Tom Riddle and the Diary!Horcrux

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 161069

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Mike" <mcrudele78 at ...> wrote:
>
> "I grew powerful, far more powerful than little Miss Weasley. 
> Powerful enough to start feeding Miss Weasley a few of *my* secrets, 
> to start pouring a little of *my* soul back into *her*..." (Cos 
> p.310, US)
> 
> It occured to me while reading the Chapter Discussion about 
> Horcruxes that we may have enough information to make a diffinitive 
> conclusion regarding the Diary Horcrux. Much of the evidence comes 
> in CoS, the conversation between Revenant Tom and Harry. But let's 
> start in PoA.
> 
> Our dear Remus informs us that if a Dementor *kisses* you to remove 
> your soul, "you'll have no sense of self anymore, no memory, no... 
> anything", leaving you an empty shell. This certainly speaks to the 
> conclusion that in the Potterverse your memories must reside in your 
> soul. The soul that is Vapormort retains all his knowledge of magic, 
> all his memories. With no contradicting evidence and only affirming 
> evidence, this must be the case.

> Take this information back to CoS. Harry's encounter with Diary Soul 
> Piece (DSP) is first through disappearing-written conversation that 
> transitions to a *Pensieve* memory viewing. Note how Harry falls 
> into the scene the same way one falls into a Pensieve scene and how 
> Harry's first encounter with DD's Pensieve in GoF reminds him of 
> this encounter with DSP. True to the way a Pensieve performs, Harry 
> is unseen and unheard but observes everything that happens as if he 
> is really there. These two pieces of magic, the Pensieve ability and 
> the disappearing written conversation feature, are two things that 
> Tom magically loads into the diary.
> 
Carol responds:
None of this proves that the memory is not separate from the soul bit.
Yes, it's the soul bit that possessed Ginny and enabled Diary!Tom to
put a bit of his soul back into her, but that may not be the original
purpose of the diary, which DiaryTom specifically says is to open the
Chamber of secrets and release the monster. Bear in mind that that's
exactly how the diary is used until Diary!Tom learns about Harry from
Ginny, at which point "killing Muggleborns [didn't] matter to him
anymore and he became obsessed with talking to Harry.

The memory Harry enters acts exactly like a memory taken from Snape's
or Dumbledore's head (or poured from a vial)--memories that are not
soul bits and have no soul bits attached unless Dumbledore has
committed multiple murders, one for each memory, which I'm sure you'll
agree is exceedingly unlikely. So, IMO, it's just a mmory. Diary!Tom
remembers what he knew when he created the diary--to "carry on Salazar
Slytherin's noble work." He is not wearing the ring in the memory, not
because he's already made it into a Horcrux, but because it's still
his fifth year. He hasn't yet killed anyone except Myrtle. Note that
he's wearing his Hogwarts robes with his Prefect badge. The diary was
created at Hogwarts, and the Hagrid memory is dated 13th June of his
fifth year--before the murder of his parents. IMO, he must have
written it down (or removed it from his head) that very day. He would
also have placed additional spells on it to make it interactive and to
control the reader (an Imperius curse would do the job) and he may
well have added a few more memories from that year so he knew about
the "annoyingly close watch" DD kept on him after that. But even
though Diary!Tom is empowereed by the soul bit, I don't think he knows
that. He just knows that in life he had the power to possess people
and as a memory he retains that power.

I confess that I'm not sure how to answer the Dementor argument, but
I'm quite sure that when DD or Snape or Slughorn takes a memory from
his own head, he's not taking a bit of soul, nor would DD have taken a
bit of Winky's or Morfin's or Bob Ogden's soul. Soul bits only detach
from the main self when a murder has split the soul *and* the soul bit
(not memory) is encased in a Horcrux using a spell (very different
from placing a "mere memory" (note that Dumbledore uses that phrase as
distinct from a soul bit) in a vial or a Pensieve--or a diary.

Mike: 
> Let's move on to what the Diary!Tom knew. Off stage, Ginny tells the 
> DSP all she knows about the great Harry Potter from her pov. Fast 
> forward to the conversation between Harry and DSP as Revenant!Tom. 
> Careful reading of that conversation reveals that Revenant!Tom knows 
> only what his 16-year-old self knows combined with the knowledge he 
> has received from Ginny. As an example: Why Harry survived 
> Voldemort's attack is knowledge that Tom wants but couldn't get from 
> Ginny. Please note also that this Tom already knows that Salazar 
> Slytherin's blood runs in his veins and that his father was 
> a "filthy Muggle".

