Harry as Horcrux 101 (A): What They are, Why He is One

Comments

1. Brett says

   February 17, 2007 at 3:20 pm

   John, Thanks for putting this up, as it won’t be included in the book.

   The “Physics”:
   One of the things I think is interesting about the conjecture of Harry’s scar being a Horcrux is that it has been the locus of a lot of speculation on what I would call the “psychical physics” of magic in Rowing’s Potterverse. Things of this line included speculation on what exactly happens in spell casting ‚Äì in short, what is the “physics” of magic. This has been particularly intense in the area of the AK curse. Several options have been presented as to the HOW of the big question, “if the scar is a Horcrux, how did that portion of Voldy‚Äôs soul get there?” One is your theory of the portion being in a sort of free-roaming state by having been placed in the wand; another is Red Hen’s and Swythyv’s speculation on the import of Voldy’s unique power of possession and some role of that in Horcruxing that put his soul in uniquely close proximity to Harry (I.E. IN him) when the deal went south.

   I would suggest another possibility based in what seem to me to be some of the possibilities in the texture of the images and descriptions of magic she has in the works (and I’m pretty sure I am not the only one to discuss these qualities ‚Ķ which I do not say in a defensive way, but rather in a way of “I know that all of my own thinking has not been solely to my own credit, I’m pretty sure I have read others out there with the same idea who have done a much better job at discussing it than I have, I would like to give them credit, but, at this point, my memory for ‘secondary sources’ is even worse than my memory for the ‚Äòprimary source‚Äô of canon”). If murder tears the soul, it seems me that there is something that happens with the soul at least in AK magic, that it is being torn in the very act of killing, beginning with the conscious intention and completed in the act of the will wherein one carries out that intention. We have seen that SOMETHING happens with psychic substance in the AK. The Priori Incantatem effect in the graveyard in GOF does not simply produce static and inanimate “object” records ‚Ķ it produces shades, images of the person that can speak, think and act for themselves IN THE WAY that the original person would have. I am not saying I think those to be “portions of soul” in the same way or level that a Horcrux is, which would make them unable to leave the earth, but that they are something more than mere ‚Äúrepresentation‚Äù or “record” ‚Ķ not portions of the soul itself of the murdered person, but something distinctly MADE BY psychic connection in the AK, something formed in the wand by a direct contact with the soul of the person (it may be that, within the “psychic physics” of the potterverse, which is something I think we will only ever be able to think and speak of as “implicit” or “latent” or distinctively “underpinning” unless she comes out and makes concrete statements, and even then I am of the “New Criticism” mind that says ‚Äúbeware committing the fallacy of ‘authorial intent'” and think the stuff is objectively there in the text regardless of conscious intention, but I would also say we should not slight authorial intention, that there is something to it, it may be that in order for a portion of the soul itself to be torn off so that it is “moveable” apart from the rest, that the soul has to be “prepared” for such through the internal violence of a conscious intention to commit the violence of murder and an act of the will in committing oneself to the actualizing of that violent intent in and through the act/spell itself, something a victim does not have ‚Äì even if they die with murderous thoughts in their soul, they are not making the concrete action of actualizing them). All of this seems to me to present some quality in the specific image of the AK curse wherein it involves psychic dimensions. Voldy’s commitment of himself (I.E. his person, his psyche) to a/the murder may leave the portion of soul torn off in committing the murder sort of “free-floating,” so to speak, that puts it in a position, IF the circumstances are right, to follow the magical connections with which it is “in touch” (the magical action in which one soul, Voldy, killed another person, separated their soul from their body) and attach to another physical body even without the other specifics of Horcruxing magic (the spell) being present.

