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

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 183560

Mike wrote:
> <snip>
> 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.


Carol responds:

Just for clarification: You think that the diary (the first Horcrux)
was made when Tom was sixteen (based on the age of memory!Tom, who
turns out to be a soul bit), but you think that he waited to make it
till after he had killed his father? Why not make the Horcrux at the
same time as he made the diary, from Moaning Myrtle's soul bit? (Her
death significant as his first murder and the proof that he's the Heir
of Slytherin.)

Obviously, he hadn't made the second Horcrux when he talked to
Slughorn because he was wearing the ring, but once he found out that
more than one Horcrux was (theoretically) possible, surely he went
ahead and made the second Horcrux from the ring, using his father's
murder, so, IMO, he he'd made two when he visited Hepzibah Smith.
(He's not wearing the ring, so he must have already made that second
Horcrux, right?)

Mike: 
> 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.

Carol:
Where does the ring Horcrux fit into this picture? And surely, he'd
have used his father's soul for it rather than for the diary, which,
if I understand your argument correctly, is the only Horcrux you think
he'd made at that point?

Mike: 
> 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.
> 

Carol responds:

I agree that he clearly made at least one more and probably more than
that between the murder of Hepzibah and the DADA interview to alter
his appearance so significantly. But I disagree about the number of
Horcruxes he'd made at the time of the DADA interview.

The first Horcrux (the diary, made at Hogwarts) seems to have made no
perceptible difference in his appearance except an occasional red
gleam in his eyes, perceptible in Memory!Tom in CoS. (I can't remember
whether we see the red gleam in the Slughorn memory or not.) The
second (the ring, made at Hogwarts or soon after, probably shortly
after the Slughorn interview in his sixth year) seems to have made him
slightly thinner and paler, but this change only enhanced his good
looks, as we see in the Hepzibah chapter. (The red gleam also appears
when he looks at the cup and the locket.)

The third Horcrux would logically have been made (as you say) using
Hepzibah's murder (only you call that the second Horcrux, leaving out
the ring for some reason): she was the owner of the cup (and locket)
and an heir of Helga Hufflepuff, so her soul bit is "significant". I
think he must have made that Horcrux immediately, having both a soul
bit and an appropriate object at hand. Whether he was too excited by
having Slytherin's locket in his possession to wait to make the fourth
Horcrux, we don't know, but if he used a Muggle tramp as JKR says in
her interview, that must be the case. (Canon itself doesn't tell us.)

Why did Tom disappear at this time? Did he think that he might be
suspected as the murderer despite framing Hokey? I don't think so.
What about the thief, surely the same person, if it wasn't Hokey? It
seems that neither Mr. Borgin and Mr. Burke nor the Smith family
suspected him. There was no hue and cry about the theft, nor was it
associated with his disappearance. I think he could have stayed if he
had so chosen, getting away with both theft and murder through his own
slipperiness, if not for one small detail that gave everything away:
the third (cup) and probably the fourth (locket) Horcrux altered his
appearance so drastically that Dark Artifact experts like Mr. Borgin
and Mr. Burke would strongly suspect or even *know* that he had stolen
those valuable objects and made them into Horcruxes. Stolen, highly
valuable objects in combination with a suspicious death supposedly
committed by an aging House-Elf *and* the greatly altered appearance
of their brilliant and once-handsome young clerk? No wonder Tom
Riddle, now irretrievably Lord Voldemort, left town. (IMO, of course.)

Mike:
> 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.

Carol responds:

At that point there's something like a ten-year gap, during which he
was surely searching for and may have found the Ravenclaw tiara.
Whether he had made this fifth Horcrux when he applied for the DADA
position, I don't know. I think not, based on the alterations that had
not happened yet. (Not as snakelike as he would later be.) And what he
was doing during those years, aside from "consorting with the worst of
our kind" (clearly not Grindelwald, however) and gathering a few of
his former school "friends" as the first few Death Eaters, I can't say.

But then he disappears from sight *again*, not to surface till ca.
1970, some fourteen years or so later and wages VWI for eleven years.
I doubt that he made another Horcrux during that time. The Voldie who
appeared on the scene ca. 1970 (having probably been gathering DEs and
other followers, willing and otherwise, before that time, probably
looked exactly as he did at Godric's Hollow, so snake-faced and scary
looking that he terrified a child who, at first, thought that he was
wearing a costume. 

We know what happened after that--Vapor!mort, possession of Quirrell,
Vapor!mort again, Fetal!mort, and a last Horcrux, not counting Harry's
scar, made using the soul bit from Frank Bryce's murder: Nagini. That
Horcrux does not affect his appearance, which quite possibly couldn't
be any less human than it already is. When he regains his body, he
looks, apparently, exactly as he did on the night of Godric's Hollow,
before he lost not one but two more soul bits (one entering Harry's
open cut and the other, eventually, encased in Horcrux!Nagini).

I didn't mean to go into so much detail. I agree that there are huge
gaps in Voldemort's history and we can't be exactly sure when each was
made. But my guess is that the first two, the diary and the ring, were
made while he was still at school; the next two, the cup and the
locket, very soon if not immediately after Hepzibah Smith's murder;
the diadem some indefinable time after the DADA interview but before
VW1. The others--Nagini and the Scarcrux--we know about.

It's not quite what I originally thought, but, oh, well. It's the best
I can do based on the canon we have now, supplemented by an
uncanonical (IMO) interview.

I don't have any comments at the moment on the rest of the post, but I
may come back to it. This response is too long already.

Happy Fourth, Mike and anyone else who celebrates this uniquely
American holiday!

Carol, heading off to watch the fireworks on TV because it's too hot
to watch them live