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

Re: Horcrux making

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. We've slammed right up against the fact that the author doesn't know, doesn't think it matters, and isn't going to bother to try to think it out.

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

[oryx_leucoryx]

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.

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

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Actually we do get some canon corroboration that Tom did realize he was over his limit, although not until DHs. Or, conversely that he had completely lost interest in the Founder's relics.

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

[lynn-waterfall.livejournal.com]

Just one small thing to add. Voldemort's face had apparently made that final change even before the events in GoF, based on his (temporary) face on the back of Quirrell's head:

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

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

That is a valid point. Of course we don't know whether the face on the back of Quirrell's head was fully realized, or if it was basically just an animated mask looking out. The face that came out of the cauldron was similar enough for Harry to identify it as the same, but if Nagini really was a Horcrux, then he'd created that one after the face on Quirrell's head. It *ought* to have shown further deterioration, but I think that Rowling was just inventing a monster and not considering that LV had gotten from "handsome Tom" to what Harry had to deal with *in stages*.

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.