Nagini as Horcrux

[felicitys_mind]

The argument for Nagini as the sixth Horcrux
(Tweaked on 9-9 in response to comments)

In an interview with The Leaky Cauldron and MuggleNet in July 2005, Rowling said,

“Dumbledore's guesses are never very far wide of the mark. I don't want to give too much away here, but Dumbledore says, ‘There are four out there, you've got to get rid of four, and

Comments

[travisprinzi]

oooh, lots to say here. I've been looking forward to your posting this one. It's rare that I disagree much with your essays. Excellent work overall, but let me offer a few challenges, none of which settle the matter for me, but they give me pause

[felicitys_mind]

Hi, Travis

[travisprinzi]

Good points, all.

I'd be more inclined to think that Dumbledore had concluded that Harry was not a horcrux and that Nagini was one, rather than that Dumbledore though Harry was a horcrux and decided to mislead Harry by telling him Nagini was the horcrux. In other words, I think Dumbledore told Harry the truth about what he actually believed in that office.

I'm still leaving the possibility open in my mind, though, that Dumbledore was wrong on this one. Rowling sort of interpreted her own words: Dumbledore's not being very far off the mark = he has to find and destroy four horcruxes. He's very likely "off the mark" on at least one of them.

Here I go again, swinging further away from the scarcrux theory again...I'll have to start revisiting the old reasons I was tempted towards it to see if they ever had any merit. Janet Batchler told me that her position is that Harry is not a horcrux, but a good enough argument could persuade her. That's about where I am. It makes sense from a storytelling point of view, anyway

[felicitys_mind]

It may be that Harry will wonder if he's a Horcrux, but that would be a bit of a replay of OoTP when he thought he might be possessed and Ginny had to explain to him what possession feels like. And now Harry knows the diary was a Horcrux, so I can't imagine he'd give that much consideration to being one himself. Now we're getting into all the anti-Harrycrux arguments, such as why hasn't the soul fragment tried to take over? We know Voldemort cannot possess Harry without unbearable pain because Harry does love (and Voldemort does not). And Voldemort couldn't Imperio Harry in the graveyard (so if making Nagini a Horcrux gives Voldemort more control over her, why isn't the same true of Harrycrux?). I've also never read a convincing argument to explain how he would get it out of himself, something he has to do before vanquishing Voldemort. Cutting his scar open doesn't work because baby Harry got a cut on his forehead at Godric's Hollow (Hagrid called it a gash or something like that), so why would this soul fragment have even stayed

[travisprinzi]

More good points against scarcrux.

Still, the "Dumbledore wouldn't have suggested Nagini if she weren't a horcrux" doesn't work for me. I don't think anyone is suggesting that Dumbledore is intentionally misleading Harry about Nagini. (That would be "nutters"). I certainly don't. I just think it's entirely possible that he (a) wholeheartedly believes that Nagini is the best guess for the final horcrux and that (b) he's wrong. Simple as that.

[felicitys_mind]

I’m with you in rejecting arguments that Dumbledore did believe Harry was a Horcrux but didn't have the heart to tell him so planted the Nagini clue in the hope that Harry would catch the hint and realize at some point he was one. As noted, the hint would have been better given as a general “we do need to consider that Voldemort may have placed a soul fragment in a living thing” But Dumbledore not only listed Nagini as a Horcrux guess, he gave reasons why Voldemort would have make a Horcrux out of Nagini to support his guess. So Dumbledore wouldn’t have been deliberately misleading Harry

[travisprinzi]

But I can’t buy that Dumbledore would have failed to consider the possibility that Harry could be a Horcrux.

I can't buy that either. It would have to be that Dumbledore did very much consider the possibility, and decided against it (and is wrong).

Which is possible (again, there's that huge Dumbledore error set-up), but unlikely in my mind.

So for the Scarcrux theory to work, a piece of Voldemort's soul would have somehow needed to leave Voldemort’s body, travel to baby Harry's open head wound, and then stay there in place until scar tissue trapped it---all of this happening without the soul fragment entering Harry himself or flying off to go behind the Veil. So Scarcrux theories are not plausible from my point of view.I'm not sure if this renders the theory implausible. If there was a piece of LV's soul in that cut, where exactly would it go before the scar formed over it

[felicitys_mind]

"I'm not sure if this renders the theory implausible. If there was a piece of LV's soul in that cut, where exactly would it go before the scar formed over it

[travisprinzi]

I do see what you mean, and I think this is reasonable stuff. I'm just playing devil's advocate. I put up a rudimentary "Is Harry a horcrux" post shortly after HBP, and it's at 441 comments now with no sign of slowing down! So I'm used to making this conversation last... =) Let me try to devil's advocate thing again here:

I just don't see how a soul fragment of Voldemort's could have hovered near Harry's open wound for the days it took for the cut to heal. My sense is that it would not have been "anchored" in a closed container so it wouldn't have stayed there.

If the theory is true, the soul wouldn't have "hovered near," it would have been embedded in the cut itself, in the damaged tissue. If there were no such thing as a "scarring" process and cuts remained open, the soul bit would still be sitting in that cut.

Plus, if it's true as seems that a vessel is not damaged when a soul fragment is placed in it, but the vessel must be broken open to release the soul fragment, then

[felicitys_mind]

Not a huge tangent that bothers me. We learn best when we’re forced to defend our arguments

[felicitys_mind]

Just letting you know I added a section toward the end of the essay with my response to this question. That's the value of having someone challenge your arguments.

[travisprinzi]

While I don't think the soul piece getting embedded in the cut violates the simplicity rule (is it really that complex?), the point about the ancient magic and the value of Lily's sacrifice is spot on.

Harry as horcrux or not, I'm not 100% sold on Nagini as horcrux (though I'm much more willing to believe it after this essay).

[felicitys_mind]

While I don't think the soul piece getting embedded in the cut violates the simplicity rule (is it really that complex?), the point about the ancient magic and the value of Lily's sacrifice is spot on. I don't think it's simple for two reasons

[travisprinzi]

I think I'm more inclined to pause on this particular question - we simply don't know enough about horcrux creation to know whether this would be too complex.

I don't think it would be accurate to say that the soul piece hung out around the cut, waited for the scar to form, and entered the scar. It was part of the wound that healed over (again, if the scarcrux theory is true, which I'm doubting more and more).

Another question: If Voldemort was possessing Nagini that night and wasn't simply controlling her from one soul piece to another (which is why Dumbledore suspects he has so much control over her), how would any experiment Dumbledore did prove anything about horcruxes? Voldemort's possessing something doesn't make it a horcrux, obviously.

I'm just about finished writing a post about all this over at SoG. My interest in the subject has reawakened, and my previous conclusions rattled. Thanks a lot ;)

[felicitys_mind]

Another question: If Voldemort was possessing Nagini that night and wasn't simply controlling her from one soul piece to another (which is why Dumbledore suspects he has so much control over her), how would any experiment Dumbledore did prove anything about horcruxes? Voldemort's possessing something doesn't make it a horcrux, obviously.Dumbledore wasn't dead sure about Nagini when he listed his Horcrux guesses to Harry; it was more a confident hunch, so we know that little silver instrument didn't give Dumbledore 100% certainty. It may have confirmed the possibility or even the likelihood of its being true given what Harry had reported. What does strike me is that although there were three actors involved (Harry, Voldemort, Nagini), the form was of a snake, not a person, and the form split in two when Dumbledore prompted it. Nagini is a snake and Voldemort is snakelike, so the most plausible explanation is that the divided smoke snakes did represent Voldemort and Nagini. The "in essence divided" I expect is pointing to "soul"

[mickeyhildrich]

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