HOW TO DESTROY A HORCRUX

Well, Harry's task is abundantly clear for Book 7. He has four Horcruxes to destroy: The locket, the cup, the snake, something of Gryffindor's or Ravenclaw's. (Or is it five? Hang on, we'll come back to that.)

The Locket. I believe it is the heavy gold unopenable locket found during the cleaning-up of 12, Grimmauld Place in Order of the Phoenix. Yes, it seems easy -- but we're just about at the end of the story. Pieces should be coming together by now. So I would be surprised if it were elsewhere. And it makes sense: If R.A.B. is (as I expect) Regulus Black, it's easy to imagine him, dying, coming home, hoping to find a better place to secure the locket, but unable to do so because he died (either due to the poison potion or due to Voldemort killing him in person).

The Cup. It needs to be found. I'd be surprised if it were also at 12, Grimmauld Place. That, indeed, would strike me as too easy. But finding the cup feels like a task someone like, say, Hermione would excel at. A little old-fashioned detective work. I would expect the finding and destruction of the cup to come fairly early in the story.

The Snake. Now we're getting more difficult. Voldemort keeps Nagini pretty close at hand, as we've seen. However, I think we can assume, barring other information leaked by J.K. Rowling over the next couple of years, that if Harry kills the snake, he kills/destroys the Horcrux (one of the "risks," I would assume, intended by Dumbledore in stating that it's risky to use a living object as a Horcrux-depository). So I will make a couple of weak predictions: (1) The snake will be the last Horcrux destroyed, tied in somehow with Harry's final battle with Voldemort (perhaps the moment that precipitates that battle?) and (2) We will get to see Harry speak (not just understand) Parseltongue again in Book 7.

Something of Gryffindor's or Ravenclaw's. I'm not so sure about this one. JKR rarely slips us red herrings, but she may have come close to doing so here, given the very vagueness of the item in question.

Dumbledore surmises that Voldemort was trying to invest a Horcrux in one object each from the four founders of Hogwarts (succeeding with the Slytherin ring and the Hufflepuff cup), but that he failed to complete his intent. In fact, Dumbledore suspects that Nagini is, in essence, a fall-back Horcrux, used only because Voldemort failed to get the thing(s) of Gryffindor's or Ravenclaw's that he really wanted. So who's to say that Voldemort ever succeeded in this particular quest?

If he didstore a Horcrux in something of Gryffindor's or Ravenclaw's, what could it be? Dumbledore states that the only relic of Godric Gryffindor's we have is his sword. That's not quite correct, of course: The Sorting Hat was also Gryffindor's. But somehow both of those items just feel wrong. The Hat has consistently sounded very, well, Gryffindor-ish, and one would think that having a Horcrux of Voldemort's in it would tend an object toward evil (as indeed the diary was a seducer of both Ginny and Harry). And the Sword served Harry well in book 2 -- and did so without drawing any reaction from the Tom Riddle who was there, present, at the time. So I doubt if either of those are the object Harry is looking for.

What about an object of Rowena Ravenclaw's? Well, to the best of my knowledge, we don't know of any such objects, so Harry would have to start such a search very much from scratch. (Again, if he has to do so, Hermione will be invaluable.) Possible, but that's a lot of exposition to cover in a book where most of the exposition should be already done.

I'm curious about the Award Tom Riddle got -- the one Ron Weasley had to polish in the trophy room in book 2. It's certainly, from Voldemort's point of view, a very safe place to store a Horcrux. It's in an incredibly defended place -- Hogwarts -- and in a room filled with objects that no one pays any attention to. And it's an object that has already been set up without any payoff whatsoever. I think it's worth paying attention to.

So that accounts for six Horcruxes (the Diary, the Ring, the Locket, the Cup, the Snake, the Hogwarts-related object). But Voldemort implied to Slughorn that he intended to make seven Horcruxes. So what is/was the last one?

Since each Horcrux requires a murder as part of its creation, Dumbledore surmises that Harry's intended murder was part of the making of Voldemort's final Horcrux. So the question becomes:

Did Voldemort make a seventh Horcrux? And is Harry, perhaps due to the failed Avada Kedavra spell, himself the seventh Horcrux?

I frankly think we don't know enough about Horcrux creation to answer this question fully. I think we state without equivocation that Voldemort certainly didn't intend to turn Harry into a Horcrux. He intended to kill him, making a Horcrux out of some other object.

So that begs the question: Can a Horcrux be created inadvertently?

I think this is really the question at the heart of the issue. Could Harry have been turned into a Horcrux by mistake?

I think (not convinced yet, but leaning that way) the answer is no. Murder seems to be one of the elements involved in creating a Horcrux, but from the descriptions given by Slughorn and Dumbledore, it seems to be separate from the process of splitting the soul. It's certainly not indicated that every killing involves a deliberate splitting of the soul on the part of the killer (certainly members of the Order of the Phoenix have killed in the pursuit of their duties, and we're not hearing lots of concern about how do they restore their souls).