   Two things present themselves to me as of interest in this regards. The first is that we have seen images of elements of the human person that have some interesting qualities. I am thinking particularly of the removal of memories from the mind (the mens, which has in much medieval thought been discussed under the heading of the “rational soul”). I think we have probably seen it most directly in Slughorn’s removal of the crucial memory in HBP but I think we have probably seen it elsewhere (but, like you, my ability for calling canon readily and concretely to mind is spotty). I think we see there a certain “elastic clinginess” in the image of the way the silver memory is pulled from the temple by the wand, indicating a certain reluctance to leave. I am not saying this is of the level, or even the nature, of violence that murder and Horcruxing is, just that we see something of Rowling‚Äôs “psychic physics” in this instance is that the images at least possibly show certain qualities of how the soul/mind enters into, or reacts or functions, in at least certain levels of magic. I think that the same sort of thing is possibly true of the soul in acts like the AK, and in particular in the way in which Harry‚Äôs received a Horcrux on his forhead (the soul is torn; the soul, like the things created by it such as memories, has an elastic and clingy quality to it – its natural tendency is to remain in the body and yearn for reunification with the rest of the soul; placing it into an object by making the object a Horcrux does further violence; unlike the case of maybe a Death Eaters murders, where the torn portion remains in-body but is prevented from re-unification by the Death Eaters own, “ill-souled-ness,” Horcruxing radicalizes the separation; in the case of the attempt on Harry’s life the body was destroyed and so no place for the fragment to reside and so it follows the magical psychical connection of the AK to the other end, to the nearest physical matter/body to reside in)

   (Aside: as far as the fact that the silvery clingy thread of memory is ONLY a memory, and not a portion of soul, I would only note that the images are “travelling together,” so to speak. I won’t go into the development of the thought in Western philosophy that notes the role of the “self” in the “formation” of “objects of knowledge,” such as concepts of things in out actual perceiving of them, and maybe even moreso for something like a memory – the statements that the world I preceive is only eever “the world” for me and how this does not necessarily undo a belief in God or the external world, partially because after five weeks of reading the likes of Wittgenstein, Husserl and Heidegger and their responses to Kant and Neitzche [for a PhD level course in “philosophy and contemporary theology”), I don’t understand it allthat well… but I do know they’re the backdrop for folks like Derrida and Lyotard, whom you have mentioned [and whom I am guessing Rowling would have smoe, at least limited exposure to], and thus I would say that I would feel comfortable in saying that Rowling’s world probably includes SOME more connection between the knower (here the soul) and the known [here the memory] than a simple statement of “here is the ‘subjetc’ and here is the ‘object’ and the two only meet mechanically and statically” as in, say, a more “naive realist” conception of things)

   The second thing is something that just came to me in thinking while reading this chapter. It seems to me like there is a connection between the specific action needed for making a Horcrux and the desired result of it ‚Äì splitting the murderer‚Äôs soul. In short: if you want to split your own soul, the action that does it is violently forcing a “soul split” on another, in the form of forcing the split, or rather separation, of the soul from body that is called death. In other words, the image seems to me (at least possibly) to contain some reciprocity: forcing that separation on another produces a separation in the one doing it. I would disagree that THE horr-ible thing in making Horcruxes is that it requires murder, but only if it is staying on that sort of mechanical level, which doesn’t seem to me to be what you were doing (I read “the” as mainly a tag of one central idea under which to encapsulate all the various shades of what is wrong with Horcruxing ‚Ķ not in the legastic manner of, “well, TECHNICALLY there would be nothing wrong with Horcruxing if it did not involve killing somebody”). The horrible thing about Horcruxes begins with the goal of the whole endeavor in the first place, destroying the unity/integrity of a human person (yourself), and from there the natural way to achieve that end is to destroy the integirty of another human person by forcing body-soul separation, forcing them to leave this world.