> 
> But also note that Revenant!Tom has knowledge and memories of his 
> own; Tom Marvolo Riddle anagrams into Lord Voldemort, Dumbledore's 
> response to Tom's opening the Chamber re Hagrid, not trusting Tom, 
> keeping an annoyingly close watch on him, Lily's *Love-Charm-
> Protection* as a powerful counter-charm, etc. The memory that Harry 
> visited Pensieve-style is only one of these memories. 
> 

Carol responds:
"Revenant Tom"? Can you explain how you're using that term and whether
it's somehow different from Diary!Tom, who refers to himself as a
memory? (Maybe he was Memory!Tom when the diary was first created but
is now, though he doesn't realize it, Horcrux!Tom? I'll go with
Diary!Tom for simplicity's sake.)

The part about knowing that his father is a "filthy Muggle" is old
news. He knew from the beginning that at least one of his parents was
a Muggle and he suspected that it was his mother because she died in
childbirth. He searched the records at Hogwarts for information on his
father, then began trying to find information on his mother's family
instead. When he was researching Slytherin, suspecting that he was
Slytherin's Heir because he could speak Parseltongue, he must have
come across the information on his Gaunt relatives that led him to
seek them out a month or so after Myrtle's murder (which occurred on
13th June, 1943, the same day as the Hagrid memory). So he already
knew about his "filthy Muggle father" deserting his mother, leaving
her to die giving birth to him in a Muggle orphanage. He found his
uncle living in a hovel in Little Hangleton, discovered that his
mother had run off with a locket belonging to Slytherin, that his
grandfather was dead, and that the Muggle his mother had married lived
in the big house on the hill--information that Diary!Tom apparently
didn't have. There's no evidence that he had yet killed his father,
only that he hated him and didn't want to use his name, which is why
he had already, at sixteen if not before, created a new name for
himself that he used secretly among his friends, the same boys we see
in Slughorn's memory, which occurs some time after he's killed his
Muggle relatives but before he knows how to make a Horcrux, or he
wouldn't be wearing the ring. Nor would he ask those questions: "But
how do you split your soul?"  "How do you encase the soul bit"? etc.
Surely not knowing whether you can split your soul more than once is
not sufficiently important to risk discovery for. If he knew that he'd
*already* split his soul and knew how to make a Horcrux, he would just
do it! The first Horcrux would keep him from dying when he made the
second. And third, fourth, fifth, and sixth. So the number seven,
though important to him, is only one of his concerns.

Mike:
> Put this all together. Diary Soul Piece is the repository of the 
> memories and the memories stop at what 16-year-old Tom knew 
> (augmented by what he learned from Ginny and subsequently Harry).
<snipped a paragraph I don't understand.>

Carol responds:
Actually, the *memory* of Tom remembers everything up to the point
when he created the diary, plus what Ginny told him. The soul piece
enables Memory!Tom to possess the reader in addition to whatever
powers he had before. You haven't proven that Memory!Tom, who *calls
himself a memory* and talks about placing the *memory* of his
sixteen-year-old self in the diary *so that the Chamber can be opened
again* is himself a soul bit. I think he's *empowered* by the soul bit
beyond the original function of the diary. The Pensieve proves that
memories are not soul bits. They can't possess anyone, nor is Harry
possessed when he enters the memory. His experience is entirely
distinct with Ginny. The diary, or Diary!Tom, is interacting with them
differently. Both are initially charmed and persuaded to interact, but
only Harry is pulled into a memory and only Ginny is possessed.

Mike:
> Tom "decided to leave behind a diary, preserving my sixteen-year-old 
> self in its pages," and his method of preserving his *self* was via 
> a soul piece, a Horcrux. 

Carol responds:
Sorry, Mike. The first clause of your sentence is a fact (in terms of
the story), but the second is an assumption. A memory is distinct from
a soul bit, and that's not merely my opinion. *Dumbledore* could have
placed some of his memories in a diary. The *memories* would not make
the diary a Horcrux. The spell encasing a *soul bit* in an object,
preferably a magic that already has magical powers of its own, as DD
tells Harry, is what makes it a Horcrux. And the purpose of a Horcrux
is *not* to interact with other wizards, not even to cause them to
release a Basilisk or do some other reprehensible deed, but to anchor
the main soul to earth. The diary has two purposes, its original
function of "carrying on Salazar Slytherin's noble work, which it does
when the students are being Petrified, and its Horcrux purpose, which
enables Memory!Tom not only to control Ginny but to seek to suck out
her soul and take it into himself. Possibly the memory was sufficient
to possess the reader and control her, or there was an Imperiuslike
spell on the book, but only the soul bit, surely added later after Tom
knew how to create a Horcrux, could take Ginny's soul and transfer it
to Memory!Tom. These are two completely different processes. One is
ordinary possession; the other is more like what a Dementor does to
its victims, not possess them but suck their souls. Note that DD says
that the diary was as important to Tom as the ring. It could only be
important because it *already* contained the memories and the powers
that proved he was the Heir of Slytherin.
> 
Mike:
> I am assuming that Tom spent his Holidays at Hogwarts, just like 
> Harry did. In fact, since the memory Harry visited showed Tom 
> attempting to remain over the summer at Hogwarts, this seems the 
> most logical conclusion. The diary was Muggle made for the year 
> 1943. Tom must have bought (or stole) it during the summer of '43, 
> just after his fifth year but most likely before he visited his 
> ancestoral hovel. He would never have found a '43 diary later and he 
> couldn't preserve his 16-year-old self after 1943. 

