Horcruxes anew

[msbeadsley]

No: HPFGUIDX 138615

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "amiabledorsai"
<amiabledorsai at y...> wrote:
> I've lent out my copy of CoS, but my vague memory is that Harry was
> strangely interested by the diary.  Would someone with a copy to 
> hand check to see if I'm remembering correctly?

It goes like this: Filch makes a commotion over the flood in the
Myrtle's bathroom, and Harry and Ron (Hermione is stuck as a catgirl
in the infirmary) investigate, finding Myrtle upset about having had a
book thrown at her. Harry starts to pick it up and Ron warns him it
could be dangerous but he persists (to the point of reaching around
Ron to get it), examining it. He finds "T.M. Riddle" written in it and
is disappointed that there's no other writing. He sees that it was
bought at a shop on Vauxhall Road and surmises the owner must have
been muggle-born. Ron suggests using Myrtle for target practice, but
Harry pockets it instead, and later...

"Harry couldn't explain, even to himself, whey he didn't just throw
Riddle's diary away. The fact was that even though he *knew* the diary
was blank, he kept absentmindedly picking it up and turning the pages,
as if it were a story he wanted to finish. And while Harry had never
heard the name T.M. Riddle before, it still seemed to mean something
to him, almost as though Riddle was a friend he'd had when he was very
small, and half-forgotten."

This is (in the wake of HBP) one of the most tantalizing sections in
the series, if you ask me. Either Harry is experiencing an affinity as
side-effect of having had some of Voldemort's powers transferred to
him, or the diary has a spell on it to make it attractive in this way,
or Harry really is a horcrux and is sensing the relationship between
the part of Voldemort's soul he carries and the one in the diary.

Sandy aka msbeadsley