The Avada Kedavra cast at Harry was, due to Lily's sacrificial love and willingness to die in the place of her son, turned back onto Voldemort. It should have killed him, we have been told. (Note that this entails an assumption that "death" is the departure of the soul from the body.) However, because Voldemort's soul was, for all intents and purposes, no longer in his body, it did not kill him.

How, in that moment, could a Horcrux have been created? I know people are surmising that the Horcrux is Harry's scar. Okay, clearly the scar is very very important. We know that it is the way the Dark Lord has "marked" Harry as his equal, per the prophecy. We know that it is somehow part of the link between Harry and Voldemort -- the scar hurt when Harry sensed Voldemort's moods, Harry speaks Parseltongue, etc. And we know that JKR intends the last word of book 7 to be "scar" -- so it's very important indeed. But is it really a sign of the presence of Voldemort's soul?

I don't think so. Wouldn't Harry have some awareness of Voldemort's presence in his own soul? Wouldn't Voldemort have some control over Harry, as he has over Nagini? And think back to the moment at the end of book 5 when Voldemort possesses Harry, but is unable to stay within him because of the love in Harry's heart (specifically his surge of love for Sirius, which drives Voldemort out of his body) -- Wouldn't a sequestered piece of Voldemort's soul have the same problem? If Harry is so "pure of heart," as Dumbledore says, wouldn't any part of Voldemort find him, to say the least, a most inhospitable environment?

Another reason why I think Harry is not a Horcrux: Dumbledore never broaches the possibility with him. Dumbledore is in the process of giving his very life to destroy Voldemort's Horcruxes, and is training Harry to either stand alongside him or take his place. He is pouring information into Harry at an unprecedented pace. He has given more thought to this, done more research (often dangerous research) than anyone in the world, other than possibly Voldemort himself.

Given this, if Dumbledore even suspected that Harry (or his scar, or any part of him) could be a Horcrux, I have to believe he would have mentioned it to Harry! Instead, he indicates that Voldemort's attempt to make his seventh Horcrux (with Harry's intended death) failed.

So I think Harry's task is as it appears to be at the end of book 6: Find the remaining four Horcruxes (the Locket, the Cup, the Snake, and the last Hogwarts-related one). Then take on Voldemort one-on-one and kill him. (Oh, is that all?!)

Which raises another interesting question: How do you destroy a Horcrux?

It is clearly very, very VERY difficult. Dumbledore basically says that Harry only destroyed the Diary because Voldemort got sloppy, entrusting it to Lucius Malfoy without tell Lucius what he really had in his possession. The destruction of the Ring Horcrux almost killed Dumbledore, and did destroy his wand hand (quite a price to pay, especially with four Horcruxes still to go). We also know that, were it not for Snape's "timely action" upon Dumbledore's return to Hogwarts, Dumbledore very well might have died.

Getting to one of Voldemort's Horcruxes is clearly difficult enough, given the episode in the cave, and Dumbledore's brief description of the finding of the Ring Horcrux. But how do you destroy one? There's nothing in the Hogwarts library about it, we know that. Voldemort probably knows, but he certainly isn't telling. Slughorn may know, but will he tell? Dumbledore can't tell Harry any longer (or can he? What knowledge does his portrait in the Headmistress's office retain?). And one can't carry a basilisk fang around all the time, just in case.

And if Dumbledore needed Snape (with his vast knowledge of Dark magic and curses) to keep him alive after the destruction of the Ring Horcrux, what/who will Harry need if he succeeds? Snape is no longer available to him. Are Hermione/Ron/Ginny enough to get Harry through this?

The tasks ahead of Harry clearly promise an extraordinarily exciting book 7!

A couple of last thoughts on the Horcruxes and especially on the concept of the splitting of the soul:

As a Christian, I am very excited about this storyline, because of the presuppositions it entails: To follow the story, we must assume that humans have souls, and that those souls are vitally important. I think this is a wonderful presupposition to plant in the minds of readers who, in our materialistic post-Christian world, are taught from many many angles to assume just the opposite. Way to go, Ms. Rowling!

And, also as a Christian, as I read about Voldemort and the splitting of his soul to gain immortality, all I could think of was Mark 8:36: What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul? That is exactly the choice Voldemort has made here: The world (power, immortality, etc.) at the expense of his soul. Never have I before seen such a profound, emotionally-walloping example of that verse. Wow.

There is much more to be said about Horcruxes. And much much more information needed before we can all feel sure we understand (info we probably won't get till book 7)! I look forward to all your thoughts on the subject, as I feel I have barely scratched the surface.

Next post, I think I will talk a bit about the other questions remaining to be answered in book 7. Thanks for reading!