Harry, Voldemort & the Horcrux at Godric's Hollow

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 174725


> Brothergib:
> I think you could argue the case either way. Yes he did use a peasant 
> and a tramp to make a couple of Horcruxes. However, he also 
> specifically hunted down his father to make one of his Horcruxes, and 
> also used Hepzibah for another.

Carol responds:
Actually, he didn't. He was hunting for the Gaunts to find out more
about his history of the Heir of Slytherin. Morfin Gaunt let slip that
Tom looked "mighty like that Muggle" and Tom, who did not set out to
murder anyone, learns about his mother running off with the locket to
marry the man who lived on the hill. He also learns about the Peverell
ring. So he Stuns Morfin, steals the ring, and sets out to commit a
previously unplanned murder, for revenge. But the ring is not yet a
Horcrux; we see it on his finger when he talks to Slughorn, presumably
immediately after he returns to school for his sixth year. He wants to
know whether a wizard can make more than one Horcrux (he's already
made the diary) and is already thinking in terms of six Horcruxes and
a seven-piece soul. But he neither creates the Horcrux on the spot nor
performs the murder specifically to create the Horcrux. It seems,
though, that even though he's murdered three more people (his
grandparents thrown in because they're there, in the way, or just to
punish and destroy the whole Riddle family and wipe out his "filthy"
Muggle heritage), he's apparently reserving that soul piece (don't ask
me how he can distinguish one from another) to use for the ring
Horcrux. And he kills Hepzibah as much to get the cup and the locket
as to have a soul bit for the Horcrux.

Clearly, DD was wrong about Tom's reserving important murders for the
Horcruxes (Bertha Jorkins? An Albanian peasant?). Also, he seems to be
wrong about his intending to make a Horcrux with Harry's murder. The
passage that I quoted clearly shows that he's there to destroy the
threat of the Prophecy Boy. There's no indication that he has any
object with him or any intention of making a Horcrux. Maybe his next
move would have been to steal the Sword of Gryffindor and use Harry's
murder to make a Horcrux with it, but DD's murder would have done just
as well. (If he'd had an object with him, JKR would have mentioned it.
And while any old murder will do for Tom, any old Horcrux won't.)

Brothergib:

 I think the creation of the Nagini horcrux was a sign that LV was
panicking. He had convinced himself that a 7 piece soul was most
magically powerful, but had attempted to kill Harry while it was still
only in six pieces. As soon as he was able to use a wand after that
night, he created his final Horcrux from the one thing he had to hand.
And one other point - I still don't see how Myrtle could be used to
create a Horcrux, since it was the basilisk that killed her. Yes, I
understand that Riddle was controlling it, but that seems rather weak
to me!

Carol:
Panicking? Can you cite any supporting evidence for this view? He has
five Horcruxes already, and we see from his smug attitude in DH that
he thinks they're all perfectly safe. And his dear Nagini has helped
to restore him and keep him alive. In his view, she would deserve the
honor, not to mention that she makes a fearsome Horcrux, as shown in
the Bathilda chapter (and comes in handy in OoP as well). He rewards
her by feeding her his victims. I don't think he's panicking so much
as resigning himself to the impossibility of ever getting his hands on
the Sword of Gryffindor.

As to how using the Basilisk to kill Myrtle would constitute a murder,
don't you think that saying "Kill!" to Nagini and ordering her to kill
Snape counts as a murder? Evidently, he did exactly the same thing
with the Basilisk and Myrtle (and Memory!Tom tried to do it with Harry
in CoS.) He also says to Harry, "Killing Muggle-borns doesn't matter
to me anymore.") The Basilisk and Nagini are as much his weapons as
his wand is. Or, to paraphrase the anti-gun-control people. "Wands
don't kill people. People kill people." Neither the Basilisk nor
Nagini would have killed had Tom/Voldemort not ordered them to do so.
Murder is murder, whether the weapon is a wand, a gun, a snake, or a
car. For that matter, Regulus was murdered, too--by poison followed by
Inferi--and Voldemort didn't even know that it was happening. But he
had set it up to happen if anyone tried to steal his precious Horcrux.
I think that if DD had died from the cursed ring, that, too, would
have counted as murder--perhaps one more reason why DD wanted Snape to
kill him.
> 
> As for DD being mistaken, I was convinced after HBP, that DD had
made a mistake somewhere along the line - maybe that Nagini wasn't
actually a Horcrux. However, DH proved that DD was absolutely spot on!
Therefore, I now find it difficult to believe that he was mistaken
about Godric's Hollow. It is possible that he may have been, but I
think the evidence argues against it!

Carol:
What evidence? I don't see it. Can you find it in the scene in DH
where LV is actually planning and committing the murder? Surely,
that's were it would be if it existed. Unless you mean that Harry
became an accidental Horcrux, in which case, he's not mistaken (though
I was!), but DD doesn't mention that in the HBP scene we're
discussing. I'm saying DD was mistaken about Tom wanting to use
important murders to create his Horcruxes, and if JKR's chat comments
count as canon, he *was* mistaken on that one (minor) point. Neither
an Albanian peasant nor Bertha Jorkins counts as an important murder,
and Myrtle is only important as his first-ever victim. As for objects
important enough to be made into Horcruxes, what was left? Only the
Sword of Gryffindor, which he certainly didn't have. (I was sure that
Nagini was a Horcrux, BTW, and boy, was she!)

> 
> Brothergib again;
> Again, I'm not sure that proves that he wasn't intending to make a 
> Horcrux after the event. But I agree that the lure of Gryffindor's 
> sword must have been great.

Carol:
Okay, good. A compromise view we can agree on. He went to GH to kill
the Prophecy Boy, his primary motive and the only one revealed in the
text, with the possible hope or intention of obtaining the Sword of
Gryffindor now that he was invincible ("the one with the power to
defeat the Dark Lord" having been destroyed). It would have been easy
enough, in his view, to kill DD, take over Hogwarts, steal the Sword,
and make it a Horcrux to complete his collection. But with the only
one who could defeat him out of the way, he would have felt a little
less need to create an additional Horcrux. Only, of course, it didn't
quite work out as planned.

Carol, sure that there was no other object and that *if* he intended
to use the Prophecy Boy's murder to make a Horcrux, he would have
considered the Sword the only suitable container for that particular
soul bit