The Diary!Horcrux Great Debate

[Mike]

No: HPFGUIDX 163804

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "justcarol67" wrote:

> Carol:
> Sigh. I don't agree. 

Mike:
Gosh, sorry if this bores you, but then you did bring it up.

> Carol:
> If he knew how to make the diary into a Horcrux,
> he'd have known how to make the ring into one, but the ring wasn't a
> Horcrux or he wouldn't have been wearing it. He'd already committed
> four  murders (Myrtle and the Riddles), and if he could use one of
> those murders, he could have used them all.  <snip>

Mike:
But you see, we have differing views on how and when a Horcrux can be 
made. IMO the object must be present and designated as the Horcrux 
repository at the time of the murder. I don't happen to believe that 
one could reserve a particular killing until some time in the future 
to extract a particular soul piece that was torn for a particular 
murder. Time and space matter in magic, I believe Snape said. It 
seems practical to me that reserving a Horcrux creation for a 
particular murder means creating the Horcrux at the time of that 
murder, not being able to designate a particular soul piece, if 
you're Voldemort and have lots of them, as the soul piece to be 
externally encased. This is a long way of saying that I don't 
consider Tom not making the ring a Horcrux, at that time, was an 
option and therefore has no bearing on the diary.

> Carol again:
> Of course he knew how to play Slughorn. Even Harry saw that. But he
> wants crucial information that he doesn't get--how to make a 
> Horcrux. After that, he asks the two questions about multiple 
> Horcruxes, both of which to me seem self-evident. If he's 
> researched Horcruxes and knows how to make them, why bother to ask 
> Slughorn anything? Just make a second Horcurs (typo accidental but 
> I'm keeping it), since a suitable object is available and the first 
> one will protect you from death, and see what happens?

Mike:
Umm... OK? I see you're having difficulty getting through to that 
knucklehead Tom Riddle, him asking all these foolish questions. 
Please be patient with him, he's only 16 after all. Wait... he'll 
catch on soon enough. ;-)

> Carol:
> His appearance has not changed since Harry sees him after in the 
> diary memory, which obviously occurs before he's written the diary 
> and placed that memory in it. That Tom, the Tom he encounters in 
> the CoS, and the Tom who visits Slughorn (and has committed four 
> murders) all look virtually identical. <snip>

Mike:
Right. And if the Tom in CoS is the way he looks *because* he's made 
his first Horcrux and stuck it in the diary, and is the same one-
Horcrux Tom we meet talking to Slughorn, they would look the same.


> Carol:
> <snipped the banter, but I liked it>   Look at the three 
> descriptions of Tom that I've cited, the first one indisputably
> before he's made a Horcrux because he hasn't created the diary yet,
> and see if you can find any differences. <snip>

Mike:
The first one *is* the Diary!Tom, right? I'm not sure what you're 
referring to. How can the first Tom be before he created the diary if 
it is the diary? As to indisputable, sorry, as I've just said above, 
it isn't indisputable that Diary!Tom looks that way after the first 
Horcrux since imo Diary!Tom is the *result* of the first Horcrux.


> Carol:
> The diary as originally created, to cause someone to open the 
> Chamber of Secrets, would not have required a Tom in human form.
> All he needed to do was release the Basilisk and command it to 
> "Carry on Salazar Slytherin's noble work." <snip>

Mike:
Agree with your first sentence, disagree with the second. In order to 
possess Ginny, cause her to do all those things, including openning 
the Chamber, *required* a soul piece. This is indisputable, 
Dumbledore told us that a "mere memory" could not have done that. 
It required a soul piece to act and think for itself, let alone 
possess Ginny, which it did in the very beginning of the school term, 
*before* it changed it's attention from openning the Chamber to 
Harry. That was it's original purpose, that was it's original design, 
imo. IOW, an interactive diary with memories and a Pensieve-like 
feature to play those memories could not have caused the Chamber to 
be openned. Tom designed the diary to house the soul piece and 
Dumbledore confirmed that without the soul piece it never would have 
been able to possess Ginny and thereby open the Chamber.

 
> Carol:
> You're right that we have no idea how such a diary would 
> function, but we don't know how a Pensieve functions, either. 
> Both use a memory drawn from someone's head and enable someone 
> else to enter it. <snip>

Mike:
I think we have been given ample oppurtunity to understand how a 
pensieve functions. We will never be shown how or if an interactive 
diary without a soul piece functions because Tom didn't make one of 
those, at least, we don't know that he made one of those. That was my 
point. Yours is speculation as to what might have happened if Tom had 
made the diary without a soul piece. But we have no evidence that he 
did that.

