deathtocapslock | A reflection on Horcruces and Dumbledore

terri-testing.livejournal.com posting in

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....

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

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.

From:

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.

From:

snapes-witch.livejournal.com

Unexplained because it's too horrible according to JKR.

From:

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.

From:

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?

From:

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.

From:

oryx_leucoryx

since Hokey was already *quite* old when it happened and I don't suppose she would have lasted long in Azkaban

I don't think Hokey went to Azkaban - her supposed killing of her mistress was taken as an accident resulting from senility. But I suppose she was disgraced worse than Winky, and wherever she ended up she probably fell into depression. (Who would take a house-elf that could kill out of carelessness? I wonder if she ended up at Hogwarts too?) Morfin did go to Azkaban. He must have been around 40 at the time of his arrest, he died shortly after Albus collected his memory.

My question is how did he not find the ring, at the very least, years previously, if he really made a point of visiting the places associated with Tom's past, as he claims to Harry.

From:

jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com

Well, he never says *when* he started looking for them, did he? Yet another of Albus's little ommissions.

We do know that something put him onto tracing Tom's backtrail comparitively early on. Because he did manage to get some fairly early memories related to Tom's actions, and history. But we don't know what it was, or what context the search he was engaged in *then* really fit into. It may have had nothing to do with Horcruxes.

I personally am rather of the opinion that he returned from clapping his old chum Gellert into Nurmengard in 1945, with Gellert's notes on his own search for the other two Hallows, and came across a mention of the Gaunt's supposedly-Peverill ring. Acto Marvolo, *someone* had tried to buy it off him before 1925, and offered him a pretty sum for it too. We know that Albus got permission to interview Morfin in Azkaban. He must have had a reason. And in 1945, as the defeater of Gellert Grindelwald, strings would have been pulled in his favor. He may not have realized that Tom Riddle was anything other than yet another undesirable element at Hogwarts until after that interview took place.

In '45 Tom may have still had the Ring with him and not hidden it in the Gaunt hovel yet. So Albus may have done a search and found nothing. For that matter, in '45, Albus had no reason to suspect that Horcruxes were on the menu, even though Tom almost certainly had one of them by then.

In fact, in '45, Tom would probably have blamelessly been working at B&B. We've no date tags to indicate how long it took him to trace the locket to Hepzibah Smith, and ingratiate herself in her favor. It seems likely that he fled Britain after her murder before 1950, but we don't know how long before 1950. It could have been as early as 1946.

And I'm inclined to think that he his the Ring as "life insurance" in the hovel before he left. If Albus had already searched it and come up empty, it would be years before he got the urge to check it again.

Well, it makes a decent theory. It might make a decent fanfic. But of course Rowling doesn't endorse it. She doesn't endorse any fan theories.

(no subject)

From:

oryx_leucoryx - Date: 2011-02-06 12:09 am (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

From:

jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com - Date: 2011-02-06 01:16 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

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.

From:

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.

From:

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.

From:

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.

From:

annoni-no.livejournal.com

The most interesting possibilities lie in why Lily didn't have *her* wand. It's possible that she was also disarmed quickly/didn't have it, but I think it's much more interesting to speculate that she deliberately threw it away or snapped it. This would tie in very powerfully with the idea that her sacrifice was a deliberate one, and might contribute toward why the effects that resulted from it were so unlike any that had been seen before.

If she deliberately snapped her own wand, particularly if it was the same wand that she had used since she was a little girl (we're ignoring the monstrosity of Troll Logic that is DH wand rules), than she was destroying something that was essentially an extension of herself and her magic, and *crippling* herself in doing so.

Why would she do this? She might have known that she couldn't defeat him in a full on duel, and Fidelius seems to come with built-in anti-apparation wards. Also, does anyone trust Albus to make sure that his followers know how to create a portkey (whose use is supposedly restricted by the ministry and thus the technique is theoretically known only to ministry workers)? Further, if they were in hiding it's likely that their house was not connected to/removed from the floo network. Relying on sacrificial magic might have seemed like her best option option at the time.

