HBP Chapter Twenty-Three: "Horcruxes"

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

* So Harry goes into Dumbledore’s office and we all get to see the memory. Brace yourself for some disappointment, people, it’s going to seem really anti-climactic after all the build-up we were given.

* Tom’s attempt to get the info out of Slughorn is “very well done”, if by “very well done” you mean “so blatant that even Mr. Oblivious Potter can see what he’s up to”.

* Riddle’s practically drooling before long. Yup, that boy sure is a master at this sort of thing.

* It’s a bit odd that Slughorn’s so shocked at the idea of killing people. I mean, c’mon, since when has wizarding society ever shown any disapproval of casual violence?

* I’m not sure why nobody’s allowed to talk about Horcruxes in Hogwarts. I mean, sure, there’s the danger that somebody might try and make one, but Muggle schools don’t feel the need to ban people from talking about murder for fear that someone will go on a killing spree.

* Although then again, wizards in general are quite psychopathic, maybe keeping them in ignorance about Horcruxes is the only way to stop them from trying to make some…

* I’m surprised Voldemort is the first wizard ever to make more than one Horcrux. It seems like an obvious enough idea that at least one other person would have tried it, even given the points raised in Sunnyskywalker’s post.

* Or maybe they did, and there’s a long-forgotten dark wizard’s soul hiding away, just waiting for somebody to resurrect them…

* “A mere memory starting to act and think for itself?” What, you mean like portraits which can have conversations with people, lock students out of common rooms when they’re annoyed, or pretend to be asleep when listening in on conversations? Or people in photographs who can get annoyed and storm off the edges of their picture? Or ghosts who can chat with students? Yeah, Riddle’s diary sure was unique, alright. *rolls eyes*

* “‘I still don’t understand,’ said Harry.” Well colour me shocked.

* Everybody seems a little too ready to buy the six Horcruxes theory. I mean, sure, it’s plausible, based on what we’ve seen, but the evidence for it isn’t decisive by any means. How does Dumbledore know that he didn’t actually make seven Horcruxes? Or that he got around to making all of them? Or that he didn’t stop short when all the soul-splitting made him too unstable?

* And why, for that matter, does anybody wishing to kill Voldemort have to attack his body last of all? Surely if you destroyed that first, it would then be much easier to destroy the other Horcruxes without Voldemort breathing down your neck and trying to stop you.

* Wow, these Horcruxes must be really dangerous, if Dumbledore was almost killed trying to destroy one. Remind me again why exactly he’s sending Harry to get rid of them?

* Wait a minute… Dumbledore says that Tom would have chosen special objects as his Horcruxes, and that the diary was special to him, even though it didn’t seem special to anybody looking at it. So how do we know that at least some of the other Horcruxes aren’t also special to Tom without looking special? Why assume that they all must be showy magical heirlooms?

* I’m not sure why Rowling needed to have Harry “counting on his fingers”, since it just makes him look like an idiot. Then again, Hogwarts doesn’t seem to offer any education in mathematics, so maybe wizards in general can’t actually count up to six in their head.

* Now you see, this “reserving Horcruxes for significant deaths” thing is where Voldemort’s love of the dramatic really bites him on the backside. If he’s just killed random muggle homeless people, he could have had seven or more well before he went after Harry, and nobody would have noticed or, unfortunately, cared.

* “‘An admirably succinct and accurate summary, yes,’ said Dumbledore, bowing his head.” Hmm, so now Dumbledore’s praising Harry for, essentially, repeating what the Headmaster told him all of forty seconds ago. No wonder that boy has a superiority complex.

* Although sadly enough it seems like repeating stuff you’ve heard/read is considered the apex of intelligence in the wizarding world. Cf. every time Hermione gets praised by a teacher.

* Dumbledore warns Harry that, even though Voldemort’s soul is damaged, his brain remains intact. Well, I suppose we’ll just have to take Albus’ word for it, since it’s certainly not obvious from Voldie’s behaviour.

* All this talk of Voldemort’s brain reminds me of the fan theory that his plans are so rubbish because the resurrection ceremony didn’t work and he ended up returning as an idiot. *sigh* It’s sad when the best way to make sense of a series is to assume that the main villain’s suffering from brain damage.

* I have to admit, I do quite like the idea of Voldemort trying to squash a potential threat and instead making his own worst enemy. I mean, yeah, the whole “person tries to avert a prophecy, and in so doing ends up bringing it to fulfilment” trope is quite common, but it’s not a bad one for all that. A pity this angle was ditched in favour of the silly wand lore business.