> Carol:
> I'm not denying that diary!Tom became nearly human because the diary
> was a Horcrux. We know that to be true. I'm saying that, as 
> originally written, the diary seems to have included the "memory of 
> [Tom's sixteen-year-old self"--a self who could not yet have made 
> any Horcruxes because he had not yet put himself in the diary (that
> memory, it seems to me, would have to go in there, too). It was only
> when the already valuable, already powerful diary received a soul 
> bit, after Tom learned how to make a Horcrux (perhaps from visiting
> Grindelwald, who is in the books for a reason and seems to be the
> wizard alluded to by Dumbledore in HBP as having made a Horcrux) 
> that he would have been able to possess anyone. <snip>

Mike:
Once again, "originally written" is speculation. We don't know that 
Tom extracted memories from his brain and put them into the diary. We 
do know that he put in a soul piece and that soul pieces include 
memories. We also know that without a soul piece the diary could not 
perform it's original function of openning the Chamber, Dumbledore 
told us so. Tom designed the diary that way. I fail to see why he 
would need to seperately extract memories, when the soul piece had 
all the memories in the first place. "Originally written" postulates 
that Tom didn't originally design the diary as a weapon to open the 
Chamber. That he only later added the soul piece.


> Carol:
> <snip> I don't think that sort of thing was part of his original
> intention. It only became possible after the diary, already proof 
> that he was the Heir of Slytherin, became a Horcrux.  <snip>

Mike:
It has just occurred to me that Dumbledore's explanation to Harry as 
to why the diary was valued enough, by Tom, to qualify as a Horcrux 
gives the impression that the diary was first created as a simple 
bragging tool. Then later, it was made into a Horcrux which turned it 
into a weapon. I see now how that could color ones perspective. The 
problem with this line of reasoning is that Diary!Tom told us he 
created the diary to "finish Salazar Slytherin's noble work". It 
sounds to me like Tom planned to put the soul piece in from the get-
go. He needed it to do his carrying on.


> Carol responds:
> Nothing of the sort. Diary!Tom is the age of the memory or memories
> that Tom at that age put into the diary. His age when he created the
> soul bit has nothing to do with it. Nor do I think that the other
> Horcruxes have the same power as the diary as they contain no memory
> along with the soul bit.  <snip>

Mike:
Big disagree.<g> Soul pieces most definitely contain memories. Lupin 
told us so in PoA. We have proof; the LV that came out of the 
cauldron (which was a disembodied soul piece) certainly retained all 
it's memories.

> Carol:
> <snip>  And, of course, JKR couldn't be any plainer in CoS. She
> couldn't give away the fact that the diary had become a Horcrux. But
> "my sixteen-year-old self" is not the same thing as a soul bit. The
> other Horcruxes don't preserve, say, his twenty-year-old self 
> because they don't contain memories in their pages. They don't even 
> have pages. They're not intended to store memories, as the diary 
> had to do if it was to enable the reader to release the Basilisk.
<snip>

Mike:
I definitely agree that JKR decided not to release the name "Horcrux" 
in CoS. That is why Tom called himself a "memory", though he later 
told us that he poured a little of his soul into Ginny. As to the 
other Horcruxes containing memories; I reiterate that soul pieces 
have memories. The others weren't made interactive, at least we don't 
know that they have *yet*, but they most certainly contain memories.

> Carol:
> And another thing--the soul bit would have come from his
> sixteen-year-old self because he was sixteen when he murdered Myrtle
> and his parents. So the soul bit, which would presumably cease to
> grow and develop, being split off from the main soul, would be the
> same age as memory!Tom regardless of when the Horcrux was created. 
> (I don't think the age of the soul bit matters, but if you think it 
> does, there's your answer.)

Mike:
Woo, where to start. Different opinion on Horcrux creation, don't buy 
the being able to select your soul piece from one of many past 
murders, don't think he split his soul with Myrtle's death-by-
Basilisk. Kind of hard to debate when we are so far apart on the 
basis for debate. I'll just leave it here. :-)

> Carol:
> We can't take Tom Riddle's making a Horcrux at sixteen as fact. All 
> we know is that he created the diary, preserving the memory of his
> sixteen-year-old self in his pages, as proof that he was the Heir of
> Slytherin. Memory!Tom could have interacted with the reader much as
> the Sorting Hat does, writing back and forth instead of speaking, 
> and taken the reader into the diary's pages, much like a self-
> activated Pensieve, controlling and manipulating the reader without 
> having the power to possess them. We don't know how the diary would 
> have worked before it was a Horcrux, but we do know its original 
> purpose and we do know that Tom only made powerful magical objects 
> into Horcruxes.

Mike:
Well, I certainly wouldn't try to assert my belief as fact. I was 
only responding to your aside that Tom didn't create a Horcrux at 
sixteen. We had this debate once before, didn't resolve it then, 
don't think we've resolved it this time either. ;-) I'll agree to 
disagree if you will.

I'll even give you the last word:

> Carol, simply noting that Tom's making a Horcrux at sixteen is an
> assumption, one way of reading the evidence, and that other readings
> are equally valid at this point