Counting and trashing Horcruces

[davewitley]

I have trouble keeping track of the damned things.

Two have been deactivated: the Diary and the Ring.

On the generally unchallenged assumption that Voldemort himself 
should be counted in the total, that theoretically leaves 4.  
However, there are two difficulties with this.

The first is the idea that Harry may be an accidental Hx (BTW 
someone more thorough and energetic than myself should follow up the 
possibility that a bit of Harry's soul got detached via the scar and 
sealed in an object at GH along with a bit of V's soul, thus 
creating a double Horcrux and accounting for the link between them) 
without Voldemort knowing it.  

The second is that, according to Dumbledore, Voldemort may have been 
making the things *since* rebirthing - as I understand it, this is 
where Nagini comes in.  If so, he could have replaced the diary, at 
least.

That way, there could still be 5 objects plus Harry out there:

Locket, cup, unknown presumed Ravenclaw object: part of the 
original "Empire Collection" to which the ring and the diary 
belonged;
Nagini (presumed replacement for GH supposed failure), unknown 
object to replace the diary: part of the new "Post-Modern 
Collection";
Harry: the nucleus of the rival "Salon des refusees Collection".

And he may get to work to replace the ring, too.

The other thing that occurs to me about all this is that by the time 
they have finished, Voldemort, Dumbledore and Harry will have done a 
pretty fine job between them of trashing all the wizarding world's 
most ancient and magical objets d'art.  The ring is gone, the locket 
is e'en now prik't, the cup cannot be far behind.

This raises unavoidable Tolkienesque associations for me.  Do these 
trinkets, like the Elven Rings of Middle Earth, play some role in 
maintaining the WW?  People have already speculated on possible 
Nazgul-inducing properties of Slytherin's ring had Dumbledore kept 
it intact.  Like the, count 'em, 7, Palantiri, do the properties of 
these devices become corrupted and formed to the will of the Dark 
Lord?

In other words, will the WW take lasting damage from the destruction 
of its ancient treasures?

David