Horcrux

Template:Current fiction A Horcrux is a magical object in the fictional Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. The first known example of such an object was introduced in the first novel of the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, although the concept of the Horcrux was only explained in the sixth novel, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Horcruxes play a large part in the seventh and concluding book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Description

The Horcrux is a "receptacle in which a Dark wizard has hidden a part of his soul for the purposes of attaining immortality." With part of a wizard's soul thus stored, the wizard becomes immortal so long as the Horcrux remains intact, typically hidden away in a safe location. If the wizard's body is destroyed, part of the soul remains preserved within the Horcrux. However, the destruction of the Horcrux creator's body leaves the wizard in a state of half-life, without corporeal form. The dark magic involved in the creation of a Horcrux is considered most despicable and is therefore rarely published, even in books devoted to the Dark Arts.

A Horcrux can be made from any normal object, as well as living organisms. Destruction of the Horcrux destroys the fragment of soul contained within it, ending the protection it provides, and rendering the creator mortal if there are no remaining Horcruxes. A wizard must have at least one piece of his soul intact on Earth in order to continue living. Thus, if all of the Horcruxes created by one wizard were destroyed, then there would be no way for the wizard to return after being killed, as his death would release the last piece of his soul from mortal existence.

Lord Voldemort is the only wizard explicitly mentioned as having created a Horcrux (though others are known to have done so) and is the only wizard known to have created more than one.

Creation

If a specific spell to create a Horcrux exists, it is not mentioned within the books, although it is stated that to create a Horcrux the creator must commit a murder which, as "the supreme act of evil," "rips the soul apart." Once the murder is committed, the spell is cast to infuse one portion of the ripped soul into an object, which becomes a Horcrux. There is no apparent limitation on the nature of the items that can be made into a Horcrux; even living creatures may be used, though this is hinted at being inadvisable because animals can die, and once it does, the fragment of soul can no longer inhabit it, making it "risky business" to make an animal a Horcrux. There also seems to be no limit to how many Horcruxes a wizard can create, but in Voldemort's case, each time he split his soul and created another Horcrux, he lost more of his humanity. As the soul is further split and manipulated as such, it becomes more and more temperamental and unstable.

The spell to create a Horcrux is found in Secrets of the Darkest Art, which had been removed from Hogwarts' library by Dumbledore; however, Hermione Granger was able to retrieve a copy of this spell book from his office.

Also, under very special circumstances, a Horcrux can be created without the intention or knowledge of the creator.

Destruction

Unlike normal objects, Horcruxes are notoriously difficult to destroy. They cannot be destroyed by conventional means such as smashing, breaking, or burning. According to a book Hermione Granger had acquired from Dumbledore's office, a Horcrux represents the exact opposite of a human in terms of containing a soul; while harm to the human body will cause no damage to the soul, the fragment of soul within a Horcrux depends on this corporeal form to exist. In order to be destroyed, a Horcrux must suffer damage so severe that repair through magical means would be impossible. Four methods of destroying a Horcrux are depicted in the series: basilisk fangs (which contain basilisk venom), the sword of Godric Gryffindor (which is infused with basilisk venom), the Dark Magic spell Fiendfyre, and, if the Horcrux is a living being, the death of that being.

Usually, the creator of a Horcrux will notice its destruction, but Dumbledore theorizes that Voldemort has split his soul too many times to notice destruction of his Horcruxes, which turned out to in fact be true in the last book. Voldemort only fears for his security after Hufflepuff's cup was stolen.

The piece of soul in a Horcrux can be returned to its maker's body, but only by forcing the creator to feel deep remorse for the death that created that fragment. Doing this can make the creator die from the pain.

Within the Harry Potter novels

Lord Voldemort's creation of Horcruxes is central to the later storyline of the Harry Potter novels.

In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Dumbledore states that he believes it is likely that Voldemort created six Horcruxes from six important murders, and kept the remaining portion of his soul within his body, thus keeping his soul in seven places. Voldemort chose to do so as seven is a powerful, mystical number (see Bridget Wenlock). In reality, Voldemort's soul was split (albeit without him realizing it) into eight pieces, seven of which were embedded within Horcruxes. The murder of Lily Potter removed another piece of Voldemort's soul, which was inadvertently sealed within the then-infant Harry Potter. Thus, anyone wishing to completely kill Voldemort must first locate and destroy all of his Horcruxes, before attempting to eliminate the remainder of his soul that resides in his body.

