Also, Nagini was a magical snake and I'm pretty sure it was damn near impossible to kill her. This is purely assumption, but I imagine Nagini's skin was hard enough that simple spells - as well as love protection - and weapons didn't work. The Gryffindor sword worked because it was a 'pure' magical sword and because it was coated in basilisk venom... At least, that's how I look at it. Either way, I'm sure Nagini's skin was very protective.

 

Exactly. Not necessarily magically destroyed, but "beyond magical repair". Which of course, generally means you have to use magic to destroy whatever it is so completely that it cannot be repaired. Sort of off-topic: wouldn't a big fat "Evanesco" work like the proverbial charm? After all, Minerva McG herself explains in DH that things which are Vanished go "into nonbeing, which is to say, everything." That, to me, would definitely qualify as "beyond magical repair".

Well, the Ring-Horcrux should have been, if what Phineas Nigellus said about goblins' silver items is in fact true, and they only "imbibe that which strengthens" them. D'dore used the sword to destroy the ring-Horcrux, and it should have been "beyond magical repair", just as the locket was after Ron stabbed it with the sword, and Nagini was after Neville lopped off her melon with it, in what is arguably the most bad-ass (and certainly the ballsiest and most defiant) moment in all of canon.

And yes, Harry should have also been "beyond magical repair", since there's supposedly no way to block the Killing Curse and no way to "bring back the truly dead", but the end-run around that was the whole mutual-ties-to-the-mortal-coil that Harry and Voldemort had going. As much as I dislike a lot of things about canon, looking at the overall arc, it was a wonderfully clever and creative plot and the way Harry survived and the way it was hinted at in the prophecy (again, hindsight, amirite?) were pretty smartly done.

And since Harry's burning-touch had been negated by the ritual at the end of GoF, there's no reason to suspect Harry's touch would burn Nagini in Godric's Hollow, and yes, they did have physical contact, as Nagini was squeezing the fuck out of Harry while Voldemort was on his way.

Harry was not an intentional Horcrux, but he was a Horcrux for all intents and purposes.

You're trying to split hairs, Taure, and I'm calling bullshit. The stone itself was cracked at the beginning of HBP, when D'dore and Harry visited Slughorn. To avoid a plot-hole, the Resurrection Stone should have never worked after that, but there you have it.

There's no way that 16-year-old Tom Riddle, believing he had this Gaunt family heirloom from the Peverells, would have decided, "Y'know, I want to make this thing a Horcrux, but in case somebody ever decides to destroy it in a desperate attempt to bring an end to my reign of madness and terror, I'll just make the ring portion the Horcrux instead of the actual stone, 'cause the stone itself might have some heretofore unknown powers and I'd hate for those to have to be sacrificed just to obliterate a seventh of my blackened soul. Plus, the stone is kinda pretty and I like that kinda thing. Don't tell anyone, mkay?"

That's the explanation we'll have to go with when all is said and done, of course, 'cause there's waaayy too many plot holes to ever reconcile more than a fraction of them.

 

Disagree here. Harry was a horcrux for some intents and purposes, but he was not exactly a horcrux. Harry would have acted as a Horcrux would have for Voldemort, but he did not share all the properties of a Horcrux. A Horcrux receptacle has to be prepared with all sorts of spells etc., and Harry never went through this.

Again, disagree.

If you'd used Gryffindor's sword to cut the Diary in two, the Dairy horcrux has been destroyed. The parts of the Diary still function as paper functions. But the horcrux is destroyed.

So too with the ring. The ring as an entity has been destroyed. The components of the ring might still function as they should, but the ring as a complete entity has been destroyed.

To me it's more of a symbolic thing than a literal, scientific, matter.

 

On the subject of vanishing the horcrux, I think the innate magic of a horcrux would keep that from happening to it. By definition, the soul is something that while, in HP, mutable, is indestructible. It is not until one part of the soul is separated from the rest that it is able to be destroyed. And even then, its existence is tied to the object it is in.

In this way, the horcrux would be a double-edged blade, in that the fusion of the soul and the object in question would change the properties of both. Because the portion of soul assumes the physicality of the object, it can be destroyed, but at the same time, said destruction must, in turn, be physical. The soul cannot simply be vanished, its physical vessel must be destroyed for it to be released, as with a a normal human. However, because the portion contained in the horcrux would be too weak to survive on its own as an incomplete entity, it ceases to have to power to maintain its existence.

 

So you're saying whatever Gaunt protections on the ring were destroyed/vanquished while the Resurrection Stone portion of it remained?

