Of Hxs and parasites

[Barry Arrowsmith]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "dungrollin" <spotthedungbeetle at ...> wrote:
> Dung:
> I think the problem is then, why did Tom (by that time already 
> Voldemort, and possessed by Sally) have to ask Slughorn about them 
> at all? 

Good question.
Ask me another.
Hmm... plot requirements?
The need to get some explication/explanation into the realm of the reader?
IIRC (and this wasn't about JKR) fantasy writers sometimes complain how
difficult it is to introduce new concepts in a neat and apparently natural
fashion. Not claiming that that's what Sluggy is for here, but it would be
an understandable reason for the backstory.
Plus if Tom hadn't at that time been totally subsumed he might be looking
for confirmation of what he'd been told.
Guessing, but it's the best I can come up with pre-lunch.

> 
> How about... Sally had been working to a 3-Hx plan (three's magical, 
> isn't it?) but got caught, AKed and stuffed in the Chamber until 
> either someone worked out how to get rid of him (since nobody could 
> find the Horseradish) or the Heir came to set him free and revive 
> his dream? That would give Tom a reason to try to confirm that 
> perhaps a 7-hx plan would be surer. 
> 
> So you could have 3 from Sally, and 3 from Tom, and the mingled 
> Sally!Tom would be the 7th. Then Harry's Horcrux would be an 
> unintended 8th, a piece of the mingled Sally!Tom soul, weakening the 
> whole shebang.
>

Wouldn't surprise me if there weren't 7 extant after all.
Sure, that's the general expectation based on DD's whitterings, but just
because there *were* seven doesn't guarantee that there are 7 still
cluttering up the landscape. Some may have returned to base already.
Gonna be a helluva long book if they haven't.

Never did warm to the idea of Harry!Horsecocks either - having one and a 
seventh soul seems a bit excessive somehow. And why should off-cuts
of soul mean power transfer? Power is learned, developed, a soul just *is*,
immutable annd indivisible, right from the beginning, in my cosmology. 
I'm not happy.
You can tell, can't you?

> Not necessarily. There was a terrible curse on that ring, we're 
> never led to believe that it was destroying the Horsebox that fried 
> DD's hand rather than just a protective curse when he was breaking 
> through Tom's enchantments in the ruin of the Gaunt House; on the 
> other hand, the diary was *meant* to be read and used, so grilling 
> the wielder's extremities and then expecting them to make it all the 
> way down to the Chamber would be a bit, well, unsubtle.
> 

Exactly.
I thought the idea was that Hxs would be hidden, safe and protected.
Tampering by unauthorised persons strictly forbidden. So why have one
whose function is to be dipped into by others?  Does not compute.
And if the Diary was a Hx, containing soul, power or whatever, then
it seems unlikely that Ginny would be able to discard it quite so easily.
Once it started exercising mind control she'd be caught, subject to its 
every whim, potentially with lots of power at her disposal: a Tom reprise.
Or maybe a Bella Weasley in the making.
Wouldn't that be fun? Harry'd have some fascinating dates, for sure.

But that didn't happen. In fact it was no more dangerous (less so in some 
respects) than other cursed objects - the book one can't stop reading, for
example.

> 
> It was the cries of "AK's don't do that!" in discussions of Horcrux-
> Harry over on HPfGU which reminded me that there were other 
> possibilities I'd almost forgotten about but that others had 
> covered. Had completely forgotten about old Sally. I'm most 
> interested in the possibility that a possession attempt at GH was 
> what made Harry into a Horcrux, and whether Lily's sacrifice could 
> have had something to do with it's nature.
> 

Sally.
He's the one, I'm convinced of it.
Has to be, in fact. It's the logical conclusion of Possession Theory.
He's the main protagonist, the source of evil that everything is tied to.
The puller of strings, the final opponent young Potter will be up against.
"Slytherin will help you become great," thus spake the Hat - and IMO it
didn't mean Slytherin House, it meant Sally himself, 'cos it could see
him inside the Potter noggin. 
But hopefully not as a Hx. Which admittedly makes it a bit difficult when
incorporating the current understanding of what's going on.
Nobody ever claimed it would be easy.

> Dung.
> Who's actually really had enough of both parasites and 
> parasitologists, having just fought off another horde of Plasmodium, 
> during which her teeth were chattering so hard she thought she'd 
> break the thermometer.
>

You have my sympathy.
Which flavour did you get?
Me, it's just the opposite - I developed a severe allergy to a range of 
anti-malarials years ago while in Africa.
No more foetid mosquito infested swamps on my travel itinerary. 
By order.
Hooray!

Kneasy