Even Slytherin's locket was fairly inert when it was initially discovered in a cabinet in the drawing-room at 12 Grimmauld Place. It displayed no powers and gave no indication that it possessed superior magical properties. Horcruxes also possessed some last line of defence against destruction. The fragment of soul within the Horcrux seems to be able to sense impending threats and can act to defend itself.
For instance, Slytherin's locket viciously taunted Ron Weasley with visions of his deepest fears in the hopes of preventing him from stabbing it with Godric Gryffindor's sword , and even attempted to strangle Harry Potter when he was close to obtaining the Sword with the intent of piercing the locket.
Aside from its self-defence mechanism from the soul fragment, a Horcrux is usually enchanted by the creator to have other forms of defences to prevent destruction. Marvolo Gaunt's ring contained a deadly curse that would kill anyone who touched it. To create a Horcrux was to divide one's soul — the " essence of self " — and it was therefore in the creation of a Horcrux that one fell prey to Adalbert Waffling 's first Fundamental Laws of Magic , which essentially stated that tampering with one's soul inevitably resulted in grave side effects.
Creating Horcruxes was considered perhaps the most dreadful act possible. One of these such side-effects was the "dehumanising" effect the mutilation of one's soul was said to have.
The more Horcruxes one created, the less human they became, both emotionally and physically; for example, in the house-elf Hokey 's memory, Tom Riddle was initially shown to be hollow-cheeked but otherwise normal, [23] though ten years later his features look as if they have been burned and blurred, and his skin was extremely white.
Lord Voldemort after his transformation. One should note that it is unclear whether the red eyes and slit-like nostrils that Voldemort had after he was reborn were caused by having more Horcruxes than he did than when he applied for the Defence Against the Dark Arts post a second time, [23] whether they were characteristics of a person who had been resurrected with the help of serpents which had continued to play key roles in his revival , or whether due to any other alterations he had made to himself.
Dumbledore speculated that Voldemort underwent other dangerous transformations, as well as creating Horcruxes which resulted in Voldemort's hideous appearance.
A third side effect of Horcrux creation was that the master soul itself became unstable even with creating just one Horcrux. For example, the creation of Voldemort's sixth "Horcrux" of seven — Harry Potter — is known to be the direct result of this.
The rest of Voldemort's mutilated soul fled. After mangling his own soul through many Horcrux creations, the fragments of Voldemort are trapped in limbo for eternity. The final known side-effect of Horcrux creation was a possible inability to move on from limbo after death. This was seen when Voldemort's Killing Curse destroyed the part of his soul that resided in Harry Potter. This broken and mangled piece of soul [25] was forced to exist in the stunted form of a flayed and mutilated baby that Harry saw in King's Cross during his visit to limbo, unable to return to the land of the living as a ghost, and unable to move on to the afterlife because his soul was maimed and corrupted.
The same fate was implied to have been suffered by Voldemort's "main" soul piece, the one that inhabited his body; it is unknown if this was a standard fate meted out for all Horcrux creators, or if it was unique to Voldemort due to the number of his Horcruxes. Regardless, reconciliation apparently cannot occur after death, as the soul's state at death remains forever, so the greatest of all consequences incurred by Horcrux creation may be the possibility of eternal limbo of the soul.
Voldemort's soul fragments also appeared to possess only the awareness and intelligence of the infant they appeared to be.
Lord Voldemort , obsessed with immortality and unable or unwilling to understand the importance of the soul's well-being, went further than any wizard known to history, creating seven — although he wanted six Horcruxes to have a seven part soul.
He accidentally created a pseudo-Horcrux when he failed to murder Harry Potter in , [8] and later made his pet snake Nagini into his seventh Horcrux. As a student named Tom Riddle at Hogwarts in the s, he learned of Horcruxes through books in the Restricted Section , including Secrets of the Darkest Art , and sought out Potions Master Horace Slughorn for further information about creating more than one, of which no book would have any record. Albus Dumbledore removed those books from the Hogwarts Library soon afterwards, although later he suspected that Slughorn had given information to Riddle about Horcruxes, as Slughorn refused to reveal the true account of what really happened.
Voldemort did understand that his soul had a limit to how many times he could split it, as he ceased creating any more Horcruxes once he intentionally reached his desired six and refused to create any replacements for the ones that were destroyed. Dumbledore later assigned Harry to retrieve the stored memory of it during the school year, in which Harry was able to get it through the use of Felix Felicis.
Having split his soul multiple times, it became extremely unstable that upon his Killing Curse's first rebound on him, Voldemort's already maimed soul split apart and attached to the only living being in the room at the time: Harry Potter. It was also the creation of so many Horcruxes that led Voldemort's humanity to deteriorate severely.
