Did Voldemort make use of a Horcrux already?

[Mike]

No: HPFGUIDX 165571

> In http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/165529
> Inge queried:
> 
> > As most other subjects, this has probably been discussed earlier, 
> > but I'm wondering if maybe Voldemort already used one of the 6 
> > Horcruxes which he created.
> > 
> > <snip first quote and part of second>
> > 
> > 2) (p 566): I, who have gone further than anybody along the path 
> > that leads to immortality. You know my goal - to conquer death. 
> > And now, I was tested, AND IT APPEARED THAT ONE OR MORE OF MY 
> > EXPERIMENTS HAD WORKED... (my highlights) for I had not been 
> > killed, though the curse should have done it."
> >   <snip>


> In http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/165546
> Carol responds:
> If "using" a Horcrux involved providing himself with a new body 
> like the one he would have had if Diary!Tom had succeeded in 
> using Ginny's soul to give himself a new body, Voldemort would 
> not have been vaporozed at Godric's Hollow.
 

> In http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/165547
> Annemehr:
> Well, it's my understanding that the soul-piece that was still 
> inside Voldemort when the AK hit him *was* the vapor that spent 
> all those years in Albania, because it was tied to Earth by the 
> pieces in Horcruxes.  <snip>
> 
> Reading your post, I remembered this bit of the post-HBP 
> Leaky/Mugglenet interview:
> 
> "The one that I wondered whether I was going to be able to get past 
> the editors was the physical condition of Voldemort before he went 
> into the cauldron, do you remember?  He was kind of fetal.  I felt 
> an almost visceral distaste for what I had conjured up, but there 
> was a reason it was in there, and you will see that."

Mike:
Has anybody else just received a revelation by putting together these 
three posts? I think I have. So thank you Inge, Carol and Annemehr :)

Let's travel with Voldemort chronologically. He loses his body at GH 
but his mutilated soul survives. He drifts off to Albania? I know 
it's just a convienently far away place, but what if it is also the 
place where JKR had LV hiding a Horcrux? LV can possess animals and 
humans, but he doesn't have his own body. He needs one of those to be 
able to perform his own magic. In the mean time he is sort of a 
ghost, but less so. In fact "less than the meanest ghost". Not sure 
what if any reason JKR had for adding the adjective "meanest".

Voldie meets Quirrell in Albania and travels with him back to 
England, with the hope of using the Philosopher's Stone as a shortcut 
to getting his body back. While at Hogwarts, he has Quirrell drink 
Unicorn blood for him, why? Blood was one of the three ingredients he 
needed for regeneration, was he hoping Unicorn blood might obviate 
the need for the other two ingredients? Anyway, it didn't work.

While LV is back in Albania, we get to see one of his Horcruxes take 
center stage. That soul piece almost succeeds in regenerating a new 
body. And what is it using to regenerate? **Ginny's soul!** and 
nothing else.

After Wormtail rejoins Voldemort, LV gets a that "kind of fetal" 
rudimentary body back. The one that JKR had a reason for giving him 
despite her "almost visceral distaste" for the concept. Put together 
what he got in CoS, a 'normal' body regenerated from a whole soul, 
with that "fetal" body -- regenerated from a piece of soul?

JKR had her reason for giving LV that body, that falling quite short 
of human body. And regenerating from a piece of soul instead of a 
whole soul seems like a logical reason for her to give it that form.

This theory needs help. How does Nagini tie in. He uses her venom as 
a sort of mother's milk, but is there more? And why snake venom?

Anybody want to add on or tear down this one? :-)

Mike, thinking Inge found one of the four remaining Horcruxes and it 
isn't one anymore. Yay!