Disclaimer: This piece had become so horrendously long that I was forced to split it some time ago. With the current posting there has been considerable recent addition and expansion made to this section of the study thanks to explorations made in an e-mail discussion a year after the release of DHs.

There has been comparatively little modification or revision to the older portions of the article. Mostly because so much of it turned out to be wrong. At least, wrong if you accept Rowling’s version of the events as the truth. Since Rowling’s version is both self-contradictory and incoherent, I find that I am more inclined to regard it in the light of a suggestion. One which I do not feel either obligated, nor particularly inclined, to take at face value.

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So. Okay. Once again, it’s time to review and consider what we think we know about the Horcruxes. And to figure out whether we know anything more than we thought we did.

The whole issue of Lord Voldemort’s Horcruxes is an overly complex one, and most of the following conclusions are reflective of what seemed to be possible regarding them as of the end of HBP, so you can expect this pair of companion pieces to wander off on any number of tangents.

In fact, the whole issue related to Horcruxes turns out to be involved enough to have required splitting it into more than one essay even before DHs came out. The essay above; ‘Raiders of the Lost Horcrux’ is now ONLY concerned with R.A.B., the missing Locket, and the adventure of the Dark Lord’s sea cave. This one, and the essay following it concern the rest of the Horcruxes, and theories about Horcruxes in general.

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Rowling’s handling of the “secret” of Lord Voldemort’s deathlessness seems to have been poorly managed throughout the series.

Very poorly managed, in fact. But at the end of HBP we had reason to believe that we were finally on the right track, Of course we were still missing what we thought could have turned out to be crucial bits of information. In the event, it turns out that even though we probably were, Rowling never chose to pass that information on to us. So the whole business just remains poorly managed.

For, once again, Rowling seems to have rewritten the rules to suit her own convenience. Rendering much of what she had told us in HBP gibberish.

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First, however, a side-step: my “fellow traveler” the LiveJournalist Swythyv and I have been engaged in an ongoing e-mail discussion/debate pretty much since the release of DHs, and we have covered a lot of very odd ground in that time.

In August of 2008 we finally stumbled into the bog related to Horcruxes.

What set us off this time was another piece of Rowling’s carelessness.

Well, I say that it is a piece of Rowling’s carelessness. Swythyv’s mode of operation is to steadfastly maintain the fiction that Rowling is so much cleverer than her readers that there is likely to be a bombshell still waiting to explode related to the way the Potterverse has been set up, and the way that Rowling chose to misdirect us all in the course of telling her story.

But, regardless.

We had all been given to understand in HBP that the Diary had been quite unique. That claim actually played very well. We had already encountered the Locket by then, and passed it hand to hand to everyone in #12, and not only had Harry had no reaction to it, but neither had anyone else. It was simply an inert artifact, a piece of jewelry which no one could get open. The Ring we didn’t encounter until after it had been denatured. So we never saw it in action.

The Diary, on the other hand, had been designed to be a weapon. It had an interactive interface and was built to reach out and get a grip on whoever wrote in it. First to convince them that it was their friend, to encourage them to confide their closest secrets to it, and ultimately to possess, control and drain them of their “life force” until it managed to restore the soul fragment which it housed to the material plane.

This explanation worked very well. Although you would have thought that Harry’s scar might have had some reaction to it. Or at least to the Diary revenant.

Instead, in a lame and desperate attempt to insert some suspense and excitement into the black (plot) hole of the endless camping trip, in DHs the Locket was suddenly acting like the One Ring and Hermione, the exposition machine, was earnestly informing us in chapter 6 that all Horcruxes will influence you if you get attached to them. Or, apparently, are even around them for any significant amount of time.

This was a stupid, and a shabby enough retrofit in the first place, but Rowling didn’t even bother to incorporate these changes thoroughly enough to take into account the fact that by the time we got it off her, Umbridge had been in possession of that Locket for over a year, and it hadn’t even affected her ability to cast a Patronus. Nor was there the slightest indication that Umbridge was under Locket!Tom’s control. She was just same monumentally unpleasant self she’d always been, with fewer outside limits to constrain her. And the Horcrux certainly hadn’t had anything to do with giving her a promotion.

Besides which, if all Horcruxes acted like that they wouldn’t be very useful for prolonging their creators’ lives would they? Anyone who came into contact with them would know within weeks that something was not right about those artifacts. Ginny figured it out in a couple of months, at the age of 11, for crying out loud. The Trio realized that the Locket was getting them down within a few weeks.