   The reason I find this important is that, even given the fact that not the series is not complete, that we don‚Äôt have all of the elements of the story (I was recently talking ton one friend who was recently moved to the NYC area to teach TESOL, and who has just rocketed through books 1-4 and is now on 5 pursuant to us talking, who objected “but how can you have all this speculation on a work that is not even finished yet?”), I still think there are tenets and qualities in the amount of the work that we have seen thus far that can be discussed, such as the consideration that what we have seen in the physics of magic, particularly certain levels of magic, there seem to be certain qualities to the images that present a particular way that the human soul of the wizard operates in the magic. I had one friend who, after reading book 5, was taking a rather dim view of the works. My impression was that she was doing so out of over-consideration for the feelings of a member of her family who, from what I heard, takes a very dim view of the books, but that she also was consciously trying to avoid either the reality or the perception of a “knee-jerk” fundamentalist response. Her “fall-back” and way of navigating that strait was to say “well, I won’t be able to say until the works are completely done.” In that particular situation the upshot of such a statement was “we can’t say ANYTHING decisive of the quality and tenets of the works until they are all done,” and my reaction was “true, in the last books she COULD take things in a direction radically different from what I think is in there now ‚Ķ but don‚Äôt think that this would prove the elements already I have discussed were never in there, but rather that it would be a radical re-appropriation of those elements. I think that it would be, and that we CAN justifiably SAY that it would be, a re-appropriation distinctly inconsistent with the way she has developed those elements in the first 6 books. In short, I think that we CAN say SOMETHING about the works based on what we have so far.” (I myself think it is a mark of the Christian quality of the works that the “meaning” be played out so well in the concrete details of the physics. Just as, in the Incarnation, divinity was wed to humanity, in ALL ways, including soul being wed to a body in a way much more holistic than Descartes’ ‚Äúghost in the machine,‚Äù so in good lit, what I would call “incarnational literature,” the ‘meaning’ is “en-fleshed” in the physical/material details of the texture of the images and the movement of the plot etc. Of course, the Incarnation is a mystery proper, and the same holds true for such literature as for it: we are free to probe the mystery and obligated to be edified by it, but part of being able to be edified by that wonderful mystery is having the respect of not trying to nail everything down too tightly, not strapping to this or that Procrustean bed).

   What I think is of value in all the “detective” theories is that they pay attention to what is their alreayd in the text. I think the stuff is really there and that trying to “predict the outcome” is a valid way of delving into them (I believe it is Abraham Heschel who is famous for his insight on prophecy in the old testement that prophecy is not primarily “foretelling” but “forth-telling” …. the ability to “predict the future” not coming simply from some mechanical drop of material information about what will happen, but rather the revelation that allows a glimpse into the future BY revealing the inner dimension of what is really going on in the present, a glimpse into the real logic at work in present events, and thus where that logic logically leads(. In the end I would not call any of the detective theories “wrong” … they will simply be other ways that the story could have been written based on what has already been written. They do not, for me, lose their value simply because they “did not get it right” in regards to , they have already gotten it right or wrong by virtue of how much sense they have made of the already known themes and the realtions of those themes to material action and plot (but I agree with your editor from a practical standpoint of the “staying power” of such a book, when, for good or ill, after July 21 the value of reading such a chapter will pretty much be probably be judged solely on whether it “got it right” in regards to the specifics of material plot and action … for which I cannot necessarily fault your “common reader” as you have admitted to looking forward to the day when the “speculation” phase is over and I myself did not make it through certain parts of The Hidden Key that dealt more with specific possible plot developments [but I do seem to emember something in one of the charts about Cho’s family and some possible form of martial arts involved? which I thought was interesting, but the main point is, even though she didn’t go anywahere near that in the books, unless she does in book 7, Cho WAS, I think, important at a level beyond “just some stupid teenage love thing Rowling decided to throw in for some reason, maybe to hold the attention of her hormone-riddled adolescent readers” … but more on that below – my point here is: Cho and Harry’s interaction with her does have some connection with the main themes and elements of the works] ).

   The “Whore-Cross”:

   On a first reading my gut reaction is that such a reading is not as likely ‚Ķ although not out of opposition directly to such a thing or any type of knee-jerk reaction “oh, good grief, why does everybody have to take it there?!?!” It‚Äôs more that, as I said, on an initial gut reaction it seems like a stretch.

   BUT, Rowling is a native English speaker in a developed country and could not be unaware of the “sound-alike” AND some other things hit me of how that fits in with what seem to me like a major, although latent, theme in some of the language: the perception of the feminine and feminine virtue. It really jumped off the page at me the first time I read Morphin calling Merope a “little slut” ‚Äì pretty harsh stuff for a “kids book” (although I think the series is more and more aimed as well at adolescents and I think she rides that line of what is appropriate pretty well ‚Äì her philosophy seems to me to be maintaining respect for the level of her audience while at the same time seeing that this stuff, these struggles, these instances of how rough the world can be, are out there and teenagers really experience them and go through them, so no use using “kid gloves” or not dealing with them at all).