 

Nothing so specific. I'm saying that the ring-as-horcrux has ceased to exist in a magically unified sense.

 

I always thought that meant that Harry could not burn down ONLY Voldemort's new body, that body with Harry's blood, you know. Nagini did not have Harry's blood so snake should be, in my opinion, still vulnerable to "burning of love". (and its Horcrux is from 1994 I think later than Halloween 1981)

 

I think what you're saying makes sense. You can still write in the diary; you can still wear the locket and tiara; you can still drink from the cup; you can still use the Resurrection Stone. The soul is gone, but the actual physical properties remain. The diary lost its magical properties, but the Resurrection Stone was something way more magically powerful than the diary and so it still could be used.

 

Again, hairs are being split, when the end result is the same. If all other Horcruxes/Horcruces are destroyed (and the soul fragments destroyed or released to the next great adventure), and the bit of Tom Ridlle's/Voldemort's soul (again, I'd better be specific) is still residing in Harry Potter's body and/or scar, TR/LV is still effectively immortal, and that, FOR ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES, is the function of a Horcrux.

Nowhere in canon are there any lists of spells etc. that have to be performed to prepare or to make a Horcrux. Certainly, some spell has to be performed (except for the accidental but still effective Scarcrux), but it may be no more than pointing the wand at yourself, saying "Splittus Soulus!" then pointing the wand at the intended receptacle and saying, "Encaisus en Horcruxus!"

Christ, Taure. Yes, the paper still works as paper. Amazingly, Dumbledore can still wear the ring, since he has it on to show to Slughorn. The locket still works as ugly jewelry and the cup will work as a dented drinking implement. For fuck's sake, the snake now still functions as food for the scavengers of the Forbidden Forest but that doesn't mean they work as magical objects anymore. The diary was no longer magical, the locket was doubtless no longer magical, the diadem was burnt to ash, the cup was bashed in on one side so I doubt it was doing anything, and even so, all the artifacts of the Founders were only rumored to have had special powers anyway, right, according to Hepzibah Smith.

And I think it's a cop-out when you say it's more symbolic than literal, because D'dore didn't symbolically hit the ring with the sword, he actually fucking did it. Harry didn't symbolically stab the diary, he put the fang through it. And Neville literally beheaded the Nagini, if you'll recall. The only Horcrux receptacle I would agree was only symbolically destroyed would be Harry himself, as he was killed/not-killed when he willingly sacrificed himself in the forest. And that, I will say, is the only reason he wasn't "beyond magical repair".

Personally, I would've accepted Harry being turned into a Squib at that point, just for the total-sacrifice angle. That Harry would lose his magic - what he truly loved - was a viable theory going around prior to DH.

I was sorta being sarcastic. Just as any competent wizard would guard their Horcrux against Summoning, you'd expect them to make sure it couldn't just be Vanished. But yeah, I get your non-destructive reasoning.

Uh, what? Seriously, I don't understand what you mean by magically unified.

 

Function of a Horcrux, yes. But a Horcrux is not just its function. We have no way of knowing if the rules which govern other Horcruxes (specifically, the rules which govern their destruction) are the rules which govern Harry's not-a-horcrux-but-has-the-same-effect-if-Voldemort-dies.

This is a word of God thing. JKR said there's a long and complex process involved in preparing the receptable in the Leaky Cauldron podcast (she then went on to say that it's so evil she refused to say what it involved. My money is on killing babies).

Unified in that we see the ring as having a unique identity. Once the horcrux is gone that identity is detroyed, because one of the (magical) properties of the ring is different. The ring can still be held, worn, etc, so it is not the ring that is past magical repair, but rather the identity of the ring as a whole object, including its magical properties.

It's the same with the other objects. None (with the exception maybe of Nagini and the Diadem) of the horcruxes were actually destroyed beyond magical repair. It would be pretty simple to repair the cup. Rather, it is their identity that has been destroyed. If you repaired the cup it wouldn't be the same cup - it would be merely very similar.

This is what I mean by it being symbolic. It has to be symbolic, because if we take the "beyond magical repair" part completely literally, then there are clearly some horcruxes that are not destroyed.

 

You mean other than (1) keeping Voldemort from being really killed, (2) allowing Harry to see Voldemort's actions, thoughts, emotions, memories, etc. at random times, (3) giving Harry a fuck-ton of pain when he's around Voldemort, (4) allowing Harry to speak Parseltongue, (5) giving Voldemort access to plant visions in Harry's head (granted, not since OotP)... did I miss any?