Comments

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/Tom’s attempt to get the info out of Slughorn is “very well done”/

It’s kind of funny how admiring Harry sounds when he describes Tom’s subterfuge. I’m sure that it was unintentional on JKR’s part, but the way that Harry describes Tom’s deception is so detailed and attentive that you have to wonder if Harry is subconsciously wishing to be as skillful as Tom, is bitter about the way Tom tricked him, is morbidly fascinated, or (as the Harry/Tom shippers would say) admires Tom himself.

/Yeah, Riddle’s diary sure was unique, alright./

But it was unique when it came to the other Horcruxes. For some reason, none of the other Horcruxes behave the same way that the Diary Horcrux did. Nagini and Harry don’t act any differently, we never see the Ring Horcrux before Dumbledore destroyed it so we don’t see how it acted, and the Cup Horcrux and Diadem Horcrux do nothing. The Horcrux that comes closest to mimicking the diary is the Locket Horcrux and even it doesn’t behave the same way. It doesn’t act as its own sentient and sapient person; it merely influences the person who is in contact with it, like the One Ring from “Lord of the Rings.”

/Surely if you destroyed that first, it would then be much easier to destroy the other Horcruxes without Voldemort breathing down your neck and trying to stop you./

Well, that comes down to how the Horcruxes work. Yes, Voldemort almost died and was torn from his body despite the Horcruxes, but was that because of the rebound Avada Kedavra or Lily’s sacrificial magic? Because if it’s the former, then nothing’s stopping anybody from shooting Avada Kedavra at him and searching for the other Horcruxes while Voldemort is a disembodied ghost again (which begs the question of why Dumbledore didn’t start looking for Horcruxes as soon as he suspected that Voldemort had made them). If, however, Voldemort was vanquished solely because of Lily’s sacrifice, then that means that Avada Kedavra doesn’t work on him because of the Horcruxes. If the Horcruxes rendered Voldemort’s body invulnerable (save for Lily’s sacrificial magic), then that would be a good reason why Harry and Co. had to destroy the Horcruxes first before trying to kill Voldemort.

/Remind me again why exactly he’s sending Harry to get rid of them?/

The movie partly remedied this by making Harry able to sense other Horcruxes. In that case, it makes sense to bring him along, since he’s the ultimate Horcrux detector. However, that still doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t need more powerful wizards to back him up and help destroy them.

/Hogwarts doesn’t seem to offer any education in mathematics/

Arithmancy is a type of mathematics, right? But then again, it’s not a mandatory subject and it’s not taught for all seven years at Hogwarts.

[aasaylva.livejournal.com]

re Harry's admiration for Tom: *grins*
I'd say it's part of Rowling's quest to impress upon us that attractive suave men are the really bad ones. Remember girls, go for the nearly brainless jocks - they are much easier to manipulate!

As to the weird behaviour of the several horcruxes: It's kind of typical that after 7 books we still don't really know how Horcruxes work even though they are at the centre of the story (plotwise) and any not brain-dead character would have found out how they are created, how they worked, how they can be detected and destroyed the moment they realized what they were up against etc. Not just for simple logical reasons either but because it would have been interesting for example to not only see Ron's insecurities but Hermione's (and Neville's) as well. Hell, you could even have had an unexpected reaction from Voldy himself when he decided to kill Harry in the Forest! If the locket Horcrux sensed Ron's intentions why wouldn't the Harry Horcrux do the same?

Your idea to salvage the weird dogma to first destroy the Horcruxes and then voldy himself (which, as aikaterini pointed out is highly idiotic, i.e. very Dumbledoresque) is commendable, but it's hard to explain why sacrificial love wouldn't work by putting something like a safety bubble around the person that is meant to be saved (Harry is not killed, but he does get a scar, and - more importantly - the Voldy soul piece gets into him, so he was far from untouchable by less than benign forces from the outside) but instead attacks the attacker with such force that it is more destructive than the ultimate destructive force (Avada Kedavra).

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

Your idea to salvage the weird dogma to first destroy the Horcruxes and then voldy himself (which, as aikaterini pointed out is highly idiotic, i.e. very Dumbledoresque) is commendable, but it's hard to explain why sacrificial love wouldn't work by putting something like a safety bubble around the person that is meant to be saved (Harry is not killed, but he does get a scar, and - more importantly - the Voldy soul piece gets into him, so he was far from untouchable by less than benign forces from the outside) but instead attacks the attacker with such force that it is more destructive than the ultimate destructive force (Avada Kedavra).

It may be hard to explain, but it's not like it wasn't foreshadowed - this is, after all, the series whose first instalment tells us that love will burn to death someone possessed, abused, and forced to obey by a monster but let said monster run away unimpaired.

