A dastardly Voldy plan - was: Re: Lockets

[Jen Reese]

Carolyn:
> All we really know is that he had the ring before he left school,
> and like you, Jen, I would like to think that the murder of his
> father would be suitably symbolic and significant to create that 
> Hx. However, since he asked Sluggy about Hxs **after** obtaining
> the ring, I think we are forced to conclude that it wasn't a Hx at
> that point.

Jen: Since we see Tom in the diary as 'not a day older than 16' he 
learned to make Horcruxes very shortly after the murder of his 
father and the talk with Slughorn. Also, he's wearing the ring in 
the memory with Slughorn and not wearing it in the diary memory. So 
I'd say both those Horcruxes were made right after the murders 
associated with them.

Carolyn: 
> Similarly, I like your idea that Moaning Myrtle (as a mudblood)
> would be suitable for the creation of a diary which housed the CoS
> secret. On the other hand, her own description of her death made
> it sound as though it was an accident that she saw the basilisk.
> Tom no doubt could hear her sobbing her eyes out in the loo, but
> he doesn't seem to have directly targeted the snake at her. She
> overheard a boy talking in Parseltongue and opened the door to
> tell him off, encountering the snake as it came up out of the
> sink. 

Jen: If Tom used 'significant' deaths to make the Horcruxes, and 
that seems likely given his psychological obsession with significant 
objects, then Myrtle's death would definitely outweigh the deaths of 
his grandparents. They were afterthoughts, wrong-place, wrong-time 
murders. Throwaways. So unless there was another murder we don't 
know about, Myrtle must be it. It was unpremeditated, but since Tom 
opened the chamber and was using Paseltongue to unleash the basilisk 
on the school, it *was* murder. 

Carolyn:
> There is also the point that she came back as a ghost, which seems
> a bit inconvenient for the dedicated Hx producer. You'd want your
> murderee to stay well dead, I'd've thought. We do at least know
> for sure that Tom was 16 at this point and therefore had another
> year to go at school.

Jen: Heh heh, good point. Foreshadowing for another murder, another 
ghost who can give us information down the line? 

Carolyn: 
> Moving on to the locket and cup, he seems to have murdered
> Hepzibah within a year or so of starting work with B&B. DD says he
> thinks this is the first murder that Tom did since his father and 
> grandparents, so by this point he has more than enough murders in 
> hand to create four Hx, and he could also have used the Vanishing
> Cabinets to move from B&B into Hogwarts to place the cup in the 
> trophy room before he resigned his job.

Jen: I've changed my mind about Hepzibah. I think he used that 
murder for the Hufflepuff cup Horcrux. She was distantly descended 
from Helga, and appeared to be rather silly. Not worthy of the 
Slytherin locket worn around his mother's neck. No, the locket must 
have been a *very* significant death we either don't know yet or 
haven't pinned down.

Really smart idea about using the Vanishing Cabinents to replace the 
services award at the school! I've been wondering how he could 
accomplish that if the award cup is a Horcrux.

Carolyn:
> [As an aside, is anyone else vaguely irritated that we seem to
> have *two* Slytherin artefacts as Hxs? Seems to spoil the symmetry
> of one from each of the founders, plus dead muggle father...and 
> his nemesis Harry? Is the locket a massive red herring?].

Jen: I think it fits the psychological profile for Voldemort to 
consider both Slytherin items extremely valuable and worthy of being 
made into Horcruxes. One is the only link to his mother and 
therefore very significant, and the other was used as a complete 
rejection of his Muggle heritage in favor of being Heir of 
Slytherin. 

Carolyn:
> My thinking is that the ring, the locket and the cup were all put
> in their hiding places early on, but that he kept the diary with 
> him until much later. Hxs 4 and 5 were created in the interim but
> after he heard the prophecy, he saved up the Potter and/or
> Longbottom murders for Hx No.6. 

Jen: I agree with that timeline completely. There was a suggestion 
on HPFGU that LV hid the diary at Gringotts, but that seems like a 
very common place and not up to his standards.

Carolyn:
> However, just because of the prophecy, I think 
> he was mighty nervous about what might happen if he went for Harry 
> and Neville and therefore put two back up plans in place. One was 
> giving the diary to Lucius with only partial instructions and a 
> strict injunction not to deploy it until Voldemort said so. The 
> other was the Regulus affair, enabling the locket to be moved from 
> its hiding place to somewhere that it could more easily take over 
> any witch or wizard that found it and put it on.

Jen: Argh!! I have such a mental block about the Regulus affair. 
First that he was involved at all, and second because I want to see 
RAB turn out to be a someone really spectacular. Like R. Amy Benson 
getting her revenge after all these years ;). I also think the 
locket was placed in the cave early on and remained there, because 
the protections are definitely Voldemort's work. Someone else was 
able to outwit them before Dumbledore, someone equally clever and 
powerful. I want to be amazed to find out who that person was and 
how they managed to do what Dumbledore barely accomplished. Regulus 
and Kreacher would be a big letdown in my book <g>.

Jen