Dumbledore believed that all of Voldemort's Horcruxes are objects that have had some importance or sentimental value to him.

Each Horcrux is destroyed by a different person: Harry (diary), Dumbledore (ring), Ron (locket), Hermione (cup), Crabbe (diadem), Voldemort (Harry) and Neville (Nagini). Two (the diadem and Harry) were destroyed accidentally. Voldemort killed himself when the killing curse he performed on Harry with the Elder wand rebounded upon him.

Tom Riddle's Diary

Tom Riddle's Diary was left with Lucius Malfoy before Voldemort's "death". Lucius hid the diary in Ginny Weasley's possessions (aware of its corrupting magical properties but unaware of its importance to Voldemort) in the hopes that in killing the Muggle-borns attending Hogwarts, Ginny's father, a well-known Muggle supporter, would be discredited. Ginny tries to flush it down a toilet to dispose of it once and for all but steals it back after it ends up in the hands of Harry Potter. The spirit inside the diary possesses Ginny and she opens the Chamber of Secrets.

Harry deactivates it, destroying the Riddle manifestation and the soul fragment, by stabbing the Basilisk's poisonous fang into the pages of the diary.

Harry takes the diary back to McGonagall's office, where she and Dumbledore confront Lucius Malfoy. Harry returns the diary to Malfoy, but it is not stated what became of it. Dumbledore later realises that the diary was a Horcrux, and one of many, and speculates that Voldemort only discovered that the Horcrux had been destroyed when he "forced the truth out of Lucius Malfoy", and "that his anger was terrible to behold".

Marvolo Gaunt's Ring

Events of Tom Riddle's earlier life, as revealed in the Pensieve, suggested that he took Marvolo Gaunt's Ring when he framed his uncle, Morfin Gaunt, for the murder of the rest of the Riddle family (which he confessed to after a memory change; Voldemort was the real murderer).

Tom Riddle wore the gold-and-black ring at Hogwarts, and it appears on his hand in Horace Slughorn's Pensieve memories.

In book 7 it is disclosed that Voldemort had placed the ring in a golden box, hidden under the rotting floorboards of the Gaunt House protected by enchantments.

Dumbledore found Marvolo Gaunt's ring in the Gaunt shack where Voldemort hid it, during the summer shortly before the start of Harry's sixth year at Hogwarts.

Dumbledore destroyed the ring Horcrux with Godric Gryffindor's sword. Yet he was foolish, for he succumbed to temptation and tried on the ring, which was horribly cursed. Seriously injured, with his hand appearing blackened and burned, Dumbledore has less than a year to live. The whole incident makes Severus Snape (who aids Dumbledore after his terrible encounter with the ring) angry at Dumbledore, and his irrationality with the ring. Dumbledore then reveals that he wants Snape to kill him, for he wants to avoid the pain and humilation that would come with death from the curse .

The damaged ring, with its black stone cracked down the middle, was kept for a time on a little table in the Headmaster's office; Harry later noted that it was no longer there, but received no explanation from Dumbledore.

Its black stone was encapsulated inside the first Snitch Harry ever caught and could be opened only when Harry was about to face his death; this was left to him by Dumbledore. The stone set in the ring is important for another reason, as it is the Resurrection Stone, one of the three Deathly Hallows, making it the only artifact to be both a Horcrux and a Hallow. It could bring the dead back for a time in a manner both like and unlike a ghost, even after it was cracked by Dumbledore's destruction of the Horcrux. Voldemort did not know this; however, Dumbledore did, hence his attempt to try on the ring.

Salazar Slytherin's Locket

Salazar Slytherin's Locket was once owned by Lord Voldemort's mother, Merope Gaunt. When Merope was homeless and starving after Tom Riddle Senior abandoned her during her pregnancy, she sold the locket to Caractacus Burke for a tiny fraction of the Locket's true value, not having known its true value (it was priceless) or more likely having simply ceased to care.

Riddle then used the Locket as a Horcrux and hid it in a cave by the sea in which he had once terrorized two of his fellow orphans years earlier.