Carol responds:
Wasn't his name written on the binding, or is that movie
contamination? At any rate, I agree that the diary had to be
*written*--ile., the memories placed in it, in 1943, one of them
specifically on 13th June--"the memory of my sixteen-year-old self" as
Tom referred to it. That does *not* mean that the soul bit was placed
in it at that time. Note that the memory Harry sees relates indirectly
to the murder of Moaning Myrtle (it's the reason that Tom wants to
frame Hagrid and prevent the closing of the school) but has no
connection whatever to the murder of the Riddles. I think that Tom
later used Myrtle's murder to create the Horcrux. I certainly don't
think he had it with him when he murdered the Riddles. He didn't go to
Little Hangleton with that intention. He went there to find his Gaunt
relatives, and after he found out where the Riddles lived, he murdered
them for revenge, as he says himself in GoF. (Or, rather, he says that
he murdered his father for revenge. Perhaps he didn't consider his
grandparents important enough to mention?) I think he *later* made the
ring into a Horcrux, but it certainly wasn't a Horcrux when he talked
to Slytherin, as Dumbledore indicates. (Why not? Because he didn't
know how to make one. Dumbledore was adamant that Horcruxes not be
taught at Hogwarts, probably because he knew or suspected that
Grindelwald had one, and would have made sure that such information
was not available to students in the restricted section of the library.)
> 
> So, Tom acquired the Diary with the express intent of making it a 
> Horcrux and made that Horcrux while he was still 16. 

Carol:

In your view. Not in mine. He probably *acquired* the diary just as he
turned sixteen at the beginning of the year, but we don't know what
his intent was. He may have wanted to use it to prove that he was the
Heir of Slytherin, and certainly he was trying to open the Chamber of
Secrets at that time or had already done so, but there's no indication
that he was interested in Horcruxes at that time. All we know is that
he placed the *memory* of himself in the diary when he was still
sixteen and that he didn't want his hard work in finding the Chamber
to go to waste, as even Harry realizes. That's different from placing
a soul bit in a Horcrux, which is done for a very different reason.
(Why place your soul fragment in an object as mundane as a diary
*unless* the diary is important in itself for other reasons?
Otherwise, it's not much better than a tin can or a manky old boot, a
distinction that Dumbledore makes clear to Harry when Harry asks what
was so special about the diary.)


Mike:
 He also 
> murdered his father and grandparents when he was 16 and framed his 
> uncle for those murders. Logic tells me that he brought the diary 
> with him and performed the Horcrux encasing spell when he does the 
> killing, at his father's house.

Carol responds:
Whereas logic tells me that he used Myrtle's murder for the diary and
his father's murder for the ring, both of them some time after the
diary was "written" and the ring stolen. I've already shown, and can
quote canon to prove, that he didn't go to Little Hangleton to murder
his father, much less to create a Horcrux. He went there to find out
about the Gaunts, got the idea of killing his father after Morfin
stupidly revealed that Tom looked very like "that Muggle" whom his
sister had run off with and that the Muggle lived on the hill. At that
point, Tom decided to frame Morfin and take his ring as a trophy. No
indication that he planned at that time to use his murders to create
Horcruxes, much less that he created the Horcruxes on the spot. (He
would have hidden the ring at the hovel on the spot if it were a
Horcrux rather than wearing it to the interview with Slughorn, right?)
> 
Mike:
> It is my opinion that removing a torn soul piece to it's encasement 
> must be done in close proximity to the murder that is performed for 
> that purpose. 