   If you look a little further you have some interesting usages of feminine imagery that is, from our cultural vantage-point as Post-Modern Christians, interestingly ambivalent. Not only do we have some pretty “scheming” teenage girls who are not necessarily bad but we would do well to heed Hermione‚Äôs cautions about not falling into their schemes and the drastic measures they employ (IE Ramilda Vain), But no less a “holy man” tha Dumbledore himself quips jovially to Harry, “let us step out into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure” (HBP 56). The speaker‚Äôs disposition toward the person is much more clear when they say “whore” or “slut” than “temptress” but I think the diversity in images referring to “feminine virtue” shows that Rowling is encouraging the reader to re-examine their own thinking. Not that she is saying you should drop all concern for a girl or woman acting in a certain way and take everything and anything and just fine (after all, we do have one of the darkest magics known, Horcruxes, named in such a way that it resembles the word “whore”), but that we should tread carefully in such matters, with the utmost concern for fairness and truth (Interstingly, while the Rabbi’s do not use a word tied specifically to POSSIBLY negative connotations of “temptation” their stance towards the Jewish Scriptures do bear some resemblance to DD’s personification of the “flighty temptress” ‚Äì they speak of places that seem to be “inconsistencies” in the text as the “beckonings” of a female lover. She pops around a corner or allows a glimpse of her face through a small window and then disappears, drawing her lover on to follow her, drawing the religious reader to delve deeper into the world of the Scripture, to fall more and more in love through longing, through catching little glimpses and following after, further and further into the world of the beloved).

   All that having been said,

   I am very appreciative that you put this chapter up (for one, it seemed as though there were numerous references to it in some of the pieces in WKAD, which made some portions a more difficult read, and it‚Äôs cool to be able to get a look at the chapter). Your editors choice to exclude seems to be a good choice given the nature of the timing of the book and how the “scene” will change on July 21, 2007 ‚Äì but there is some great stuff here and I think I would not have wanted to miss out on it..

   1. I liked the information on the French of “Horcrux,” which I had not heard before, and it makes a lot of sense.

   2. I liked the mention of Tolkien. And the Silmarillion. I have heard many phrase it that the Silmarillion is the “myth backdrop‚Äù for LOTR, which I think it is (Tolkien himself having said that that was what he was doing in writing, creating a myth for England) but I also think it is a lot more than that in relation to LOTR. I see the two works as really king of “the Old Testament and New Testament” of Tolkien (IE in a specifically Biblical Mode, not just “myth” and “tale”). LOTR is a morality tale like Gawain (cf point 3), with the locus more directly in specific characters. The Silmarillion, on the other hand, is, like the Old Testament, a history of a people. To be sure there are particular personages, but the “characterization” is in broader strokes: there is the “People of Israel” entering the promise land, there is the unified kingdom under David and Solomon, there is the Northern and the Southern Kingdom after the divide (with ‚Äúhead‚Äù or “king” figures like Josiah and his attempt at reform) ‚Äì there are the elves who go over and the elves who stay, the elves who come back and the elves who stay in Valinor, there are wars and tensions between different families of elves.

   If Rowling did write a background work I would be perfectly happy with the “encyclopedia” style, but would find it really neat if she did go beyond that and did it more in the style of the history of wizards as “a people” with varying group developments and tensions and things like that (between countries, between groups within a particular groups within particular countries/cultures ‚Ķ you already have a little of this in the character of Karkaroff and the Durmstrang school, the fact that they are in alliance with Dumbledore and Hogwarts and England but take a different ‚Ķ even in the book 7 this might make Krum a good candidate for information on Horcurxes, since Draco, I believe, makes specific mention of the fact that Durmstrang specifically studies the dark arts themselves).

   3. In regards to what I just said about the Morality Tale quality of LOTR, I liked your mention of Gawain and the Green Knight, which was definitely studied heavily by Tolkien (the famous lecture on the tale, included in the Monsters and the Critics book), and it would be HIGHLY irregular if Rowling had not studied it heavily as a classics major. Correct me if I am wrong (and I may well be ‚Ķ this is not my field per-se, I only did a BA in English and it was not that strong of a BA at that), but that tale is a morality tale, just as I was saying about LOTR as technically a morality tale, in contrast to the OT quality of Silmarillion as the story of a people ‚Ķ and I think the Potter series is basically a morality tale (but with some uniquely modern element, for instance, I think that a central question of the works is, on the moral plain, how do you respond to “psychic illness?” I will not call psychic illness an “evil” because of the danger of painting the individual with psychic illness as “bad,” but I will say that they present certain instances in the world where there is “un-wellness” and sometimes very drastic un-wellness. I think the main question of the works is how you respond to them, How the ministry responds to Voldy, How DD responds to Voldy [in addition to the unfortunate task of having to rid the world of him, there is a deeper underlying . These considerations are flavored by what I would call the “modern form of alchemy,” the modern science of studying the soul ‚Äì post-Freudian psychology. There are numerous questions and areas where one could justifiably disageee, or agree, with Freud but the fact is that some advances have been made in that discipline that have concrete profitable applications in helping people to overcome particular struggles. I am not saying “buy into Freudian psychology and the scientific mentality and replace your religion with it,” I am saying I think there is some real value in it and that Rowling presents an instance of how art can show a unified path that melds those positive developments with more traditional Christian methods/models of understanding the human person, such as alchemy).