[aasaylva.livejournal.com]

Mwuahahaha!!! You are so right and I didn't have the pure heart to appreciate these intricacies of true love...

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Nice catch.

But Quirrell's horrific death wasn't caused by Lily's love/sacrifice, but by the charm DUMBLEDORE cast powered by that sacrifice. Or so he said.

OotP 37--

"She gave you a lingering protection he never expected, a protection that flows in your veins to this day. I put my trust, therefore, in your mother's blood....

"...but still she [Petunia] took you, and in doing so she sealed the charm I placed upon you. Your mother's sacrifice made the bond of blood the strongest shield I could give you....

"While you can still call home the place where your mother's blood dwells, there you cannot be touched or harmed by Voldemort. He shed her blood, but it lives on in your and her sister. Her blood became your refuge. ["Became," note, not "was." This is value-added, here.] You need return there only once a year, but as long as you still call it home, there he cannot hurt you."

See? The burn-to-death spell was Twinkles; invention. It's HIS idea of how love-protection works. Nice guy.

It worked on Quirrell because they were at Hogwarts, and someone of Lily's blood dwelled in Hogwarts and called it home-- Harry himself.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Harry gets the scar *because* the soul piece got into him. The AK never touched him. As to how it happened - I think Terri had the best idea when she proposed that sacrificial love created lucky circumstances - the AK hit some other object near Harry and got reflected. AKs that hit inanimate objects do that (though rarely so perfectly).

[aasaylva.livejournal.com]

Brace yourself for some disappointment, people, it’s going to seem really anti-climactic after all the build-up we were given.
That's an admirably succinct and accurate summary of the last two books...


Or maybe they did, and there’s a long-forgotten dark wizard’s soul hiding away, just waiting for somebody to resurrect them…
That's what's been puzzling me all along - what good are Horcruxes to anyone? Sure he cannot be "totally killed" but he IS reduced to float around eternally unless he finds someone to restore him like Quirrel attempted to and Wormtail did. the way JKR painted Riddle you'd think the last thing he'd go for would be to be so totally dependent on someone else.

* Everybody seems a little too ready to buy the six Horcruxes theory.
Oh yes. The movie handled this much better by making Dumbledore completely ignorant as to what Tom had been up to. Thus, Slughorn's memory really does help in figuring out how to bring Voldy down while at the same time giving Slughorn a somewhat better reason for not wanting anyone to know about it.

I agree with everything you said about the Horcruxes being an illogical mess of epic proportions. How can any author care so little about the centre of her own plot?

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

re he cannot be "totally killed" but he IS reduced to float around eternally unless he finds someone to restore him like Quirrel attempted to and Wormtail did.

Didn't Voldemort also claim that his resurrection ritual was something he'd invented from first principles? The only way I can make sense of it is if Horcruces keep you in your body as long as said body exists, regardless of what condition it's in, and in that case there's some genuine potential for horrific consequences that I'm surprised* Rowling missed.

*I'm not surprised.

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was my theory. Imagine having your consciousness trapped in a corpse rotting around you.

Horace did tell Tom, "But of course, existence in such a form....

"... few would want it, Tom, very few. Death would be preferable."

[sunnyskywalker]

Horrifying as living in a rotting corpse would be, the worst part is still probably after it disintegrates enough to make you vapor. Then you're apparently stuck not being able to channel most of your magic usefully (otherwise Voldemort would have done more than possess squirrels and snakes for eleven years). And that is the worst thing ever, for wizards. They're helpless! Truly, few would want that.

That he could possess snakes is probably supposed to show how exceptionally powerful he is, but it's related to the kinds of magic he'd already started learning before he got a wand. It makes me wonder about that theory that while wands may help provide focus, they also make wizards believe they can't do magic without them when actually they all could, if they practiced. If so, it's fortunate Voldemort never figured that out, or he would have been able to run around doing... whatever... without bothering with all that re-embodiment rigamarole that took so much time out of his schedule. Getting a new body does seem to have kept him from possessing anyone besides Harry for a minute - can you imagine if anyone who stepped outside the Hogwarts grounds was in danger of ending up with Voldemort sharing their heads?

[oryx_leucoryx]

Not exactly on topic for this chapter, but I had a thought about the memories Albus had Harry see. In HBP Harry sees 7 memories (8 if we count the two versions of Horace's memory) and in OOTP Albus showed Harry the memory of Sybil making her prophecy. Most of these memories are explored from within the Pensieve, but for two Harry is shown only a snippet, without entering the Pensieve. These are the memory of Sybil's prophecy and the memory of Caractacus Burke retelling the story of how he came to own Slytherin's locket.