As Voldemort's soul fragments have been separated from him for so long, he could no longer feel them should they be destroyed. This was part of Dumbledore and Harry's quest to determine, locate, and destroy, in secret, what they believed to be as many as four of Voldemort's remaining Horcruxes two had already been destroyed.
Hermione was able to summon the books on the subject to her from the Headmaster's office at the end of the — school year to aid them in their research on Horcruxes. Although Voldemort had six true Horcruxes not including Harry in total, no more than five existed at one time because Tom Riddle's diary was destroyed before Nagini was turned into a Horcrux. Concerning Nagini, it is not known if she had to have been killed by Godric Gryffindor's Sword or if any other means, such as a regular sword killing her, would have destroyed the Horcrux.
However, as Albus Dumbledore stated, using a living being as a Horcrux was a risky business, due to it being able to move around and think for itself. It is also unknown what would happen if Nagini had died a natural death, or if that were possible, since Horcruxes have mechanisms in place to prevent destruction. All of Voldemort's Horcruxes were made from objects that had extreme monetary, historical or in as much as he could feel sentimental value, in his desire to secure his position as the greatest sorcerer in history, and that only noteworthy items could live up to his standards and have the honour of housing a fragment of his precious soul.
As such, he had originally made it his desire to collect four items of the four founders of Hogwarts ; he found only three, and gave up after failing to find Gryffindor's sword, but made Horcruxes out of other items that had sentimental value to himself, if not as a priceless artefact of the Wizarding world. Believing that the number seven is the most powerful number when it comes to magic, Voldemort intended to split his soul into seven pieces, with six Horcruxes housing one fragment each and his body containing the seventh.
He hid these Horcruxes in special locations and kept their existence and purposes from absolutely everyone. However, his arrogance had also inadvertently let him leave behind subtle hints of their whereabouts, leading to their destruction. Because Voldemort was the first and by far, the only known wizard to have created more than one Horcrux, both Dumbledore and Voldemort himself believed that he was the closest to true immortality than any other wizard or witch before him.
A secondary reason why Voldemort chose to create multiple Horcruxes is to utilise the effects of having a soul fragment to weaponise some of these artefacts, as opposed to keeping them as hidden safeguards. Voldemort felt more comfortable placing these few Horcruxes in the risk of destruction knowing he had more hidden safely to maintain his immortality.
It was for this reason he chose to use his diary to reopen the Chamber of Secrets , and sending Nagini on missions from time to time.
Although Voldemort created multiple Horcruxes so that if one was destroyed, it would not be detrimental to him, he would nevertheless be furious if any one of them were destroyed. He was wrathful at Lucius Malfoy for indirectly causing the destruction of the diary Horcrux, [1] despite intending for it to be a weapon instead of a safeguard, due to Lucius acting without instruction. When Voldemort found out that Hufflepuff's cup was taken, he massacred all the Gringotts employees within the bank that failed to protect the cup.
Discovering that Slytherin's locket and the Gaunt family ring were taken from their hiding places infuriated him even more, though it became more understandable as he was aware that he was losing more Horcruxes as time went on. He went out of his way to protect his last Horcrux, Nagini, and was horrified and angry beyond words when she was killed by Neville Longbottom with Gryffindor's sword , thus stripping him of his immortality.
In an alternate reality where Cedric Diggory became a Death Eater and killing Neville during Voldemort's Last Stand , Nagini was not killed as a result, thereby allowing Voldemort to maintain his immortality and kill Harry Potter while also conquering the British wizarding community.
While he does not fit the definition of a Horcrux, as he was not created intentionally using the Horcrux-making spell for the purpose of obtaining immortality, Harry Potter essentially became a Horcrux. After Voldemort's curse rebounded on him, a piece of his mangled soul split off and latched onto Harry.
Dumbledore explained that for simplicity's sake, Harry was a Horcrux. Alternatively, Horcrux can be seen as a combination of a shortening of "horrible" and "crux" meaning " the Cross " in Latin. In this sense, a Horcrux would be something that a follower of the Cross would regard as horrible. On the other hand, " hor" could be derived from the French " hors" , which means " outside". Thus, "Horcrux" would mean something that is "outside what is permitted under the Cross".
The Greek " hor " means " boundary ", which could refer to the boundary between life and death. Harry Potter Wiki Explore. Regulus Black later retrieved the locket after he defected from the Death Eaters. No doubt, this was one of Voldemort's most essential Horcruxes since it once belonged to his favorite founder. Hepzibah Smith proved to be important in Voldemort creating not one but two of his seven Horcruxes. She claimed to be a descendent of Helga Hufflepuff and had a cup once owned by her.
Helga Hufflepuff was not a founder whom Voldemort particularly related to, but she was a founder nonetheless, so he also took the cup and transformed it into a Horcrux. It was later hidden in the vault of the Lestrange family. Bellatrix was not only evil and despicable but Voldemort's most loyal follower and utterly infatuated with him, so she was probably happy to keep it hidden even though he wouldn't tell her what it was.
