Horcruxes: Groundrules and Theories

[John Kearns]

No: HPFGUIDX 136386

> ongj87:
> Voldemort had to let Lily live because Lily wouldn't stand just 
> standing by while letting Harry be turned into a horcrux.  She was 
> gonna stop Voldemort or die trying.  So Voldemort had to get her 
> out of the way, despite the fact the it wasn't really what he 
> wanted.

John K:
Yes, but... there are so many more ways to incapacitate a person 
than killing them.  In the scene in the Astronomy tower, Harry would 
have protected Dumbledore or died trying, but Dumbledore didn't want 
him to.  So (rather than killing him), he put a full body-bind curse 
on him.  If Voldemort wanted Lily to live for his own purposes, he 
would have done similarly.  It would even have been easier.

I also don't see Voldemort wanting Lily to live because even if he 
did want Harry to be his heir, he wouldn't /want/ Lily raising him.  
Not only had she proven that she hated Voldemort (and he knew it; 
she'd defied him three times) but she was muggle-born.  She was 
pretty much the opposite of the mother Voldemort would idealize.

> imgj87:
> I don't think he ever really intended to kill Harry that fateful 
> night.  It might have been interpreted as such by everyone who 
> didn't know otherwise.  I think Dumbledore, James, and Lily might 
> have been the only ones to know Voldemort's true intentions.  

John K:
I still think it's been directly called a Killing Curse, including 
by Dumbledore, way too many times for JKR to pull this on us.  It's 
one thing to make a motivation or an event seem a little strange, or 
to drop hints in the text that something is not as it seems; but 
this would be another thing altogether, a plot twist out of the 
blue.  That's not fair to readers, and JKR is a better writer than 
that, no matter what the H/G shippers say. ;)

> ongj87:
> But what Dumbledore gathered from the smoke tendrils is that the 
> soul piece in Harry is divided from Harry's soul.  And we all know 
> that Harry, though he has his similarities, is very different at 
> heart from Voldemort (as Dumbledore has pointed out a million and 
> one times, as Harry has the ability 'to love').

John K:
I have to admit that this is indeed the most logical explanation 
I've heard yet for this, though I've been adamately maintaining that 
Harry cannot be a Horcrux.  I just haven't yet heard a satisfactory 
explanation of /how or why/ Harry could have become a Horcrux.  I 
just don't think Voldemort was trying to do anything but kill him.  
And if Dumbledore thought he was, wouldn't he have told Harry?  
After all, the Horcrux explanations seemed designed so that Harry 
could carry on destroying them if something happened to Dumbledore.  
That would be an awfully critical piece of information to leave out, 
no matter how it made Harry feel.  Not to mention the fact that 
Dumbledore has already learned not to withold information from Harry.

> ongj87:
> I think, 
> putting the rivalry of Slytherin and Gryffindor together with the 
> prophecy, he concluded that the one to be his equal and rival 
> would obviously be the heir to Gryffindor.

John K:
Makes sense (though I'm unsure why Harry hasn't found out he's 
Gryffindor's heir by now), but...  

> ongj87:
> By making this child one of his own at birth, he would have:
> 
> 1. Ended the Gryffindor line, and won a point for Slytherin in the 
> process.

John K:
I'm not convinced making Harry a Horcrux would end the Gryffindor 
line; after all, the Gryffindor descendant would still be alive.  It 
would be far more effective to kill him.

> 2. Earned himself an heir.

Why does he need one?  I thought he planned to live forever?

> 3. Gotten rid of his rival

Again, killing him would be far more effective.

> 4. Gained a powerful weapon, one who had the power to vanquish 
> himself and yet was completely under his control.  As Dumbledore 
> said, Nagini is very much under the control of Voldemort because 
> she is one of his horcruxes.

But it would be an enormous risk to raise to full wizarding maturity 
a boy with the power to vanquish him, particularly as Voldemort 
thinks nobody else has that power.  It would be a classic evil 
villain mistake - I'll raise my son to be as powerful as me, of 
course he will do my bidding (but he doesn't, he ends up killing the 
father instead).  Voldemort doesn't make many of these obvious sorts 
of mistakes.

Besides, he doesn't need Harry as a weapon.  He doesn't need 
anything as a weapon.  He's the most powerful wizard on earth.  We 
see throughout the sixth book that Voldemort is really doing quite 
well for himself, and that's with Harry the weapon on the OTHER 
side.  And by all indications, he was doing quite well during the 
first war as well, until Harry came along.

> ongj87:
> You and I may be one of few people who think Harry won't die.  I 
> wholly agree that Harry will not die.  I think it is perfectly 
> possible that if he does have a horcrux in him, he can remove it 
> without killing himself.

John K:
I like this idea simply because it explains Dumbledore's little 
tool.  I don't like it because I can't find any other evidence for 
it.  And though, as I said, this is a good explanation for 
Dumbledore's instrument, that's not enough to go on for me, as there 
are other potential explanations for the instrument as well - 
perhaps it was about the snake that bit Arthur?  Or about control of 
Harry's mind?  Or to find out whether Voldemort was possessing 
Harry?  All of these would have been much more urgent, and 
necessitated Dumbledore using the instrument in front of Harry.

> ongj87:
> And I think Dumbledore has planned this, the clues possibly in 
> that mysterious pensieve of his.

John K:
I love the idea that Dumbledore has left clues or information for 
Harry in the pensieve, whether they're related to the rest of this 
debate or not.  I hadn't thought of it, and it would make for a 
fantastic scene in the next book.

> ongj87:
> Happy to debate this further with you and anyone else.

John K:
Hooray!  I love a good friendly debate. :)

John K