A reflection on Horcruces and Dumbledore
Feb. 3rd, 2011 11:49 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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deathtocapslockI'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....
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....
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Re: Horcrux making
Date: 2011-02-06 02:23 am (UTC)On another note, although Rowling says so, I'm not sure I buy that Nagini was ever a horcrux. Why couldn't it be the case that Tom was simply possessing Nagini, the way he attempted to possess Harry, and Harry got pulled along for the ride? It doesn't make sense to me that Tom would intentionally make a horcrux from a mortal creature.
Re: Horcrux making
Date: 2011-02-06 02:37 am (UTC)Frankly I thought that it would be a very nice example of one of Albus's rare "huge mistakes" and one that would not have major effects on the story since they were going to need to deal with the snake anyway. The revelation of the Harrycrux (which I was convinced of) was the big one.
I thought that Tom had Nagini under Imperius. Perfectly within his capabilities, even as BabyMort.
And yes, the insistence upon killing Harry himself in order to retrieve the soul fragment would certainly play (and is brighter than Rowling gives him credit for being). He couldn't have antcipated that killing Harry the 2nd time would backfire, destroy the fragment, and land him under a bench in the cosmic King's Cross station. Evidently Lily's protection didn't wear off upon Harry reaching his majority.
Re: Horcrux making
Date: 2011-02-06 04:45 am (UTC)Yes exactly!
Re: Horcrux making
Date: 2011-02-06 07:05 am (UTC)But Voldemort's protection of Nagini when he realized Harry took the cup from Gringotts proves Albus was correct about her.
So either Voldemort expected to gain something by Horcruxifying Nagini that was worth the risk or she was protected from most forms of death (what did she eat? maybe she was being fed unicorn blood) or she was not the intended Horcrux, but since Godric's Hollow Tom lost control of the entire process. Because there is another bit we don't have a clear explanation for: Albus tells Harry that Voldmeort was *very much* incensed that Lucius deployed the diary - because he could no longer make more Horcruxes. How did Tom know he couldn't? And how did Albus know Tom knew? Did Albus agree with Tom? Which may also be related to Tom himself going to kill Amelia Bones. Was he trying to force a situation where he could make a Horcrux anyway, despite the limitation he already ran into?
Re: Horcrux making
Date: 2011-02-06 08:20 am (UTC)Or that Albus was simply spouting off about that which he had no real information. An awful lot of the shorhand deployed in the last couple of books came down to; "let Albus tell us what to think" and then never support his statement by anything that corroborates it. Particularly when these statements directly contradicted things that she'd already set up. We're lucky that she even did remember to have Tom conspicuously protect his snake. But then she had already decided to use that snake for a set-piece.
It might have been that, as BabyMort, creating a Horcrux came so close to sending him straight back into disembodied form that he decided not to do that again even when he did get a proper body. It might have been that having, he thought, failed with Harry, the Nagini Horcrux completed his set of six and he didn't *need* to do it again. What we *don't* get is any indication, apart from Albus's pronouncement, that he *couldn't* do it again.
Albus didn't have Snape spying for indications of Horcrux-creating. We've got no indication to establish that Snape was even aware of the possibility of Horcruxes until Albus was ready to reveal to him that Harry had to die. So I don't know where Albus got the idea that Tom had exceeded the maximum.
Snape reported back to him on Tom's fury at Lucius for having lost the Diary. But I even if Tom *did* say something about the Diary being irreplacable, that isn't, in itself, evidence that he couldn't create another Horcrux. Just that he couldn't recreate the Diary.
Re: Horcrux making
Date: 2011-02-06 02:18 pm (UTC)If he hadn't been so secretive, he might have shared this with Snape in the PT chapter so we'd understand just how he knew about this limit.
Re: Horcrux making
Date: 2011-02-06 07:05 pm (UTC)I speculated in at least one of my essays that when Tom came out of the cauldron and ran his hands over his face, he knew that the Horcrux he'd made had had some effect on his appearance. Because she'd obviously set it up that creating multiple Horcruxes had a cumulative effect. What he didn't know, or not at first, was that he'd actually created two of them. And that, so far as we know for sure, the "melting wax" iteration of Tom that came to request the DADA post was the face that he'd worn right up to the time he'd gone to kill the Potters.
Which is *not* a conclusion that is supported by the flashback. Rowling was clearly having the trick-or-treaters comment on his *current* appearance, i.e., post defeat, post cauldron, and at least two more Horcruxes down. She'd forgotten that she'd established that his appearance had deteriorated over the course of his career in the previous book.