   Anyway, one of the things I really like in the Gawain-Tolkien-Rowling connection is the role of romantic love. In Gawain you see that how Gawain at least doesn‚Äôt concretely cross the line of violating another Knight’s marriage bed, given in three instances of “attempted seduction,” correlates to the virtue of courage in the final “showdown” when the Green Knight (who is the self-same Knight whose wife Gawain was tempted by, only under different guise) offers him 3 chances to beg for his life, beg for being let out of the deal ‚Ķ and the Green Kight spares him specifically because he does not (in other words, I would argue that had Gawain failed the tests of respecting the marriage bed and then lied to the knight, he would have been unable to have courage in the Green Knight’s chapel and been blubbering like a baby-mort begging for his life and gotten his head severed from his shoulders in a much more decisive manner than ‚Ķ this end of the story is in direct contrast to eh other end of the story, the childish revelry of Arthur’s “court,” which is what almost gets Gawain in trouble: according to those foolish “courtly” rules the knight never refuses the lady her request, even if it goers against morality and true respect for the marriage bed and TRUE “courtly love” ‚Ķ The Gawain Poet was every bit as much a social critic as Ms Rowling and the PoMos). In Tolkien you have 3 instances of courtly/romantic love that I think each show a quality of romantic love as symbolic of Grace (Eowyn-Farmir = Grace heals, Rosy and Sam = Grace perfects, in that they are the one instance in which, within the scope of the story itself, we concretely see their love come to fruition in a child, and Aragorn and Arwen = Grace elevates, in that their love is symbolic of the larger battle of good and evil, their betrothal completion of Midsummer eve closes out the inclusio proper in that the direct attack by evil began one year ealier on midsummer eve when the Nazgul crossed the Fords of Isen disguised as riders in black ‚Ķ but good is always more than merely the negation of evil, Just as Harry must not only rid the world of Voldy but must further unite the fractured wizarding world, and thus the true culmination of LOTR is not the betrothal on midsummers eve, but the actual wedding on Midsummers Day). In Rowling you have ‚Ķ teenage love and the shipper wars. I would not say that the shippers were right and that that is the main deal to be concerned with, just that we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Book 5 was not just the long dark night of the hormones that for some reason she made us wade through. To be sure, it was painful reading at points, but in the way that conveyed to us the readers how those elements are legitimately part of the long dark night of THE SOUL and somehow connected with the larger battle, with our struggles to be good in a world that tempt us to join the evil side and amass power etc (as an example here I would use Ron and Hermione as the “arguing couple” of alchemy ‚Ķ those two were meant to be together romantically as a way of symbolizing that ‚Ķ I started to see that in POA when Hermione starts to call Ron, “Ronald” just like Mrs Weasely does ‚Äì I don‚Äôt think Freud was right that each man has some specific erotic desire for his mother, but I do think it true that, for men, the mother forms the thinking on “feminity as such” ‚Äì maybe that is why Voldy is such a loner and obviously never had even a girlfriend: he never knew his mother as a mother, never had any concept of the feminine outside of Mrs Cole, who is ONLY a part of the system of authority, which I am not say she is bad, just that his relationship to her could never take on any of the dimensions of “motherly love” so crucial to early development, which is why I think he spent so much time stopping to offer Lily a chance to step aside, he has a certain “morbid curiosity” about mother that drives him to distraction, and who does he look to late? A Female snake called Naginni ‚Äì That’s an image of Tiamat, the snake/sea monster mother goddess from the Babylonian Enuma Elish, if I ever saw one)
2. mutabilis says

   February 17, 2007 at 10:42 pm

   Hi John (we met at Lumos)
   I am the webmaster for Accio Quote! which has superseded the Quick Quotes Quill and Madam Scoop’s Index. I just wanted you to know that all the URLs have changed and the QQQ doesn’t really exist anymore.

