The Smiths must still have the Hufflepuff Cup

[jelly92784]

No: HPFGUIDX 156517

Carol: who doesn't see a plot hole if LV steals and hides the cup as 
he does the locket but sees a serious inconsistency in 
characterization if LV leaves his precious Hufflepuff Horcrux in the 
hands of the greedy Smith family


Janelle: This is an interesting debate and I could see it going 
either way.  On the side of Voldemort taking the cup, turning it 
into a horcrux and then returning it to the Smith family, people 
have been saying that this doesn't fit in with the strict protection 
that surrounds the other horcruxes we've come in contact with.  In 
reality, however, the only one that we know for sure was protected 
that extremely is the locket.  The diary was placed with Lucius 
without him even knowing what it was and as a result, was given away 
and it ends up being destroyed (I remember discussing this before 
but did we end up deciding that Voldemort does know that the diary 
was destroyed or not?)  The point here is that the diary wasn't all 
that well protected.  Also, Dumbledore never gets around to telling 
the story about the protection surrounding the ring although we can 
assume that it was pretty intense given what happened to his hand as 
a result of destroying it.  The rest of the horcruxes we haven't 
really seen and don't even know for sure what they are.  

I think it is possible that Voldemort turned the cup into a horcrux 
with the death of Hebzibah Smith (sorry, not entirely sure I got 
that name right) and then left the cup, knowing that it was the 
family's most prized possession and that they would be sure to take 
care of it, in which case he could easily find it if need be.

On the other side, someone upthread argued that if Voldemort had in 
fact taken the cup and hid it somewhere, the Smith family would have 
been outraged that the cup was gone and so we'd be left with a plot-
hole.  The thing is, we haven't had any contact with the Smith 
family (with the possible exception of Zacharias, and even that had 
nothing to do with the cup), so how do we know that they weren't 
outraged when they discovered that the cup was missing?  I don't 
think that that particular situation is necessarily something that 
would be common knowledge in the wizarding world, or at least 
something that Harry, and us by extension, would have heard about.

I kind of like the idea of Voldemort leaving the cup with the 
Smiths, knowing that they would take care of it, although, as I 
mentioned above, I can see how the story could work either way.