Tom Riddle's Award for Special Services to the School

[hermionegallo]

No: HPFGUIDX 134655

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "darqali" <darqali at y...> wrote:
> Again, as for the Award being the remaining 'mystery Horcrux', it is 
> of course possible; but when would it have been made so?  For the 
> award came after Hagrid was framed and expelled [for supposedly 
> opening the Chamber of Secrets, with Aragog the supposed 'monster'].
> 
> The diary had been made .... with Moaning Myrtle's death the required 
> soul-splitter [????] .... the award comes later .... so whose was the 
> second death {required}?
> 

hg replies:
I'm of the mind that the award is indeed a horcrux.  

It's important to note that 1)Myrtle was killed by the basilisk, not 
Tom Riddle; 2) when Tom is talking to Slughorn, he is a prefect (so 
he's 5th or 6th year, because we know in his seventh year he was head 
boy), and he is wearing the ring; 3)he asks about making multiple 
horcruxes, and seems to not know what spell is required in forming one; 
4)he is not wearing the ring when he is Diary Tom, otherwise JK would 
have shown it; and 5) Diary Tom is repeatedly stated to be 16.  

>From all that I have deduced that Tom opened the chamber at the end of 
his 5th year, 1943, allowing Myrtle to be killed and framing Hagrid.  
He then went to the orphanage and left, going to talk with Morfin 
Gaunt, going to kill the Riddles, going back to implant the memory of 
the murder in Morfin's mind and taking the ring.  Now when he returns 
to Hogwart's: it's the beginning of his sixth year; he's still 16 
because his birthday is December 31/January 1; he's got an award, a 
ring and three murders under his belt.  It's likely that he knew murder 
was a necessary component of the process of making a horcrux, and that 
the multiple murder gave him the idea of making multiple horcruxes. 

It seems to me that based on this evidence, sometime between the talk 
with Slughorn and Tom's 17th birthday (between September 1st, 1943 and 
New Year's Eve 1943-44) Tom found out how to make horcruxes and made 
three, because he had three murders: the ring, the award, and the 
diary.  The diary was the distinctive horcrux in that it was intended 
to be a weapon, to replicate himself, so it probably would have been 
made after the ring and the award and hence the lack of ring on Diary 
Tom's finger.  The award would be a special treasure in that it was 
HIS, but it was a stolen honor, much the same as the ring was 
rightfully his but also stolen.

What I'm puzzling about is where in canon is there an actual quote 
stating that Tom committed the murders after he graduated (1945), 
because this is where the lexicon dates it, and why the opening chapter 
of GoF places the murders of the Riddles in 1944 (saying "fifty years 
ago" when the year of that story is 1994).  

hg.