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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[oryx_leucoryx]

As I said in my sporking of GOF chapter 1, I think the ring was placed in the hovel at the same time the 'rich man' became the owner of the Riddle House. I think he put some kind of charm on the place to keep people away. It worked so well the local Muggles no longer remember the hovel even existed.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

That certainly works, and I could believe it. We don't know how long it took him to acquire the Riddle house either. He hadn't the money before he left Britain after murdering Hepzibah, but we don't know that he actually legally purchased it. He could have fuzzed the land records, putting it into his own name.