Barricading the door after snapping her wand was likely just set-dressing in this scenario. Either to try and get V into a proper state of mind concerning her position/sacrifice, or because she thought it was an appropriate piece of "ritual" lead-up we'll never know.

Which leads to the actual content of what she was pleading. I can believe that she was a nervous wreck when she came face to face with Voldemort. She knew he was there to kill her child, and her best plan to save her baby was little more than a desperate gamble. Lily might even have been aware enough of V's mental abilities, or at least heard enough rumours, to feel that thinking too clearly of her plan was a bad idea, thus her focus on happier memories of Harry. That doesn't mean she couldn't think of anything more concrete to offer in exchange for her son's life.

She might have offered the pleasure of her body (Voldemort almost certainly did take at least of moment of pleasure from seeing/creating her corpse)

She might have offered the use of her magic (It was Lily's sacrificial magic that created another horcrux for Voldemort, tying him more closely to life even though it did him physical harm. If we hypothesize that V had originally intended to create a horcrux that night but later forgot - possibly because it had been a last minute decision - than Lily's magic was even more immediately useful than it might originally have seemed)

She most certainly offered her life in place of her child's (Which was the exchange the magic most clearly enforced)

If Voldemort had explicitly turned down the first two offers, but didn't bother with the third, than the magic may have considered that one to have been implicitly accepted. Whether this was because he decided to just kill her already as in the book, or because he decided to deal with Harry around her as Jodel posited in her Changeling Hypothesis, and Lily sacrificed her life interfering, is impossible to say, though both seem plausible depending on how faulty you believe his memory to be.

Thinking of the scene this way is really the only thing that salvages Lily as a character for me, and seems to be the only way to close the gaping plot holes that Rowling opened up in her version.

(*sits back from rant. breathes. realizes that an extremely long reply has just been made for a thread that hasn't actually been read in its entirety. feels very sheepish while posting.*)

From:

majorjune.livejournal.com

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.

I can personally attest to the above.

Back in 1991 I was hit by a car while crossing a street; for the longest time the only thing I could remember was seeing the vehicle as it was bearing down on me and thinking "It's going to hit me!", the next thing was I was flying thru the air and thinking "This isn't so bad..." (?????)

I had no memory of actually getting hit, just seeing the vehicle making a too-sharp turn onto the street I was crossing and then remembering flying thru the air.

About a year later I finally was able to remember a little bit more, but to this day -- and it will be its 20th anniversary on Feb. 13th -- all I can remember are what seem a series of still photographs of the vehicle getting closer to me. I still have no memory of actually getting hit by it.

So I have a "movie" of the memory of crossing the street and seeing the car turning onto the street and heading towards me. Then it turns into a series of "stills" of the vehicle getting closer but no memory image, either moving or still, of me actually getting hit. The memory then goes back to "movie" mode of me flying thru the air for about 40 feet while thinking "This isn't so bad", before crashing back down onto the pavement.

I definitely remember crashing onto the pavement, but have no memory of the vehicle actually hitting me.

Luckily there were witnesses who saw what happened who described it in detail.

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

Sadly I think that is the correct option. :-P

From:

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.

From:

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.

From:

sharaz-jek.livejournal.com

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.

Why not? Tom made the thing, after all, and I don't see why his previous memory-absorbing enchantments on it would be put out of action just because the diary now contained a soul fragment.

From:

jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com

Well, it is certainly true that the Diary revenant learned from Ginny Weasley's writing in it. But given that the Diary actively tried to take over anyone who came in contact with it, and that Tom would have hardly been unaware of that, I think Tom would have been more likely to have started a new diary if he intended to continue recording his adventures.

At the very least, he'd have been concerned that the Diary fragment might manage to climb back aboard and reincorporate itself with the rest of his soul. Which is exactly what he *didn't* want to have happen.

But then, I'm rather of the opinion that crafting the Diary into a loaded weapon to raise havoc on Albus's turf is something that didn't occur to him until much later, and that the Diary wasn't the first Horcrux, but something like the 5th. Created shortly before he handed it over to Lucius with instructions to keep it safe and await further orders. I which case, it may have been made from Dorcas Meadows' death.

A reflection on Horcruces and Dumbledore

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