Is there any particular in-universe reason why Voldemort didn't just hide his horcruxes under the Fidelius Charm with himself as Secret-Keeper? There may well be something I've just missed or this may just be me being an idiot. Was he just that blinded by his delusions of grandeur, sense of symbolism and desire to spread his wares everywhere?

Stick at least one in a cupboard, Fidelius the property it's in and be done with it.

 

The Fidelius Charm is an incredibly obscure piece of magic. Until Dumbledore used it for Lily and James, it's not clear that anyone other than him knew it existed. Even after that point, we don't hear about anyone else using it until Deathly Hallows, when we discover that it's on Shell Cottage, cast by some member of the Order after Dumbledore's death.

It's entirely possible that the only wizards who know how to cast the charm are those Dumbledore told.

 

Same reason Dumbledore didn't hide the philosopher's stone under a fidelius and used a decoy to trap Voldemort, and similarly brainless plans from both (like the "Resurrection through Tournament" and "7 Harry Potter"): Wizards are stupid.

 

True enough, that sounds a good enough explanation.

I still wonder whether Voldemort would have at least sought the knowledge of casting the charm then, given he could have made strategic use of it. (Unless it was magic he was incapable of utilising, for whatever reason.)

 

The Fedelius charm is based on hiding the secret in a human soul, correct? If your soul is fragmented you can't very well hide the secret there.

 

Its an incredibly obscure piece of magic. There's no knowing if he had even heard of it, before Lily and James. Afterwards, we still don't know if anyone besides Dumbledore and those he told would be able to cast it.

 

You should ask yourself why Voldemort didn't simply make a stone into a horcrux, put protections on it, then threw it into the sea. No way to find it in canon.

 

Or portkey'd the stone on the moon...

 

Does he need access to the horcrux to get resurrected again?

 

Neither of those posts are necessary. Stay on-topic.

Edit: X-post with Monkey.

 

In that case Harry would have the Mermaids get it for him.

 

He didn't seem to need one to get resurrected. Nor to possess Quirell.

How would anyone identify a horcrux that's not killing people on touch?

 

They wouldn't. At least there's no indication of anything in cannon that would help.

 

The concept of them is vague enough, yes, but how many people knew that the Potters were hiding underneath one after the events of '81? Was it common knowledge or was it all just told 'they were hiding' without going into details about it?

 

No.

Voldemort doesn't resurrect. Now, I'm not playing semantics here, because it's an important concept. Resurrection means being dead, and then coming alive again, but in the books, he lives the entire time. He's a shadow of himself, and without a corporeal body, but he's still alive. The Horcrux then, is said to anchor the soul to this earth, or as Slughorn said, "Even if one's body is attacked or destroyed, one cannot die, for part of the soul remains earthbound and undamaged."

In GoF, Harry is at Voldemort's rising, however there's nothing there concerning the Horcrux. Instead, all actions are about his blood and the blood protection of his mother.

As such, a horcrux stops death, rather than bringing a dead person to life, and other types of magic incarnates him. The first is specifically canon and the second concerning incarnation is deduced, but very evident, I believe.

 

She had the idea of Voldemort having split his soul when she was writing CoS at the latest, because various cryptic interview comments from that time indicate, with hindsight, that she already knew the Diary was a piece of his soul. It wasn't retconned that way (and the text supports it further, with Riddle talking about Ginny feeding him her soul).

So yeah, I can believe that she put "single" in there deliberately.

Though it's possible the identities and number of the other horcruxes changed over the years. I'm pretty sure she intended Harry to be a horcrux from the start of writing the series though, because she famously wrote the last line about his scar no longer bothering him years before the series ended.

 

Can we infer from the "Single living soul" quote that the reason Lily and James needed a secret keeper was because they were ineligible?

 

I've seen many fics that have Fleur's father as an official in the French Ministry. Is that canon? Not necessarily his rank or position, but that he's a member of the government.