The Diary was designed to be (possibly) expendable, since Tom had other Horcruxes out there. But it you only had one, you would damned well want it to act inert!

Well, we kicked that around the block for a while, between us. And ultimately drifted off in a couple of other directions, but in the course of the discussion I came to a couple of related conclusions of my own.

We have it from Rowling (admittedly it’s only in an interview statement, so she could reverse herself at any time) that she thinks it was Herpo the foul who first came up with the idea of Horcruxes, as well as being the wizard to have created the first Basilisk.

Well, Herpo was a wizard from the days of classical Greece. That may have been a long time ago, but in our own world that was an era which was amply documented. The same cannot necessarily be said for all the eras since then.

This gives us a good long stretch of time since Horcruxes were invented, and we have no idea how many wizards may have created Horcruxes in order to try to fend off death. All we know is that as recently as the 1940s no one was believed to have ever created more than one of them. What isn’t so obvious, because no one has ever come out and said so, is that we haven’t a clue of how many Horcruxes have been created since Herpo’s day. Because the only ones that anyone knows about are the ones which somebody later managed to destroy. And it might be a mistake to suppose that the ones destroyed are the only ones that have ever been made.

We also haven’t any official information on how a Horcrux is made. Frankly, on this subject, I don’t think Rowling has a clue, herself. She imported the concept of Horcruxes from folklore where any number of villains seem to have external hearts/souls/lives and no one has ever bothered to ask how they got them.

And the method used could make a difference.

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Wizards with the same kind of natural ability to possess others that Tom can claim appear to be vanishingly rare (thank ghod!). And a Horcrux ought not to have abilities that its creator doesn’t. So right there let’s forget about all Horcruxes being able to take over anyone who gets attached to them. There may be other such wizards with such a talent out there, but not many. And they are probably not in western Europe. Asia, maybe. I think there is something of a tradition for possession there. And there is no reason to suppose that they are out there making Horcruxes.

Tom tells us that the only ability he retained while disembodied was the ability to possess others. He overstates his case, for I am sure he was still a Parselmouth. But being a Parselmouth would have scarcely been useful for any purpose apart from catching snakes. Which seems to have been what he used it for. He lured them into range and then possessed them. Tom, it seems, even when reduced to no more than an incomplete, disembodied soul was able to reach out and take possession of other creatures. And in OotP, after he already had a new body to live in, he was still able to reach out and (briefly, and with great pain) take possession of Harry. Ergo: it is a tenable hypothesis to suppose that Tom is able, at least briefly, to be consiously in two bodies at once.

Well, as anyone who has read my Changeling hypothesis essay in the past couple of years is aware, I contend that Tom Riddle’s ability to possess others is a quality which contributed mightily to his ability to create seven Horcruxes (one of them unintentionally).

For I contend that to take possession of the victim is an intrinsic component of the creation of a Horcrux. I flatly do not support the loosey-goosey “kill the victim first and make the Horcrux later” postulation that Rowling appears to support. As I say, I don’t think Rowling ever bothered to work out how one creates a Horcrux. All that mattered to her is that somewhere out there in the Potterverse there needed to be a method of doing it. Upon the whole, I believe we are all better off rolling our own explanation, than waiting around for her to tell us what to think on the subject.

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Slughorn tells us in HBP that to commit murder tears the soul. I’m sure that he is correct. But what he does not, and probably cannot tell us is that to commit murder will necessarily tear pieces of it off. The soul may rip into the middle from an edge, or along a fold, or off an existing rent (if there is one), or make a hole, or anything at all, leaving perhaps a tattered edge, but not necessarily a damaged soul and a loose fragment suitable for framing. Indeed, if, as he clams, the soul is supposed to remain whole and inviolate, for a piece of a soul to actually get separated from the rest would probably be quite rare. And, indeed, “against nature”.

Consequently, “the spell” that Slughorn refuses to speak about and starts hyperventilating at the very thought of, probably assures that when the soul is torn there will be a clean split and a separate fragment.

And one of the most certain ways of splitting something cleanly is to slice it apart when it is braced between two anchor points.