   AQ News is posted here: http://madam-pince.blogspot.com/

   I really enjoy reading your blog!

   –Lisa
3. Brett says

   February 19, 2007 at 1:54 pm

   Sorry, left a thought incomplete: meant to say that had Gawain not passed the three temptations by the wife of Sir Bertilak (who is the Green Knight), he would not have passed the three tests of courage by the Green Knight and had his head severed from his shoulders in a much more decisive manner than Nearly Headless Nick.
   Also wanted to say, the whole connection between the three temptaions with the lady and the three test in the chapel of the Green Knight, may be simply the standard intepreatation that I picked up from the usual sources and forgot that I picked it up there (and thence go around making non-sensical statements like “I would agrue that …” – to which the proper sarcastic reply would be “and exactly which windmill, Mr Quixote, are you going to argue this against?”) … so, if it is the standard reading, please chalk it up to those who have gone before and are much better than myself, and if it seems outlandish, then feel free to chalk it up to me (I’m pretty spotty on some of this stuff sometimes … can’t even remember if the scarf she gave him was considered a disctinctively good or bad thing by the Green Knight … but I do remember that Tolkien spent considerable time on the fact that Gawain goes to confession before).
4. Gryffindor_Spirit says

   March 3, 2007 at 1:47 pm

   Yes, Virigina, There is a Harry Potter.

   I know I have told others this and I apologize very very much if it sounds like I’m repeating myself. I just want people to know this. I greatly apologize if I come off as rude, I’m truly not meaning to. People need to look around at the people in their lives and not what they have or want to have. Just because it’s the last book doesn’t mean it’s the end isn’t that what Dumbledore has tried to tell Harry by saying “To a well-oragnized mind death is the next greatest adventure.” (Sorcerer’s Stone Book 1) People need to realize the end doesn’t mean the end.

   If people let the magic and spirit of the books die then yes it will be the end. It’s not like we can’t go back and re-live the adventure and re-live the magic for as long as we want.
   A great example is that the Stars Wars movies and LOTR movies and books have long since finished the true hardcore fans aren’t mourning because of it. They are still letting the magic live on for them for them it hasn’t ended but continued. They look around and see what’s around them embracing something they love so dearly.

   I think some Potter fans need to look around and if they truly enjoy Harry Potter they should embrace it not let it slip from their dreams that’s how souls die because people let loved ones’ spirits be forgotten not remembered so the loved one truly dies. Nowadays it’s Harry’s going to die and nothing else matters. It’s like people are ready to drop the series and get it over with then there’s some who feel lost that it’s the last book. It’s like they are the big kids who tell the little children that Santa isn’t real. They have lost the magic so they need to make people feel just as miserable as they are. If they can’t believe why should other people is their train of thought.

   I am a Gryffindor I want Harry to live and Voldemort to die I do however get mocked because I want that and believe in good winning and matters of love and true friendship.

   A good friend that I had the absolute honor blessing and beyond privilege of meeting in real life this past New Years Weekend. Rae Carson, theorist and writer of Harry Gets Even explains her theory beautifully in her well written and well-organized fanficton. this theory we both have spent many many discussions on, I asked for perrmission post her theory in her own words again, this is HER thoery not mine.

   “I believes that Harry has to die in order to vanquish LV. Why? Harry is obviously an ‘accidental horcrux’ and with or without the spell used to make a horcrux, a piece of LVs immortal soul resides inside him. Since there is no known way to prove that Harry is a living horcrux,the young wizard would be forced to sacrifice himself to make absolutely certain LV cannot ever return to life again. How this will happen is the real mystery.

