Nagini as Horcrux
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 ( Read more... )
I don't think it's simple for two reasons:
1) Voldemort was casting an AK. That is made clear numerous times in the book and in Rowling's interviews, and as you pointed out in another comment, the AK is not a Horcrux-making spell. So it's a complication to begin with to explain how a piece of Voldemort's soul broke away and went to Harry.
2) I just can't pausibly see how that escaped soul fragment (since no spell caused it to escape or directed it afterwards) would embed itself in the sliver of damaged tissue on the edge of an open wound, but not enter Harry's body and not speed away behind the Veil.
3) And finally, I've never understood how the Scarcrux theory explains how Harry can speak Parseltongue when he needs to or to understand it effortlessly when he hears it unless what entered Harry at Godric's Hollow truly entered his body.
You might be interested to know that Merlin is giving me a hard time over on MuggleMatters.com.
I do know that Nagini as Horcrux is inexplicably unpopular. I don't understand that, either. For so many reasons, it just makes more sense to me that she is the "living" Horcrux.
As always, the interaction with you is first rate!
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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 ;)
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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" because the soul is often described as an essence. That's all I can guess at there.
Dumbledore probably knows how much control Voldemort has over Nagini from things Snape has mentioned, which would inform Dumbledore's suspicions. We don't know when Voldemort got Nagini, but it's not likely she was with him during his exile in Albania (wouldn't he have mentioned it when he was talking about possessing snakes and small animals that didn't live long?), but Dumbledore knows her name and knows that Voldemort likes to keep her close, so he's getting that information from someone, and Snape is the spy.
I suspect Voldemort has MORE control over her as a Horcrux than he would have otherwise, and that goes for possession. When we read Harry's dream, Nagini wanted to strike Arthur right away but held back because there was work to do (an odd thing for a snake to be thinking)--so that was Voldemort controlling Nagini from inside during the possession.
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