Actually, I personally suspect that when he went to confront Albus and ask for a job, he had created only four of them. We saw what he looked like when he went to visit Hepzibah, and I think that at that point he had created only one, which was the Ring. That was at his "elegantly wasted" stage. The "molten wax" iteration was still predominently human in appearance. By then he'd created the Locket, Cup and Diadem and was now trying to zero in on the Sword.
I don't think he created the Diary until he had a use for it, and that was just before he handed it over to Lucius Malfoy in '81. But there isn't any textual evidence to support that, and I'm not going to insist on it.
But the fact remains that, acto Albus, the Diary was designed to be kind-of-sort-of disposable. We have no way of telling whether this was yet another of Albus's mistakes. The Diary was a *weapon* without doubt. But we have *no* idea as to whether Tom had figured out that if you give a Horcrux a user interface, the soul fragment will eventually manage to escape its housing. We've no way of knowing whether a reimbodied Horcrux revenant would be killable by normal means either, but it would certainly no longer be safely housed in the artifact--unless it was a classic Koschi, *only* killable by destroying the housing. The most we can depend upon is that Tom was confident that the Diary would control it's holder enough to raise havoc at Hogwarts and set the Basilisk to roaming the halls.
If one squints around the edges, one can extrapolate that the Trelawney Prophecy changed the whole ball game. I really do think that Tom was able to count up to six, and the Sword would have been number five. He had been reserving that last Horcrux slot for emergencies. That there was actually a Prophecy of his downfall out there constituted an emergency. The death of the Child of Prophecy would be a fair trade for the Sword, and I think the Diary was meant as a means to at the very worst take Albus down with him.
But the big mystery which we are stumped at is whether he realized the Diary revenant could escape the book. Without knowing that, it's impossible to extrapolate what his intentions might have been.
Re: Horcrux making
Date: 2011-02-06 08:14 pm (UTC)Or a deliberate attempt to mislead harry. Albus was working very hard to not let Harry notice too soon that he was a Horcrux. If he didn't say the diary immediately implied the existence of more Horcruxes wouldn't Harry wonder how come Dumbledore didn't believe Tom was gone at the end of COS?
Re: Horcrux making
Date: 2011-02-06 08:31 pm (UTC)He put Snape into the Headmasters post, yet he seems to have taken no interest in the Sword whatsoever. Not even to have it handed over and safely stowed somewhere where he could get at it. By that time the Sword had been sitting openly in a case in the Headmaster's office for something like 4 years. And even after his return he *never* demanded that Snape steal it and bring it to him.
Of course Rowling seems to have forgotten that Tom supposedly wanted Hogwarts, too. Once he got it, he didn't seem to have any particular interest in it apart from turning it over to minions and meddling with the curiculum. We only know of one point at which he even visited the place in person.
Re: Horcrux making
Date: 2011-02-06 08:34 pm (UTC)Petrified, he watched as Quirrell reached up and began to unwrap his turban. [...] Where there should have been a back to Quirrell's head, there was a face, the most terrible face Harry had ever seen. It was chalk white with glaring red eyes and slits for nostrils, like a snake.
Of course, Voldemort didn't see himself, so he wouldn't have known what he looked like. If there was a change between his "death" and creating the Nagini horcrux, he probably wouldn't have known it based on his face.
Re: Horcrux making
Date: 2011-02-06 08:46 pm (UTC)If I am right about the Diary being made in '81 there *ought* to have been a brief period between it and the defeat at Godric's Hollow where his appearance had taken another hit. But we'll never get any data to suggest that was the case.
Re: Horcrux making
Date: 2011-02-06 08:02 pm (UTC)Tom really did intend to make the 6th Horcrux at Godric's Hollow and he had the proto-Horcrux in his pocket. But when Lily refused his polite request to step aside he got distracted and forgot he had to start the Horcrux-making before attempting to AK Harry. Later Albus found the proto-Horcrux (or one of his lackeys on the clean-up team found it and brought it to him).
Since Albus never heard of anyone making more than one Horcrux and logically one would want to ensure one's immortality *before* confronting one's destined vanquisher he thought Tom attempted to make a Horcrux with James' death. But being new to this (so Albus believed) he messed up resulting in some half-way soul situation that caused the final soul-split when the AK rebounded. And the soul-bit ended up in Harry's head rather than in the proto-Horcrux because without special direction soul-bits prefer being in heads of living beings than in inanimate objects, however well prepared.