Yes, killing people will tear your soul, But it does not guarantee that the soul will be torn into individual bits, nor will murder remove any of the bits to an external housing. Your soul, even if it is in bits remains safely inside your body. I also do not accept that there is any way in which you can select a specific fragment of your soul and exorcise it from your own body at some later date. I do not even accept that you can look inside yourself and gauge the condition of your own soul to see whether there are loose bits available for rehousing.

And, the way to get a soul out of a body is to kill the body that it lives in.

You see where I am going here?

If you have possessed the victim, and then kill him, using a spell specifically for that purpose, it splits off the piece of your soul that is in the victim’s body. And since you are still alive, that soul fragment (at that point) tries to get back to the rest of the bundle. You catch it in the artifact you’ve prepared as a housing and presto, there’s your Horcrux. You can add further protections/curses/whatever to the housing later. It’s possible that the spell that kills the victim and splits the soul also makes the fragment visible, at least temporarily.

Now, a wizard who is not naturally able to take possession of a victim has an additional step to perform, since the possession would also need to be accomplished by a spell. I suspect there may be such a spell. It is possibly a variant on Imperius, as the Horcrux creation spell is a variant on AK (at any rate, it is green like an AK).

Which eliminates all the nonsense (which Rowling seems to have chosen to dispense with herself) over Tom wanting to use particularly “significant” deaths to create his Horcruxes. If what you’re dealing with is a proxy suicide, any victim’s death is going to be a “significant” death.

Which is also why the soul fragment in Harry was still in Harry. Tom had possessed him in preparation to making his 6th Horcrux, but that Horcrux never got properly made.

What I propose happened was that (based upon the Dementor-assisted memories given us in PoA) Tom broke into the room, Lily got between him and Harry and pleaded for mercy. Tom took possession of Harry, who started laughing in Tom’s voice. Lily, horrified, glanced back over her shoulder towards him and started screaming. While she was distracted, Tom stepped to one side and threw his Horcurx-creation curse past her. She realized what he was up to at the last moment and threw herself in its path.

What I have extrapolated from this basic premise to explain what happened to Harry was to propose that the spell requires that the caster and the victim share the same soul.

Harry and Tom did share the same soul. Lily and Tom didn’t. And it was Lily who threw herself into the path of the spell.

Yes I know that DHs does not show it happening this way. I don’t believe DHs. DHs and just about everybody in it just is too stupid to be believed.

The spell, hitting someone who did not share the caster’s soul, went blasting back to find its caster. Rather like taking an axe to a heavy plank that turns out not to be anchored at both ends. Being unstable, it flips up and bashes you.

It got Tom, and it got him good. The fact that he already had other Horcruxes and couldn’t be killed may explain why it completely destroyed his body tying to get him out of it. Once it got him out of his own body it then followed the still intact soul connection to the fragment in Harry, and tried to remove it as well. Which is where the scar came from. It shorted out the fragment that had been possessing Harry, but it didn’t get it out of hm. It didn’t even break the connection to the main portion of Tom’s soul. It was trying to perform its function backwards, having started at the wrong end, and by the time it got to Harry had probably overextended itself and was running on empty. Which for Harry's sake is probably just as well.

The fragment was heavily damaged, however. It acts like it has been Obliviated. It doesn’t have any agenda of its own, it has no identity or self-awareness, it barely recognized the name of Tom Riddle, and it never took control of Harry. But that particular fragment was also never actually separated from Tom. It still reacted to him, and either Tom or Harry eventually could activate and use the link. None of the other Horcruxes seem to be at all aware of Tom himself. And he became aware of that one, as he never was aware of the rest of them.

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The ability to possess others it would make a very big difference to what one can accomplish without a body. Because anyone who creates a Horcrux is eventually going to be in that particular boat.

Because the fact remains that making a Horcrux does not mean that you physically live forever. We have no evidence whatsoever to suggest that it makes you immune to time. Eventually you are still going to lose your body — or it will become so enfeebled that you will be trapped in it. Only anomalies like Tom, who can naturally reach out and possess others get any kind of benefit from creating Horcruxes. Otherwise all a wizard accomplishes by it is something that will diminish his soul in order to tether it on this side of the Veil, and since any wizard has the option of choosing to be a ghost, and can do so with a complete soul, a Horcrux effectively produces absolutely zilch.