   Regardless, I believes that Harry will be the one to return from the dead at the end of book seven, and it will involve a sojourn of someone going beyond the black veil in the Dom to retrieve him. the one who does,or at least initiates this dangerous retrieval will be none other than Ginny Weasley–it would only be right,especially since Harry saved his own future by rescuing her in the Chamber of Secrets. So yes my friends…I fear Harry Potter will have to die in book 7. But due the unfailing power of love, once again, he’ll live to tell about it.”-Rae Carson. (Please don’t take this theory and call it your own thank you)
5. Deborah says

   March 6, 2007 at 1:36 pm

   You are on the money with the Harry is Horcrux theory. I would like to add that I believe that the absolutely final horcrux is the one within.

   This puts the entire final battle on a spiritual plane – Harry’s soul vs. Voldemorts.

   When the release date was announced to be 7/21, the first thing I though of was Romans 7:21…
   “I find then the evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good.”

   In alchemy, the regulus is when the stuff to be purged sinks to the bottom. Therefore, I think that Regulus (R.A.B) is the guy reponsible for the Horcrux that was once in the locket to be inside of Harry. Voldy’s soul remnant represents gunk to be purged out of Harry.

   When Harry finds the “real” locket, it will be empty. (except, of course, for a portrait of R.A.B. who then spends a few moments in plot exposition explaining how it all came to be.)
6. tnm16 says

   March 20, 2007 at 2:36 pm

   I have an alternate version to your theory; namely, that Harry being a Horcrux is NOT accidental. And this leads to a drastic re-reading of the Prophecy. Neither dies …

   The ultimate resolution of the series -Harry Potter, title hero, exemplar of Good, triumphing over the Dark Lord, anti-hero, epitome of Evil – seems indisputable, in a story whose core is based on the essential issue of morality (and here, also inextricably tied to the notion of MORTALITY).

   But the thorny prophecy: how will Harry dispose of Voldemort without blood on his wand, so to speak; without enacting on his nemesis the selfsame ‘supreme act of evil’ of murder? Even as a pre-destined, ‘Chosen’ hand, he would be taking life.

   The dilemma is further complicated by that other controversial question: If Harry is a Horcrux, how can he destroy without dying himself?

   I propose here an off-color theory that may be warped enough for J.K. Rowling‚Äôs love of twists ‚Ķ for as Jeeves says, we must examine ‚Äòthe psychology of the individual.‚Äô The individual here being, Tom Marvolo Riddle vis-?†-vis his six choices for Horcruxes:

   1- The Diary: (i.e. ‘Book’); represents Riddle’s respect for Knowledge as a means to Power.
   2- The Ring: (i.e. ‘Heirloom’); symbolizes Riddle’s reverence for his Ancestry on the pureblood maternal side.

   Because Riddle considered Hogwarts his ‘home’, it follows he would wish to identify himself with all four Houses as a whole, by selecting relics belonging to each of the original founders:

   3- The Locket: House of Slytherin
   4- The Cup: House of Hufflepuff
   5- The [?]: House of Ravenclaw
   6- The [?]: House of Gryffindor

   As for Dumbledore’s hypothesis that Voldemort, having failed to create his sixth Horcrux prior to his downfall, would later resort to entrusting a part of his soul in a live creature (Nagini), I doubt that Voldemort (and Rowling!) would be so tacky as to disturb the perfect symmetry & symbolism of the ‘Houses of Hogwarts’ coat-of-arms. Three simply is not four; it ruins the balance, makes it lacking, asymmetrical, devoid of full meaning. A big black snake (even if it does call to mind Voldemort’s serpent/skull Dark Mark) is a poor substitute for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Riddle’s home. All four relics must be present to create this symbol. How can one become a Dark Lord if one is not obsessive about his image? : )

   So what can Ravenclaw & Gryffindor’s relics be, according to canon hints? I agree with what many have suggested: Rowena’s wand, which we encountered in our first trip to Diagon Alley, sitting in its prominent position in Ollivander’s shop window like a set of antique jewels. Maybe Ollivander’s mysterious disappearing act in HBP is due to Voldemort’s wish to provide a safer hiding place for his Horcrux-wand, following the failed Ministry mission and his exposure? The object itself has intrinsically symbolic value, as the most crucial instrument of magic.

   Gryffindor’s relic, as Dumbledore tells us, cannot be the sword, having been under safe lock in the headmaster’s office during Riddle’s schooldays and subsequent years before/after his fall. But the sword is said to be the only ‘known’ relic of Godric Gryffindor … might not have Voldemort managed to find an ‘unknown’ one? Especially, as GG holds an unusual correlation to SS (according to the Sorting Hat): best friends AND worst enemies.

