Questions regarding the Harrycrux
“While the magical container is still intact, the bit of soul inside it can flit in and out of someone if they get too close to the object. I don’t mean holding it for too long…. I mean close emotionally…. You’re in trouble if you get too fond of or dependent on the Horcrux.”
(Hermione regurgitating Dumbledore’s books, DH p. 103)
So why were Hermione, and Ron, and Hagrid, and Mrs. Weasley, never “in trouble”?
Why was the Harrycrux not subject to that particular effect?
And how did Dumbledore know it wouldn’t be?
In theory, anyone close to Harry emotionally ought to have been vulnerable to possession by Tom Riddle.
But in canon this didn’t ever happen.
And, presumably, the Twinkly One expected this not to happen.
Otherwise, letting Harry wander among Hogwarts students making friends was the utter height of irresponsibility. (Okay, comparable to the headmaster’s other heights of irresponsibility, but still….)
I tried to float a theory on my own lj that Dumbles HAD expected that people who loved Harry might be possessed by his Horcrux, had therefore arranged magically to reinforce Harry’s canon early (pre-Hogwarts) friendlessness, and had further arranged that Harry’s first friends in the WW be disposable Dumbles-followers (Hagrid, the youngest Weasley scion). I’d even suggested that the events of CoS seemed at first to Dumbles as indications that the soul-fragment inside Harry had flitted out to possess one of the Weasleys, after Harry spent much of the summer there.
But that theory was shot down.
So why was the Harrycrux different from every other Horcrux known in this particular crucial respect (non-flittiness of the soul-fragment), and how did Dumbles know it was?
Or did our omniscient headmaster overlook that danger, and just luck out that the Harrycrux happened to be different?
Ol’ “Power of Love,” after all, is himself so lacking in normal emotional affect that it’s credible that it might simply not occur to him that normal people do become fond of each other, and that this emotional state (when Harry is the object) is precisely the condition which, in theory, should allow Tom’s soul-fragment to possess the fond third party.