[HPforGrownups] Re: Mortality of horcruxes?

[Peggy Wilkins]

No: HPFGUIDX 154335

On 6/25/06, houyhnhnm102 <celizwh at intergate.com> wrote:

> houyhnhnm:
> That is a good point that Voldemort didn't know where
> Nagini was.  Of course, he could possess her to find out
> where she was at any time.  But Voldemort was Baby!Mort
> at the time he made Nagini a horcrux, if he did...

Peggy W:
I don't think we can be so sure that if he made Nagini into one of his
Horcruxes, that he would have done it then and there.  I don't think
he would have, actually.  To go back to my pet idea that Voldemort is
reserving the act of making his final Horcrux for Harry's death, it
would have worked against that plan if he had done this with Nagini at
this point.  When he is in the Riddle house in Babymort form, he must
think he has five Horcruxes (he doesn't know about the diary's
destruction yet); if he is saving his final Horcrux for Harry's death,
he would not use Nagini yet.  Perhaps he kills the gardener only to
test his power a bit (no doubt it's been a long time and he is out of
practice).

> If it would be dangerous for a bodily able wizard "to
> confide a part of [his] soul to something that can think
> and move for itself" how much more so for something as
> weak and helpless as Baby!Mort.

To pick nits a bit here, Dumbledore called it "risky" not "dangerous".
 Dangerous implies something bad will almost certainly happen; risky
is less severe.  I agree with Dumbledore's assessment that the act
carries a risk; I wouldn't go so far as to say it is inherently
dangerous.

> ... Voldemort would not
> have known anything about the destruction of the diary
> horcrux at the time he killed Frank Bryce. He didn't learn
> about that until he had regained his body and met with
> Lucius Malfoy again.

I believe this is correct; and so I think that if he made Nagini into
a Horcrux it would have been after he found out about the diary.  In
that case, perhaps he was even a bit grateful that he didn't kill
Harry at the graveyard, since with the loss of the diary that wouldn't
have completed his 7-part soul.

If only Voldemort hadn't tried to trick Dumbledore into killing Harry
at the MoM; that little incident suggests that maybe it wasn't
entirely important that he kill Harry himself.  So maybe my pet idea
isn't quite all I was thinking it was... or maybe the MoM was an
extenuating circumstance.  Something to think about.

-- 
Peggy Wilkins
enlil65 at gmail.com