Destroying the horcruxes (The cave potion and soul pieces )

[M.Clifford]

No: HPFGUIDX 141166


> > Valky:
> > It occurs to me that the Diary and the Ring were probably
> > destroyed in different ways. I deduce that Dumbledore may have
> > attempted to re-enact to the best of his ability, the way Harry
> > destroyed the Diary, but he could easily have discounted something
> > important to the process, something small that Harry did, but he
> > didn't. <snip>
> 
> Jen: From Dumbledore's explanation of the ring and then reading the 
> cave sequence, the protections on the Horcruxes appear to be the 
> dangerous part of the destruction. Harry destroyed the diary 
> effortlessly because there were no protections on it, it was the 
> only horcrux 'intended as a weapon as much as a safeguard' to lure 
> someone into using it (Horcrux chapter). 
> 
> Dumbledore attributed his blackened hand to a 'terrible curse' upon 
> the ring, and the later destruction of the horcrux back at Hogwarts 
> seemed to have no particular ill effect on Dumbledore. Harry just 
> noticed the ring sitting on the table with a crack in it, after the 
> withered hand incident. 

Valky:
Oh :( I really hate to do this to you Jen, but, it didn't happen that way.

'...Harry noticed a ring on his uninjured hand <snip> and was set with
a heavy black stone that had cracked down the middle.'
Page 68, Bloomsbury HBP, Chapter 4, Horace Slughorn.

The destruction of the Ring and the terrible curse on it do appear to
be linkable, yet. 

Now I agree that Harry destroyed the diary, in the sense of the
precise act of destroying it, rather effortlessly. But I wonder if it
was helped along by the fact that Harry used Voldemorts own weapon
(Basilisk tooth) to do it. This could be the thing that Dumbledore
overlooked, and if so it would then translate sensibly that if he died
bearing a Horcrux himself, it would be necessary that he died of
Voldemorts potion and nothing else in order to secure the victory
aginst the Ring Horcrux. This doesn't very well explain why it had to
be Harry's hand that destroyed it in the end. But I suppose there
could be reasons why it was always fated to be. I am sure Dumbledore
was in no hurry to share the secret that he was destroying Horcruxes
with a large number of people, but sharing it with Harry was
necessary, and so putting Harry under the exclusive onus of being the
one who has to handle Voldemorts weapon, again and destroy the Horcrux.

> Lipa:
> > This is fairly similar to what I have been thinking.
> > Dumbledore was asking to be killed, quickly.

Valky:
I kind of agree with you there Lipa. I am becoming ever more certain
that the pleading tone in Dumbledores voice can be explained as that
it was urgent that Snape act quickly.

I quite like the notion that Snape used a fake AK to conceal a
non-verbal blasting-type spell, and that the idea to do so was Snapes
own quick-thinking, I also like the thought that it was a clever trick
that Dumbledore had taught him some time ago. Those are just my
preferred interpretations of the scene. 

So in the sense that Dumbledore was pleading with Snape to act
quickly, I agree. But I don't think he was asking Snape to kill him
but rather asking him to secure the tower with a cover up of
Dumbledores real cause of death.
 

Lipa:
> > My guess is that the curse from the ring and/or the
> > potion/water combination from the cave were finishing him
> > in a horrible way, dehumanizing him (Inferi, Dementors, 
> > Ghosts, ... come to mind)
> > and only timely death could save him from destiny
> > which he considered worse than death.

Valky:
I think we may, all three, be thinking along the same lines here too.
>From separate directions we are all drawing a similar conclusion that
Dumbledore chose death rather than become one of Voldemorts weapons.

I, like Jen, really lean strongly toward possession, LV's rank
favourite weapon, IMO. But I am not sure we will any of us agree on
precisely what the true source of this evil is. JKR certainly didn't
make it easy to narrow down either, it could definitely have been any
one, or even all, of the dangers that Dumbledore ran in HBP. 

Fortunately there are three main ones, the Ring protections, the Ring
itself and the Potion in the cave, I am sure we agree its one of those
three, but which exactly we may not be able to know until book seven.

 
> Jen:  
> About the potion/water. I like the idea Voldemort formed the potion 
> to be an information device and the water to be the actual death 
> agent. This would be a very sinister thing to do on Voldemort's 
> part, using the potion to find out who was penetrating his defenses 
> and why, then forcing the person to drink the actual quick-acting 
> poison. It's overkill, but then Lord Voldemort does like his drama! 
> That might explain why Dumbledore was dying so slowly since Harry 
> only dribbled a bit on his lips and he didn't swallow it.

Valky:
Oh yes, the Inferi water comes as part of it too. It certainly does
seem to be pointed at by Harry's deduction that LV wanted the intruder
to drink it. There is still the possibility that Voldemort only
intended the intruder to break the surface of the water and then their
death be caused strictly by the swarming Inferi. At the very least we
know for sure that most intruders of the cave will have certainly died
after the potion was drunk, so whatever information Voldemort intended
to get from them, he already securely had before the surface of the
water was broken. The torturous potion was definitely a tool as well
as a weapon. It becomes interesting when we consider that the previous
intruder R.A.B. must also have drunk some of, or all of, that potion
too. What traces of that person were left behind in the cave, we re
aware via Dumbledore that there is definitely a recording of RAB's
intentions somewhere in the cave, is the potion our only option or is
there somewhere else that it might be recorded? Did RAB drink the water?


Valky 
Confused now.