Regulus Arcturus Black also known as R.A.B and his house elf Kreacher then stole the Locket and left a note to Voldemort explaining what Regulus had done. Unfortunately, Regulus did not destroy the locket - rather than force Kreacher to drink the terrible potion that guarded it, he did so himself and died, entrusting Kreacher with the task but not realizing that the house-elf would find it impossible. As a result the locket came to reside at #12 Grimmauld Place. Regulus realized that Voldemort had made a Horcrux, but not that he had made more than one. As he was being hunted by Death Eaters who wished to punish him for defecting from their cause, death by drinking the potion was not a useless sacrifice.

In Book 5, members of the Order found the locket but did not recognize it, and discarded it after being unable to open it. Kreacher rescued the Locket from the rubbish heap, and hid the Locket in his cupboard. Mundungus Fletcher stole it from him and tried to sell it. Dolores Umbridge received it from Mundungus as a bribe, as he had no license to sell such an object, and she tried to use it to prove her ancestry. Harry, Hermione, and Ron infiltrated the Ministry of Magic and retrieved the Locket.

Harry opened the Locket using Parseltongue. Ron destroyed it by stabbing its windows with the Sword of Gryffindor, after much encouragement from Harry, as the locket defended itself by intensifying and projecting Ron's insecurities.

The locket may have been made a Horcrux with Hepzibah Smith's murder, but it seems more likely that her murder was used to make the Hufflepuff Cup into a Horcrux and another unknown murder used to make the locket.

Helga Hufflepuff's Cup

Helga Hufflepuff's Cup was once owned by Hepzibah Smith, a distant descendant of Hufflepuff. Tom Riddle murdered her, stole the Cup, and made it into a Horcrux.

Voldemort entrusted the Cup to Bellatrix Lestrange, who kept it in her family's vault at Gringotts Bank, protected by duplicating and heat spells. Upon contact with foreign human flesh, the cup would replicate into searingly hot copies (Harry is able to confirm that the cup, along with other objects in the vault, do not replicate at the touch of Godric Gryffindor's sword). Harry, Ron, and Hermione stole the Cup from the vault and escaped from the bank on a partially blind but nevertheless fierce dragon, who had been shackled in the deepest depths of Gringotts to protect the vaults of the goblins' oldest clients.

Hermione Granger destroyed this Horcrux shortly before the Battle of Hogwarts by using a fang from the remains of the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets.

Rowena Ravenclaw's Diadem

Rowena Ravenclaw's Diadem was stolen by her daughter Helena Ravenclaw, later revealed to be the true identity of the Grey Lady, ghost of Ravenclaw House. Helena ran away with the tiara, pursued by her then-suitor, the Bloody Baron. Shortly before he caught up with her in an Albanian forest, Helena hid the Diadem in a hollow tree. When Helena refused the Baron's advances, he killed her. Horrified by what he'd done, he killed himself.

Years later, Helena's spirit was tricked into revealing the Diadem's resting place by the charming Tom Marvolo Riddle. Riddle traveled to Albania (where he returned to hide in exile years later) and acquired the Diadem, transforming it into a Horcrux.

Later, Voldemort returned to Hogwarts to request from Dumbledore the Defence Against the Dark Arts position, and hid Ravenclaw's Horcrux in the one place that he believed he alone knew about, the Room of Requirement. Harry was able to deduce the Diadem's location in the Room of Hidden Things (a manifestation of the Room of Requirement). Harry inadvertently moved the Horcrux in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince when he tried to hide his potions book.

It was destroyed by Fiendfyre started by Vincent Crabbe, who also perished in the fire.

Harry Potter

Harry Potter (who then was a baby) was the only living entity left in the room when Voldemort's fatal Killing Curse backfired on himself. Voldemort's soul had been so weakened by his continuous creation of Horcruxes that when he was ripped from his body, a fragment of his soul was lost when he fled the scene, and this fragment attached itself to the then infant Harry Potter. This gave Harry a window into the Dark Lord's mind and his gift of Parseltongue.

Years later, Voldemort used some of Harry's blood to resurrect himself, as described in the fourth book. As a result, some of Lily Potter's protection over Harry was in Voldemort. This accounted for Dumbledore's "gleam of triumph" upon learning that Voldemort had used Harry's blood in the fourth book, knowing that it was this mistake that would save Harry---by bringing Lily's sacrifice of love into himself, Voldemort had in effect turned himself into a Horcrux for Harry, in that Harry could not die until after Voldemort did himself. Unlike the other Horcruxes, Dumbledore did not directly provide Harry with the suggestion that he could be a Horcrux; he asked Severus Snape to reveal this information to Harry at the end of his task, hoping Harry would have summoned up enough courage from his previous adventures to sacrifice himself willingly, though Dumbledore suspected and hoped that the blood connection would keep Harry from actually dying.