And, frankly, being a ghost is the sounder choice, since you are pretty well guaranteed to remain yourself as a ghost, rather than having to fight to retain your identity and stay aware every single moment, without rest, and in ever-present danger of unraveling, as Slughorn describes it, and even Tom later confirms.

It’s small wonder Tom is such a world-class fruitcake. He’s got more than 10 years of sleep deprivation to make up for. Maybe that’s why he was so curiously passive once he finally managed to resurrect himself. Because I’ll swear he did next to nothing for the rest of the series. Perhaps he just gave his followers a few basic instructions and a free pass, and was sleeping it off.

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And, a Horcrux-creator who cannot take possession of others is a sitting duck for the kind of attrition which ultimately will unravel any sense of identity or self-consciousness.

The whole concept of building Horcruxes, when you really examine it, is a monumental scam from the get-go. I think old Herpo must have been pretty far gone in a Dark Arts-related dementia when he came up with that trick. And I don’t think we need to look very far to figure out just what entities may be hanging around waiting to unravel such defenseless, disembodied, and incomplete souls, do we?

A ghost cannot perform magic, so any such hypothetical chaotic entities just leave them alone. But undead souls still retain that link to the source of their magic. Even incomplete souls channel magic — so long as they remain at least technically alive. In fact they probably leak magic, or magically-charged emotional detritus, even more freely than complete souls do. And we know what kind of entities appear to feed on that. None of them mean humans well.

In most recent version of the ‘History of Magic’ essay I have postulated the existence of “thin places” in the world where magic leaks into the material plane in the form of what in Real World folklore has become codified as a “holy well”. This is fresh, new magic which is emitted as a steady rate, unlike the magic channeled by humans. It’s nature is still chaotic, but it is not conscious and it is certainly not hostile. Magical creatures, whether sentient being, fantastic beast, or magically botanical tend to be drawn to the sites of these wells and to settle in the vicinity.

In the History of Magic essay I also touched upon the chthonic cults which in early times, particularly in the centuries before the development of the cored wand, attempted to duplicate the rare holy wells by creating “pools” of power through unsavory and dangerous practices.

An unraveled soul would also duplicate the function of a well. For it is also an entry point into the physical world of magical energies. The souls that unravel are probably serving as a snackbar for the kind of entities that feed on raw (i.e., Dark) magic. Such unraveled souls probably account for a number of odd anomalous places of “power”. Ones that do not entail “holy wells” or whatever other natural phenomena would account for such an entry point.

Since these false wells were originally human souls, it is possible that the emission of magic from them fluctuates, since humans, without wands, appear to be unable to regulate their channeling of magical energies. But it is unknown whether the impacted quality of human magical channeling is fundamental to the human soul or a by-product of attempting to channel magic through a human body. Humans, as I have pointed out before, are not normally a magical species, and their bodies are not necessarily designed for the effective channeling of magic. It is possible that an unraveled and disembodied soul would create a false well which emitted magic as steadily as a true well. It would not, however be accompanied by the water source which normally accompanies a “holy well”.

We are in a peculiar sort of position since we can do something like a “forensic” examination of early times, up to about the founders era, using our own Real World folklore to fill in gaps and examine the “bones” of what appears to have survived to the present day. But, much later than the Peverills (who Swythyv and I placed somewhere around the beginning of the 13th century) and we might as well be playing “telephone”, because the two worlds’ social histories start diverging wildly. But there do still seem to be a few points in common.

For one thing, I suspect that after Nicholas Flamel and his wife succeeded in creating the Philosopher’s Stone at the end of the 14th century, there may have been far fewer people interested in creating Horcruxes in an attempt to extend their lives. A Horcrux, after all wouldn’t have the additional benefits of making you as rich as you wanted to be, or of producing the universal panacea in addition to the elixir of life. But it would have taken a while before the news of Flamel’s achievement traveled beyond Paris, and longer before people believed the report.

And, of course, no one but the Flamels seem to have managed the feat, either. But most wizards with anything like a functioning moral compass would have made that their project rather than looking for instructions on making Horcruxes.

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At the end of HBP we all suspected that relevant information had been deliberately saved up for Book 7, or that various details may have just fallen through the cracks.

Particularly where it came to the issue of Regulus Black and the hijacked Locket.

Still, I felt we could all be sure that while we may or we may not have heard the last of Regulus Black, we definitely hadn’t heard the last regarding Tom Riddle.

About whom we have just way too many contradictions to ever really sort out.