Of course I'm fucking with you, but we actually do have a good bit of info about the rules which govern this particular unwilling/unwitting pseudo-Horcrux.

Allow me to translate: What she meant was that she hadn't given it any thought at all and so decided to just wing it. It's sort of the classic ploy I use on my kids when letting them know their unacceptable behavior will result in punishment if continued.

I say, "If you do that again, there'll be consequences and you won't like them." The kids ask, "What'll you do, daddy?" and my smiling reply is along the lines of, "You're not going to do that anymore anyway, right, so you don't need to worry about it, but trust me, you wouldn't like it."

"Or else" is always better left unsaid, because the other person's imagination can always come up with much worse things or things you would never have thought of as possible worst-case scenarios, and that's essentially what Rowling was doing. She couldn't think of something sufficiently nasty, or was afrid of being out-nastied, and took a powder on detailing the specifics, which is of course her right.

Personally, there's an excellently written Horcrux-creation ritual that fits with the whole snake motif in Lynney's Magic Never Dies

 

True, but other than (1), all these things are things that normal Horcruxes don't do, which just goes to show that Harry is a unique case (though this could easily be explained as Harry being an intelligent animate being, not just an animal/inanimate object.

With regards to missing anything, you forgot (6) can be destroyed by a Killing Curse.

I'm not sure if a Killing Curse would destroy a regular Horcrux. The effects of the Killing Curse on physical objects seem to be variable.

 

If anyone recalls Chamber of Secrets for a moment, shouldn't of Ginny had to be killed too? I'm not saying this as a person who didn't like her beyond book 6, but logically (I know you hate that word Taure) looking at it.

Chapter 17 of CoS:

Tom Riddle was bragging about the side-effects of what happened to Ginny Weasley because of the Diary.

- From the Lexicon

So wouldn't it logically make sense to say Ginny has a little bit of Tom Riddle's soul in her?

 

The incantation Avada Kedavra is translated as "Let it be destroyed", and from what I remember of canon, that seems to fit. The intent of the spell doesn't seem limited to human life, and indeed, it destroyed a few non-living objects as well, did it not? The essence of the spell is simply to destroy. The spell does no physical damage to humans, but that might be a result of the caster's intent. When one is thinking about killing a wizard, they're focusing on the essence of the person, his life and existence. Because of how the spell works, this simply means shutting down his mind and body by magical means. For something like an object, it might simply destroy the object to the point where it can't be used anymore, like shattering a rock or incinerating wood.

That's just my interpretation though, I'm certain there are better explanations available.

 

We've seen Killing curses bounce off objects (one of Dumbledore's animated statues in OotP fight) as well as destroying them though, which is what I meant by saying it was variable.

 

I think I finally got Taure beat in canon. :awesome

Seriously though, reference that page Taure in which the animated statues have killing curses bounce off them? Are you referring to the fact on Pg 813 where it said:

"The statue of the witch ran at Bellatrix, who screamed and sent spells steaming uselessly off its chest, before it dived at her, pinning her to the floor." I don't see any killing curses being thrown out there. The one time a statue took a hit for Dumbledore was the one-armed centaur that shattered into a hundred pieces.

I don't think there is any place in the books where the Killing Curse "bounces off something". It will either damage it or destroy it. (Except Fawkes who becomes reborn due to being a Phoenix but that's a exception to the rule.)

 

I think there was also another golden statue which had its head blown off. CBF to verify though.

 

On my version of book 5 page 813, it says:

"But the headless golden statue of the wizard in the fountain had sprung alive, leaping from its plinth, and landed with a crash between Harry and Voldemort. The spell merely glanced off its chest as the statue flung its arms, protecting Harry."

The curse that glanced off was the Killing Curse. Seems like it didn't rebound, but it got diverted.

On page 814 though, the Centaur statue took the Killing Curse and blew up into pieces. Seems like the effects of the killing curse, even on objects that likely have the same enchantments or materials used in construction, will behave differently.

 

I looked up and read that now. That's really odd but I'm assuming it has to do with the fact it's alive? I would think it's a typo by Rowling more then anything. Especially since nothing just "glances off" the AK. Sounds more like bad writing in order to protect Harry then anything.

 

Wow, circular argument ahoy.

1. Nothing "glances off" the killing curse.
2. The statue glances off the killing curse.
3. It must be a typo.
4. Thus, nothing "glances off" the killing curse.