Voldemort was entirely unaware that Harry was his sixth Horcrux, or the fact that, by giving himself Harry's blood, he had actually made it harder to kill Harry. Thus the curse did not destroy Harry, but did, however, destroy the piece of Voldemort's soul inside him; as a result the two's magical connection was broken, and the way was cleared for Harry to kill Voldemort later.

The books do not reveal when Dumbledore first realised that Harry might be a Horcrux. It is most likely that Dumbledore realised this fact gradually between the events in the Chamber of Secrets and the end of Goblet of Fire. This realization of Harry as the final horcrux may possibly have been the clue that caused Dumbledore to consider the possibility that Voldemort created multiple Horcruxes.

Nagini

Nagini was said by Albus Dumbledore to have been made into a Horcrux with the murder of Frank Bryce in the first chapter of Goblet of Fire. Not knowing that he had inadvertently made Harry into a Horcrux, Voldemort believed Nagini to be his sixth and last Horcrux necessary to split his soul into the magically significant seven pieces.

Once Voldemort realized that his other Horcruxes (except Harry, which he did not know of) were no longer functional, he cast a powerful bubble-like protective shell around Nagini during the Battle of Hogwarts. When he believed wrongly that Harry Potter was dead, he carelessly removed this protective shell from around the snake.

When the right distraction came, Neville Longbottom, acting on Harry's previous instructions to kill the snake should the opportunity present itself, brought the Sword of Godric Gryffindor down on Nagini, severing her head and rendering Lord Voldemort mortal once again.

Although the goblin Griphook had taken the Sword of Gryffindor from Harry in Gringotts, the Sorting Hat, which Neville had at the time upon his head, had previously displayed the ability to recall the Sword from its current location. As a true Gryffindor, Neville could invoke this power to obtain the Sword, as Harry had five years before. On both occasions it was removed from the hat, the Sword was used to slay a serpentine creature which was a personal familiar of Voldemort.

Concept comparison

The idea of a Horcrux is similar to the story of Koschei, who is said to have taken his soul and put it inside a needle, which is in an egg, which is in a duck, which is in a hare, which is in an iron chest, which is buried under a green oak tree, which is on the island of Buyan, in the ocean, all in an attempt to achieve immortality.

Another analogy is the One Ring, in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, into which Sauron incorporated "the greater part of his power" at its forging. While it was lost, the defeated and almost destroyed Sauron could continue to exist: his ring needed to be destroyed in order to kill him. In the meantime his evil character corrupted all wearers of the ring, with greater effect on those who used it with ignoble intent or who kept it for a long period. In a similar way, close contact with Lord Voldemort's Horcruxes had negative personality effects; the characters who may have experienced these effects to a greater or lesser degree include Ginny Weasley (Diary), Lucius Malfoy (Diary), Kreacher (Locket), Albus Dumbledore (Ring), Bellatrix Lestrange (Cup), Dolores Umbridge (Locket), Ronald Weasley (Locket), Hermione Granger (Locket, Cup), and Harry Potter (all, except Ring).

It should be noted that the concept of a Horcrux is very similar to the concept of a lich's phylactery, or with the heart of Davy Jones in the movies Pirates of the Caribbeans.

In the online game World of Warcraft, the Warlock class can create a "Soulstone" which is also very similar to a Horcrux.

Bibliography

Books

• Frazer, James George, Sir, The Golden Bough, "Chapter 67:The External Soul in Folk-Tales". (Wikisource).
• Rowling, J. K. (1997). Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Bloomsbury. ISBN 0747532699.
• Rowling, J. K. (1998). Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Bloomsbury. ISBN 0747538492.
• Rowling, J. K. (2000). Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Bloomsbury. ISBN 074754624X.
• Rowling, J. K. (2005). Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Bloomsbury. ISBN 0747581088.
• Rowling, J. K. (2007). Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Bloomsbury. ISBN 1551929767.

Online resources

• Frazer, James George, Sir, The Golden Bough, "Chapter 67:The External Soul in Folk-Tales". (Wikisource).
• Rowling, J.K. . "J.K. Rowling's Official Site". {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |accessmonthday= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)