We probably know why he did not want Harry to see the events of the prophecy from within the Pensieve: Albus didn't want Harry to see anything else that was happening at the time, whether that was Severus peeking through an ajar door or Albus casting security charms because he noticed Severus there or similar. But what had Albus to hide in the other instance? My guess: He did not want to see whom Caractacus was talking to. He was probably talking to Albus, and what Albus was hiding was his age at the time the conversation took place. When Tom came to interview Albus was already white-haired (the differences Harry notes between Albus of ca 1960 and Albus of 1997 are the state of his hand and how lined his face was). But in COS we see Albus of 1943 still had auburn hair. I am inclined to believe that Albus spoke to Caractacus following the revelations from Hokey's memory, probably ca 1950. IOW what Albus was hiding from Harry was that when he interviewed Tom he already had reason to believe he was speaking to a murderer, yet did nothing about it.

[hwyla.livejournal.com]

I've long been suspicious of those little stand-up memories. Note that there is also a third one. The memory of Bertha Jorkins talking about the boy that hexed her for catching him kiss someone by the greenhouse.

Your idea is a new one on me, I'll need to think more on it. I've always figured it was Aberforth whose identity he was hiding in the Burke memory. I used to think Albus sent Aberforth to Burke for that memory with the Peverell ring in hand - under guise of a fence. The ring was specifically mentioned as not on the table where it had previously been any longer. And then came DH and the stone hidden in the snitch, leaving me with the obvious fact that Aberforth didn't sell the ring at all.

Of course, I never felt he HAD to sell it. It might have just been for a bit of prompting. However it would have raised questions in Burke's mind to see that ring again when youngTom used to wear it.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Well, even before DH I was convinced Dumbles had collected the memories a long time before Harry's Hogwarts years. I don't believe Morphin survived in Azkaban into the 1990s (all the time since 1942 or so, when he wasn't in good health to start with), and Hokey was described as an old elf ca 1950. If he had both those memories a long time earlier, and both memories mention the locket (and Hepzibah explicitly mentioned Caractacus), I don't see why he wouldn't go to Burke to fill in the missing details. Albus *likes* knowing things, it is acting on said knowledge that is a problem for him.

The only question was what had prompted him to start seeking those memories in the first place. When I still wanted to give Albus the benefit of doubt I assumed it was seeing the transformation Tom's appearance had undergone that sent him researching, but now I agree with jodel that Dumbles got involved in this following Hepzibah's death. I think what happened was that her heirs were searching for the cup. They asked Hokey, but had a hard time getting anything from her (other than perhaps that she had last put it in the usual place under the usual protections) because she was must have lost her mind, believing she had caused her mistress' death and probably forced into elf-retirement (because who would want such a dangerously senile elf?). So they needed a Legilimens. Preferably one not known for using his powers for illegal purposes. Their contacts directed them to Albus.

From Hokey he got to Burke. How would a starving witch get hold of Slytherin's own locket? And isn't it interesting she was ready to give birth around Christmas? (It is possible the parts of the memory we weren't shown identify the year exactly, but even without that additional info, at least he had the time of year.) And wasn't the trouble with the Chamber of Secrets claimed by Slytherin's heir? So either he researched the genealogy of Slytherin's heirs or he looked up wizards named Marvolo. With access to the quill the latter should have been easy enough, much easier than Tom's research. He could have found every wizard named Marvolo born in the 19th century and where he lived when he was 11.

[hwyla.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I mainly thought it was a recent memory simply because the ring had disappeared from the table since Harry had last been there. And that Harry specifically noticed it messing.

But as I said in my post, the fact that the stone turns up in the snitch in DH means the ring was obviously still in Albus' possession. So it's disappearance from the table was more of a red herring.

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Both good ideas, and I'm ashamed to say I never gave any thought to the discrepancey. I like Oryx's better, thought; that Albus investigated that early (and did nothing substantive about what he found out) seems more probable to me than that he never checked out Burke until that last summer.

[nx74defiant.livejournal.com]

* Everybody seems a little too ready to buy the six Horcruxes theory. I mean, sure, it’s plausible, based on what we’ve seen, but the evidence for it isn’t decisive by any means. How does Dumbledore know that he didn’t actually make seven Horcruxes? Or that he got around to making all of them? Or that he didn’t stop short when all the soul-splitting made him too unstable?

And just because as a teenager he thought seven would be a good number couldn't he have revised his plan since then, once he learned more about Horcruxes?

Oh, right in the Wizarding World who you are and your plans for life never change once you leave Hogwarts.

Does anyone in the Wizarding World change after they finish school? How many of us as adults are living the life we thought we would when we were in high school? Not every one marries their childhood sweetheart. Some people completely change their career in mid-life.