Why so long for the last Horcrux? & the Nagini factor

[Mike]

No: HPFGUIDX 183559

> > kennyg1864 wrote:
> > I just discovered that *Harry's* death was to be the 7th H:
>
> > DD: "He seems to have reserved the process of making
> > Horcruxes for particularly significant deaths.
>
> >  I am sure that he was intending to make his final
> > Horcrux with your death." (HBP, ch 23)
>
> > However, this doesn't change that LV waited almost 35 years,
> > since he didn't know of the Prophecy until 1980.
> 
>
> Jerri responded:
> 
> "Maths again!"
> 
> <snip> 
>  That aspect of the books is one I have to just let roll 
> by with a "it's just a book/series" shrug, rather than 
> try to analyze or try to make things fit.

Mike:
I don't think I even have to get my plot-hole filler out for this 
one. Let's see.

Riddle had gotten his hands on the Horcrux book and learned how to 
make them before that chat with Slughorn. At least that's what 
Dumbledore surmised according to Harry. <DH, p.103> Personally, I 
surmised that Riddle had made his first Horcrux before that chat. 
There is no canon for this, only JKR interview info, which I don't 
count as canon. But it fits the mold; if Riddle was already armed 
with the Horcrux info when he went to find his father and was already 
a powerful enough wizard to effectively employ an AK, I think he was 
also able to make his first Horcrux from his fathers murder.

My second postulation is that Riddle didn't manage a second Horcrux 
until Hepzibah Smith's death, when he got his hands on the two 
founder objects. Just a guess, but I thought he'd made the Hufflepuff 
cup into one from the H-puff decendent's death.

That's only two Horcruxes by the time he leaves Britain on his dark 
arts exploration quest, which lasted for around ten years. Did he 
make any, some, or all of the other 3 Horcruxes during this time? We 
have no way of knowing. Based on his appearance at his interview with 
Dumbledore, ca Jan 1947, my guess would be that LV made at least one 
more during these 10 years. 

But I surmised that he didn't yet make all of them. Harry noted LV's 
appearance during his Pensieve visit of DD's memory as: 

"His features were not those Harry had seen emerge from the great 
stone cauldron almost two years ago.They were not as snake-like,... 
and yet he was no longer handsome Tom Riddle." <HBP, p.441>

Since these physical changes seem to be driven by making Horcruxes, 
it stands to reason that LV had more than one more to make from the 
time of the DD interview until the resurrection in GoF. And though he 
was no longer the handsome TR from the H. Smith memory, he doesn't 
seem to have made a whole 4 more transformations by the time of the 
DD interview.

This is a long way of saying that I don't think LV waited 35 years 
between Hx-5 to his attempt at Hx-6. I think he made at least one and 
possibly two more Horcruxes between the DD interview in 1947 and that 
fateful evening in Holloween 1981.

As to kennyg's DD quote above, I think DD was making a guess here and 
was only partially correct. Which is another way of saying he was 
wrong. It appears that LV would have been happy to make Horcruxes 
from significant deaths, but based on his use of the Muggle Frank 
Bryce's death to make Nagini!Crux, for LV the play was the thing. He 
may have been intending to make that Horcrux with Harry's death, but 
when that didn't happen he used the next convenient death to make 
that one. 

If Carol and I are right, the Prophesy was made then told to LV at 
the time of Harry's conception, around Holloween 1979. This seemed to 
be when LV decided to divest himself of his Horcruxes and have them 
hidden away. This guess is based on *who* he gave his Horcruxes to. 
One to Bella and one to Lucius, meaning he waited until this 
generation of DEs came onboard before he started handing them out. He 
hid the locket himself, around this time. Best guess is that he hid 
the Diadum, which he probably picked up and Horcruxified during those 
10 years of travel, during that DD interview. No idea when he hid the 
Ring in the Gaunt hovel.

Which brings us to his last Horcrux and my final speculation.

Hermione, reading from the Horcrux book, told us that a Horcrux can 
flit in and out of it's encasement if someone gets emotionally close 
to it. That's what happened to Ginny in CoS. LV seemed to be 
emotionally close to Nagini, and only Nagini, enough so that this 
Horcrux could have been flitting out to inhabit LV's body. 

There's no way to guess what might happen when his own soul piece 
flitted into his own body. Did it try to possess it like the Diary 
soul piece possessed Ginny? Was it trying to rejoin with it's *home* 
soul piece? 

Since the Diary soul piece reflected the Riddle at the time of it's 
encasement (16-year-old Tom), did this piece take on the 
characteristics of the deformed, pain-ridden, fetal Baby!Mort of the 
time when it was made? Was this piece more deranged than the already 
deranged Voldemort, having survived for those 13 years without it's 
mind? And if so, could the flitting in and out of this piece have 
been a factor in the stupidification of the LV in DH that I and many 
other percieved?

Just a few speculations.

Mike