Horcrux Cheat by JKR? (Was Tom Riddle and the RoR)

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 181909

zanooda:
> 
> Maybe a murder needs to be fresh not in the sense of "recent", but
in the sense of "latest", each consecutive murder erasing the previous
one for the purpose of Horcrux-making. <snip> To use Myrtle's murder
to make a H-x LV only needed to do it at any time between her murder
and his father's murder.

Carol responds:
Excellent suggestion. If you're right, Tom must have killed the older
Riddles in front of Tom Sr. to torture him emotionally before
murdering him. (Maybe he already hoped to make the ring into a second
Horcrux and deliberately saved his murder for last, but I suspect that
causing his father anguish before he killed him was the primary motive
for saving him till last--again, if you're right, and I think you are.)
> 
zanooda:
> The same with the ring - he could make it a H-x at any time between
his father's murder and the next murder - I don't know if it was
Hepzibah Smith or that Albanian peasant, or the tramp. 

Carol:
It was almost certainly Hepzibah's. He was still working at Borgin and
Burke's when he found out about the cup and the locket, and he killed
her, framed Hokey, and stole the future Horcruxes at that point. (DD
says in HBP that he doesn't think that Tom committed any murders
between Hepzibah and the Riddles, and Tom's appearance suggests that
he hadn't yet made the Ravenclaw Horcrux.) He certainly hadn't yet
killed the Muggle whose murder he used for the locket Horcrux because
it was obtained at the same time as the cup, for which he used
Hepzibah's murder. I assume that he made the cup Horcrux as soon as
possible after the murder, probably the moment he had safely
Disapparated. but he'd have to commit another murder to make the
locket Horcrux. Possibly he was in such a hurry to make that Horcrux
that he killed the first person he saw. At that point, he could not
possibly go back to work at Borgin and Burkes; his altered appearance
would give him away instantly to his Dark Arts expert employers. I'm
guessing that he fled to Albania; exactly when he made the Ravenclaw
Horcrux is unclear, but it had to have been before the DADA interview
some ten years later.

zanooda:
This way the ring doesn't need to be a H-x when LV talks to Slughorn,
because he (LV) didn't kill anyone yet after his father (although he
needed to kill him *after* the grandparents). 

Carol:
Right. He has already killed them or he wouldn't have the ring, but I
don't think he'd be wearing the ring, or asking those questions, if he
had already made a second Horcrux. (I've already dealt with the father
being killed after the grandparents, which as you say must be the case
if he used that soul bit to make the ring Horcrux.)

zanooda:
> LV didn't have to make the ring a H-x right after or very soon after
the murder. But, if he wanted the ring H-x to be made out of his
father's death, and not out of any other, he needed to turn it into
H-x *before* he killed someone else. I'm not sure that it's the right
idea, because it's late and my head doesn't work well :-).
> 
Carol:
I'm sure you're correct. and, in any case, he had no reason at that
point to kill anyone else. (Myrtle was killed to "carry on Salazar
Sytherin's noble work" and his father was killed for revenge (with the
older Riddles thrown in for good measure, either to destroy his Muggle
heritage, not just the Riddle name but his father's maternal bloodline
as well or to torment Tom Sr. or both). But he had no motive to kill
anyone else until greed (not really a strong enough term to describe
his lust to possess those particular artifacts) drove him to murder
again. The other two murders (I'm not counting Bertha here) were
committed solely to create fresh soul bits for the Horcruxes. The soul
bits form the older Riddles were evidently inaccessible, as you
speculated.

> > Mike:  
> > And I bow to your wisdom in picking Nagini as a Horcrux, I 
thought she was a red herring. 

Carol:
Thank you. Only I thought that she must have been made a Horcrux
before GH to account for the transformation in his appearance between
the DADA interview and his second return, at which point he seems to
have already been snakelike. I still can't account for that one.
> 
zanooda:
> 
> Yeah, me too :-). Never believed she was a H-x. We were right about
Harry!Horcrux though :-).

Carol:
And I resisted Harry!crux with every argument I could come up with. I
still don't think he was a true Horcrux since no encasing spell was
performed on him. Accidental Horcrux or quasi-Horcrux or something
like that, but he doesn't act like the diary or locket Horcruxes, or
Nagini (who must already have had some sort of affinity with
Voldemort), and I don't think it's solely because he had his own
"pure" soul. I think it's also because he wasn't a true, spell-encased
Horcrux.

Carol, hoping that JKR will provide a well-thought-out, complete,
canon-consistent explanation and backstory for Voldemort (and for the
duel between DD and Grindelwald, while I'm at it)