Re: Horcrux making
Date: 2011-02-06 08:13 pm (UTC)Actually, the fact that canon *is* so loose and shoddy (and cluttered) gives readers, fanwriters, and theorists an amazing amount of leeway. If Rowling had built her world more solidly, we wouldn't have had half so much fun with it. And if she had taken the trouble to make the elements she imported into it *hers*, we wouldn't have had the gall to casually take it all apart and put it back together to suit ourselves so readily.
But as it stands, it constitutes a positive invitation to deconstruct and reconstruct, organize and refine, and just generally improve upon it. I mean, it's not like there isn't enough to work with. In fact, the first hurdle is to decide what you need to throw out.
Re: Horcrux making
Date: 2011-02-06 08:07 pm (UTC)But if Tom only Horcruxified the diary later wouldn't he have plenty of other diaries from later years to use as a Horcrux-that-can-also-possess-people? Because I don't see why he'd stop making such recordings. Or did it have to be the diary from that particular year if he wanted the chamber reopened? If he used a diary from his inferi-making years it would possess people to make inferi?
Re: Horcrux making
Date: 2011-02-06 08:34 pm (UTC)Re: Horcrux making
Date: 2011-02-06 08:09 pm (UTC)We know that even when he knew that several of the trinkets were removed from their hiding places he only thought to protect Nagini rather than make some more.
Re: Horcrux making
Date: 2011-02-06 04:17 pm (UTC)But Voldemort's protection of Nagini when he realized Harry took the cup from Gringotts proves Albus was correct about her.
Oh, these are both good points. Nuts.
OK, so how about this...
Tom planned to AK Harry in order to retrieve the soul bit lodged in Harry's scar. He was keeping Nagini close by and protected so that he could then store the freed soul bit in the snake until a permanent Gryffindor object was available. In other words, Nagini wasn't a horcrux yet, but she was supposed to become a temporary one after Harry was dead.
Yes, I know it's a stretch. ;D
Re: Horcrux making
Date: 2011-02-06 06:04 pm (UTC)Or there's some sort of Horcrux-detecting spell equivalent to Hominum Revelio, and Tom realized Fawkes was already a Horcrux. In which case the question would be, whose? Dumbledore might have gotten interested in Horcruxes after he picked up a phoenix Horcrux somewhere. Or, if you really don't trust Dumbledore, maybe it was his, and of course now he regrets his misspent youth blah blah blah, single tear... And then we could theorize that while the normal immolation cycle doesn't destroy the Horcrux, since that's just something phoenixes do, being reborn after being deliberately killed would dislodge the soul-fragment. So when Fawkes showed up to take that AK in the Ministry, Voldemort in fact had taken to first step toward killing Dumbledore for good. Which might explain why, if Dumbledore already had a line on some of the Horcruxes, had more license to sneak out to look for them than a schoolkid, and had a Horcrux-destroying sword, that he suddenly started training Harry to find them the next year: he might have planned all along to destroy them himself (we know how much he hates delegating and sharing information!), and then somehow arrange for Harry to be killed during a duel with Voldemort (or whatever) after which Dumbledore would finish Voldemort off, but once he lost his Horcrux, he panicked and decided he needed a backup plan. (Why he then screwed up by putting on the Ring, I don't know, but it doesn't get any worse than it already is as written.)
Re: Horcrux making
Date: 2011-02-06 07:11 pm (UTC)By that point Rowling was presenting the central plot in shorthand. Nobody's behavior makes any sense. They all jerk along like aotomations.
Re: Horcrux making
Date: 2011-02-06 07:17 pm (UTC)Re: Horcrux making
Date: 2011-02-06 07:46 pm (UTC)Re: Horcrux making
Date: 2011-02-06 08:22 pm (UTC)Indeed, the Diadem may have been stowed in the RoR decades before Tom started handing his Horcruxes out for safekeeping, or hiding them himself. We have no indication of *when* the Ring was hidden in the Gaunt's ruined hovel. It could have as early as when Tom fled Britain after killing Hepzibah Smith or as late as when he stowed the Locket in Lake Inferi (which would have been around 1979 or 1980--after Snape reported the Prophecy). But he seems to have simply bunged the Diadem into the Room with the rubbish and left it there. Even thenews that Draco had had a team of DEs parading through the place like Grand Central Station didn't prompt him to move it.