Carol:
But this is just your opinion, with nothing to back it up in the book.
If your argument is true, he could not have used the murders of his
grandparents for later Horcruxes. Note that the cup and the locket are
both in close proximity to Hepzibah Smith only because he murdered her
to obtain them. No other murder takes place at that time. He would
almost certainly have used Hepzibah's murder for the cup and could
have turned it into a Horcrux at that time (once he'd stunned Hokey
and performed the memory transplant), but he'd either have to use the
murder of one of his grandparents, killed some four years earlier, for
the locket, or go out and specifically kill someone to create that
Horcrux, and where was he going to find a more suitable murder for
that Horcrux than the ones he'd already committed? He had no more
relatives to kill. He'd already wiped out the Riddle line and he had
no reason to kill Morfin, a fellow descendant of Slytherin whom he'd
already framed for the murders, even if Morfin were still alive. I
think the soul bits from killing his grandparents were still split off
and available and he used one of them for the locket, his father's
having already been used. (If you split your soul through murder and
don't repent the murder, why would the soul heal itself?)

Mike:
Envision a Lord Voldemort having murdered enough times 
> to create an "army" of Inferi, not to mention murders that didn't 
> become Inferi. If he could remove those torn soul pieces at any 
> time, he would be taking a big risk of removing too much soul by the 
> time he gets to his Godric Hollow attempt. Furthermore, it would 
> render Dumbledore's opinion that Voldemort reserves his Horcrux 
> making for "significant" murders as nonsensical. If you can remove a 
> torn soul piece at any time because it stays seperate from the main 
> soul, how does one "reserve" making a Horcrux? No, IMO a torn soul 
> piece remains attached to the main soul and eventually reforms to it 
> unless it is completely seperated and removed upon it's tearing.

Carol:
I agree that the "significant murders" idea is a problem and that
Voldemort has split his soul many more times than we know of, but I
don't think JKR has considered the difficulsties inherent here any
more than she's figured out how you can remove exactly one seventh of
your soul with each significant murder, especially if you've committed
fewer than six murders. Logic would tell us that the fragments were
unequal or that, if souls split like amoebas, that you could commit
three murders to divide your soul into eighths (halved, halved again,
and halved a third time) and have all the soul bits you need for six
Horcruxes, one for yourself, and one to spare. But, oops. It doesn't
work according to logic. Somehow, Riddle!Voldemort can commit more
murders than he needs, choose the soul bit he wants (similar to the
way that Snape and Dumbledore can choose the memory they want to put
in the Pensieve but not the same process because a soul bit is not a
memory and must be split off through murder?), and have each one an
equal seventh. Maybe he had to figure out that part of the spell
before he began creating his Horcruxes? Anyway, I think we can blame
JKR for any flaws in the theory, as well as for the idea of splitting
and dividing something as intangible as a soul. (Her mythical sources
have the wicked sorceror hiding his entire soul--or heart--separate
from his body, not retaining part of it himself.)
> 
Mike:
> Therefore, before he starts his sixth year at Hogwarts, Tom has 
> created his first Horcrux. This sheds new light on the Slughorn 
> memory. It now appears that Tom really did know how to create a 
> Horcrux before that conversation, and all he really wanted is what 
> Dumbledore said he was really after. Tom wanted Slughorn's opinion 
> on *multiple* Horcruxes.

Carol:
I don't think so. I think he'd killed Myrtle, placed his memories in
the diary to enable a successor, perhaps a Slytherin with pureblood
prejudices, to "carry on Salazar Slytherin's noble work," visited
Little Hangleton to find his Gaunt relatives and ended up killing the
Riddles for revenge, and acquired the ring. But according to the
questions he asked Slughorn and the fact that he was still wearing the
ring, it seems most unlikely to me that he had made any Horcruxes by
that point. Nor do we see any change in his appearance, as we do when
he shows up at Hepzibah Smith's. There's no evidence that he had yet
created a Horcrux, only committed the prequisite murders and acquired
or created two of the six powerful magical objects that would become
Horcruxes once he knew the encasing spell and knew the seemingly
trivial fact, which he discovers not from slughorn but from
experience, that it's possible to create multiple Horcruxes.

I just thought of another point: Voldemort's soul is greatly
diminished, as is his capacity to feel human emotion and even to
appear human, but neither his powers nor his memory are in any way
diminished. I think that neither the powers nor the memories are in
the soul. The magical powers are in the blood and the memories in the
mind. Ask Snape. He'll tell you that he's taking memories, not soul
bits, from his mind when he uses the Pensieve!


Mike: 
> OK, Carol, Steve, Snow, et al, what did I miss?

Carol:
Lots! See above.

Carol, realizing that we'll probably never get a clear and consistent
explanation of Horcruxes because JKR's strong point is imagination,
not logic or consistency