Hermione destroyed it during the Battle of Hogwarts using the trusty Basilisk fang. Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem was said to make the wearer wiser. Jealous of her mother's power, Rowena's daughter Helena stole it and eventually hid it in the forests of Albania.
The ghost of Helena was charmed by Tom Riddle, and she told him where to find the diadem, allowing him to travel to Albania to retrieve it. It became the last of the seven Horcruxes to come from the Hogwarts founders since Voldemort never got his hands on anything that belonged to Godric Gryffindor. The diadem got destroyed by Fiendfyre, another substance capable of destroying Horcruxes, when the Room of Requirement caught fire at the Battle of Hogwarts — an accidentally heroic act from Crabbe of all people.
For the whole of the book series, fans did not know very much about Nagini. She was a snake that seemed deeply bonded with Voldemort and could communicate with him, thanks to him being a Parselmouth, and was one of Harry Potter 's most iconic creatures.
Eventually, it was revealed that she was a Horcrux, and Neville Longbottom killed her with Godric Gryffindor's sword. Of course, more was revealed about Nagini in the Fantastic Beasts movies, creating a whole, human backstory that some fans loved, and others criticized heavily for the sensitive issues present in the story.
This does not seem to be the case; while the remnant of soul that remained within Riddle apparently became very frayed and fragile, each of the Horcruxes was as strongly able to defend itself as the earlier ones. In the end, Riddle or Voldemort, as he is later known does end up making seven Horcruxes, one of them accidentally. These are as follows:. It is perhaps interesting that no person destroyed more than one Horcrux.
Harry, Ron, Hermione, Neville, Dumbledore, Crabbe indirectly: the diadem fell apart in Harry's hands after being damaged by Crabbe's fiendfyre , and Voldemort each destroyed one of the seven. This illustrates a point that Harry has been trying to make throughout the series, but only verbalizes while in the process of setting up Dumbledore's Army in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix : Harry didn't do all this stuff alone, he had loads of help.
One thing that must be noted is that re-embodiment does not "use up" a Horcrux. Despite being sheared apart, all of the "soul fragments" remain connected, and the purpose of a Horcrux is to anchor the principal soul remnant to the earth by securing the sheared-off portion in an artifact that cannot be translated. When you die, your soul is freed to make the next step; if you have made a Horcrux, that fragment of soul is tied to the ring you used e.
It was acting independently, as the principal soul shard had been earlier, to take over another person. In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone , the principal soul fragment partly took over Professor Quirrell, but on Quirrell's death it was released to return to Albania. In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets , if the soul fragment had succeeded in rebuilding itself from Ginny's life force, killing the reconstituted Tom Riddle would almost certainly have freed the soul fragment.
Harry destroyed the diary before the Horcrux was fully extracted from it, which similarly freed the soul fragment. We noted earlier that Voldemort's plan was for there to be seven soul fragments, the original plus six Horcruxes; and Harry's gaining a soul fragment from Voldemort was not actually a Horcrux, as the charm that binds the sheared-off soul fragment to an object was not completed, if it was even begun.
While a murder is necessary to create a Horcrux, it is not sufficient. While the act of murdering someone does result in the soul being torn apart, according to Professor Slughorn , Professor Dumbledore implies that the separated soul fragment will attempt to return to the soul that it was sheared from and re-integrate.
This is why Harry carried a piece of Voldemort's soul: it was torn free, but when it attempted to re-attach, Voldemort's soul was no longer there, having been blasted away by the backfire from the Avada Kedavra spell.
Creating a Horcrux requires a spell to keep the sheared-off fragment from re-attaching, and to embed it in some object, so while the soul fragment within Harry probably would have acted to hold Voldemort's soul in this plane, it is not actually bound to Harry. Dumbledore commented at one point that he believed Tom's soul was so frayed and damaged by the repeated murders that he could no longer sense when a Horcrux was destroyed; it is uncertain, but is it not possible that one who committed enough murders would be left effectively soulless when their soul frayed away to nothing?
Study questions are meant to be left for each student to answer; please don't answer them here. One question that has been debated is whether the Elder Wand, an exceptional wand, would provide sufficiently strong magic to destroy a Horcrux? We learn that a Horcrux can defend itself against any damage that could be inflicted by ordinary magic; the Elder Wand, of course, is an extraordinary magical artifact, is not its magic strong enough to destroy a Horcrux?
After all, the Killing Curse , cast by Voldemort at Harry using that wand, was sufficient to dispatch the soul fragment that Harry had been carrying; and the wand had not accepted Voldemort as its master at that point.
There is nothing in the books that directly addresses this question.
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