   For purposes of symmetry in the series, it seems crystal-clear that Harry Potter is to Lord Voldemort as Godric Gryffindor is to Salazar Slytherin. Knowing Voldemort is Slytherin’s last living descendant, from his pureblood mother’s side; Harry would have to be Gryffindor’s from his pureblood father’s side. Two half-blood orphans, two extraordinarily talented wizards: logically, who else could possibly be ‘born’ to vanquish the Heir of Slytherin but … the Heir of Gryffindor? (further canon support for this symmetry is that Riddle visited his hometown where Merope Gaunt lived and Harry plans to visit his birthplace where James Potter lived. Thus Godric’s Hollow can be read to indicate the Potters’ ancestral namesake).

   If the above premises are correct, Voldemort would absolutely be compelled to find a Gryffindor relic as a Horcrux. Perhaps he would esteem it the most important one, to be chosen with care, taking time to procure, and so wish to leave the best for last (i.e. the sixth trophy).

   Let’s now examine a very probable scenario: having already created five Horcruxes, Voldemort hears the prophecy and identifies the candidates: Neville Longbottom & Harry Potter. Voldemort, putting so much store by the prophetic possibility of doom, would not make his choice between the two infants arbitrarily. He would do his homework on parentage. And perhaps learn of James Potter ancestral line leading to Godric Gryffindor, making young Harry Potter not only the obvious ‘prophesized enemy’ but also … a prime relic for the last Horcrux. What could ensure immortality more emphatically than to entomb the final fragment of his soul in the corpse of his vanquished nemesis, the Heir of Gryffindor?

   My theory is that Voldemort made Harry into a Horcrux with pre-meditated purpose. Not ‘accidentally’ (as some have suggested to be the case after backfiring of the Killing Curse on the baby –and others have pointed out that casting the complex spell needed to create a Horcrux is impossible to perform after losing his body, sapped of strength and sans wand). Voldemort sought out his relic/enemy that fateful July night, killed James & Lily, used their murders to create a Horcrux in Harry’s body (thus carving the scar), and in triumph over the prophecy, shot the lethal Avada Kedavra at the baby boy, knowing a mortal can die but retain the Horcrux in its corpse (morbid enough?!). We know what happens next. Power Voldemort knows not, and could not expect, ancient magic evoked by Love, gives Harry Potter protection to survive the curse as an unprecedented exception in the history of wizardkind.

   The crux is that Voldemort, now back in power, well remembers what he has done. His rage to kill Harry arises not only from his desire to win the prophecy, but to safely repossess a cherished Horcrux: the lightning-bolt scar wherein one-seventh of his soul resides. How else could the scar be such a powerful conduit between Harry and Voldemort’s moods, emotions, innermost chambers of mind? How else could Voldemort’s talents (e.g. Parceltongue) have been transfused into Harry’s essence? Why does Harry’s scar burn, if not with the lava wrath of the Dark Lord’s soul?

   As a last thought, we have heard much but not yet seen that worst of punishments, the infamous Dementor‚Äôs Kiss. Maybe when the other three Horcruxes are destroyed (locket, cup, wand), as well as the last bit in Voldemort‚Äôs physical body (Ideally, Snape will fire the AK like he did at Dumbledore, as per his ironclad trusted vow), and only Harry himself remains a Horcrux … he can have a Dementor kiss his scar. The empty shell of Voldemort‚Äôs soul will live in it until the end of Harry‚Äôs life, yes; but perhaps that is why ‚Äòscar‚Äô is rumored to be the last word of book seven‚Äôs epilogue: the prophecy will be fulfilled by Harry living and Voldemort failing to survive ‚Äìin the sense of immortality. There is good reason why the prophecy wording is not ‚Äòneither can live while the other lives.‚Äô Voldemort may live, but not have the eternal survival he had planned ‚Ķ Dumbledore did warn him there are worse ways of destroying a man than death. Being soulless is the best example of such destruction. Also, as per law, a Dementor‚Äôs Kiss is not illegal like an Unforgivable. This way, Harry will not technically be a murder, either, because he does not ‚Äòkill‚Äô Voldemort, but lets his scar act rather like a cell in Azkaban.

   Your thoughts …?