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, 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.