur. I agree that that attack is probably what made him suspicious of the degree of control that Tom had over her.

[lynn-waterfall.livejournal.com]

I guess that makes sense, but the implications of that...

Wouldn't that tend to indicate that if you make a lot of horcruxes, you're bound to create another whenever you "die"? Or that you're highly likely to?

If so, Harry didn't kill (or may not have killed) Voldemort after all.

Furthermore, once you create n horcruxes, you're safe from death even if all n horcruxes are destroyed, because you'll just create a new one when you "die." At least until you, um, run out of soul. (Gah, I hate the way these books treat soul as a physical thing.)

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

... you're right. Unless it was specifically the AK-plus-side-effects-of-rebounding-off-a-shield-of-pure-love, but your implications are far more fun. But once the soul becomes that ravaged, presumably it has some implications for the wizard besides turning them into a flayed baby for eternity if they ever end up in the afterlife - maybe once the limit is reached, it's too weak to stay anchored to the living world even with Horcruces? (My model of the Potterverse soul is that it's the ethereal equivalent of the brain - it's the hardware on which the software of the mind runs, and so far it seems fairly consistent with the soul's behaviour in the books).

[lynn-waterfall.livejournal.com]

Yeah, having a too-shredded soul might affect your ability to stay in a body. Seeing what Riddle was like after he got a new body, it does seem like one's mind is affected by creating too many horcruxes. At least, I'd like to believe Riddle was smarter than that at one point.

Now that I think of it, creating n horcruxes wouldn't make you entirely safe from death. If someone destroyed your death-throes-horcrux while you were disembodied, presumably you'd just die.

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

If someone destroyed your death-throes-horcrux while you were disembodied, presumably you'd just die.

That's an interesting point - before Horcruces were added, I assumed Vapourmort was similar to a ghost. Does the disembodied spirit of a Horcrux-user need the Horcrux once its body has actually died, or does it merely need something to anchor it during the process of dying? (Maybe Vapourmort was more like a ghost than I thought and is in fact a mere echo of the original Voldemort, with Horcruces merely anchoring a ghost rather than the original soul, giving another possible reason for the mental deterioration).

[oryx_leucoryx]

Unless it was specifically the AK-plus-side-effects-of-rebounding-off-a-shield-of-pure-love

Or perhaps suicide while having a Horcrux (as opposed to just 'dying' while having a Horcrux).

[oryx_leucoryx]

Is it possible Albus arrived at the mistaken conclusion that Tom tried to make his one Horcrux with James' death, but made some mistake in the process? This mistake then left his soul in a detachable state, so that when he was hit by his AK soon after creating 2 fresh rips in his soul a fragment detached and entered Harry?

But that leaves the question what would cause Albus to believe so. Because logically, if the prophecy caused Tom to fear for his life to the point of wanting a Horcrux as 'insurance' why wait so long? Especially as we know of at least one person Tom killed himself between hearing the prophecy and the Godric's Hollow attack - Order member Dorcas Meadows.

So either something caused Albus to believe Tom only learned about Horcruxes shortly before Godric's Hollow or there was very clear evidence at the crime scene that suggested attempted Horcrux-making - and Albus fell in love with his theory to the point he was not willing to look further.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Perhaps once Albus saw the diary and realized Tom already had a Horcrux then perhaps he may have retconned his interpretation of Godric's Hollow as a failed attempt to make a Horcrux with Harry's death. (So as to free the diary to be used in its other function - as a weapon?)

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

Oh! I commented about something like this in one of your essays. :)

I've been speculating that DD didn't know that Tom had been making horcruxes. And he didn't know right away that Vapormort was still lurking around. All he knew was that there was a piece of Tom's soul lodged in Harry's scar. What if he thought that the soul bit in Harry was all that was left of Voldemort to deal with?

Voldemort could still "return" one day if the soul bit was able to possess Harry.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

I rather suspect that this consideration may have had something to do with Albus's pussyfooting about Harry in the first two books. He waved the mirror of Erised in front of him to find out what Harry wanted. And there were indications of suspicions that Harry was concealing something when "Enemies of the Heir, Beware" started being written on the walls of the castle.

I am still of the opinion that the Serpensotia incident at the dueling club was because Albus wanted to know whether Harry might be a Parselmouth. Snape exceeded his orders that time. I suspect that Albus had not intended that the matter be resolved quite so *publicly*.

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

Yes! I think Albus was regularly testing Harry to see how "active" the soul bit was. In CoS, he knew that Harry had a piece of Tom lodged his scar, so Harry was the obvious suspect