Do you agree? (Harry as Horcrux)

[Ken Hutchinson]

No: HPFGUIDX 163831

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Mike" <mcrudele78 at ...> wrote:

> 
> Mike:
> I am a Harry-is-a-Horcrux camper. Not to go into that so much as to 
> defend our camp on a point of order. Being in our camp does *not* 
> require us to believe that Harry is going to sacrifice himself in the 
> end. There are just as many Horcrux!Harry campers in Geoff's IWHTL 
> club as not <that is, if he'll let us in :-)>. There are many 
> theories floating around as to how Harry can safely get the Horcrux 
> *OUT*, which of course means those people believe both in the Horcrux!
> Harry and in IWHTL.
>


I guess I see "Harry as horcrux" like so many other plot theories at
this point: they are a herd of Schrödinger's cats. They are neither
dead nor alive, they are both dead and alive, until we all finally get
the chance to "observe" them. Then all the quantum-mechanical wave
functions will collapse into a "reality". Whether or not we will like
that reality is another question entirely and the answer will
undoubtedly vary from individual to individual.

I agree with Mike that Harry could be a horcrux and that this does not
doom him. We know nothing really about how horcurxes are made or
destroyed. Of the two examples we have, the diary has a hole in it and
the ring has a cracked stone. It is true that the contents of the
diary have been rather thoroughly destroyed but then they were in a
very real sense a living part of Riddle, they would be destroyed when
the soul bit died. The physical diary itself only has a hole in it. If
Harry happened to have a soul bit embedded in that scar then he
certainly could survive a cracked skull or having a bit of his skull
removed as many modern accident victims and surgical patients survive
these types of injuries and procedures. 

Could a horcrux be created accidentally? Well in some sense, no, it is
a deliberate act. But the details of that process have been
deliberately hidden from us and that in itself is suspicious. We
simply do not know if the spell can be cast in advance to take effect
once the murder has been committed or if it can only be cast
afterward. If it is the former and if Voldemort had intended to make a
horcrux of young Harry's skull then it is quite likely that the spell
would have gone off as "scheduled". Like so many things it is unclear
if Voldemort has considered this possibility and if he has what he
believes happened that night. "Leave the boy for the Dark Lord" could
be an indication that he knows, or suspects, that Harry is a horcrux.

I don't consider the appearance of Tom Riddle during his school years
a reliable guide to whether or not he had created a horcrux by the
time of the Slughorn interview. He was a growing boy, of course his
appearance changed during this period. It did not change in a way that
made him unrecognizable or inhuman but it is reasonable to think that
whatever changes had occurred by the creation of a single horcrux
could have been masked by the changes one expects in an adolescent. 

Neither I, nor Dumbledore apparently, think that the point of Tom's
questions to Slughorn were intended to uncover how to make a horcrux.
They were directed at getting his reaction to the notion of multiple
horcruxes. Tom either already knew how to create a horcrux or where to
get that information, in my opinion.

The fact that Dumbledore did not mention the possibility that he might
be a horcrux to Harry is hardly conclusive. Dumbledore is famous for
withholding information from Harry because he fears that Harry is not
ready for it. This simply could be another case of that. Dumbledore
never did get around to relating the story of how he disarmed the ring
horcrux either and you would think *that* was information Harry needed
to know too.

I somewhat doubt that the diary would have been the first horcrux
Riddle created. It seems a little too ordinary to have been the first
but as Dumbledore says it may not have seemed so ordinary to Tom. I
don't think that Tom's wearing the ring during the Slughorn interview
is a reliable indicator that it was not a horcrux at that point. Tom
was a cocky teenage boy. The species is known for doing inadvisable
things while showing off. He may have been afraid of death but like
most teenagers he would have thought it was years away anyway. There
was plenty of time to hide it later and wearing a horcrux to class
every day under Dumbledore's nose would be a very appealing stunt in
Tom's eyes, if the ring were one at that point. Even if it was a
private joke with himself.

I haven't seen an argument yet that is sufficient to convince me one
way or the other. A scar horcrux feels right to me but since many of
you strongly disagree personal feelings aren't a reliable indicator
either. Until Rowling finishes the chapter describing Voldemort's
(presumed) demise there truly is no answer to the question. She could
still go either way up until that point. Some of our favorite cats
will live, some will die, we cannot know which is which until we have
the books. Rowling will know before us, hopefully very soon now if not
already, but *she* isn't going to spill the beans. She's part of the
wave function.

Ken

PS: Here is a really wild theory that came to me one night this
weekend when I woke for some reason. Could Dumbledore have been a
horcurx? Tom did make a wand movement in that scene in Dumbledore's
office and we were intended to believe that was when he cursed the
DADA position. What if it had a different purpose entirely? What if
Tom had become convinced that Dumbledore was the closest thing to a
Gryffindor relic that he was likely to find? Even I am distrustful of
thoughts that come in the middle of the night and yet....