23-Skiddoo.
I had planned on getting to this one a lot sooner, but I had the week from hell at my job this week, so things didn't go as planned. Among the highlights of this are:
--Me working a 24 hour shift on Tuesday, because everyone who manufactures, sells, distributes, and supplies chemicals has excrement where their brains should be.
--Me trying to do double duty, because I got transferred to replace the guy who quit two weeks ago, but they still haven't bothered hiring the guy who's supposed to replace the guy who gets transferred to replace me.
--Me pulling a fifteen hour shift on Friday, because somebody else screwed up their work and I have to wait around to find out what we're gonna do about it.
--Me eating a meat lover's bowl at Denny's. Well, this wasn't so bad. One of the perks to being a chemist who works weird hours is that sometimes you have an hour to kill and you can go eat at Denny's because you have time.
I don't mind the hard work necessarily, but I really didn't know going in that it'd get this hairy. I think next week will go a little smoother just because I'll know what I'm in for, and I can make sure to come in earlier so I can get things ready before the rush begins. Just the same, I'm a little irritated that everyone around me seems to be making my job more difficult. When someone f*cks up, that's more work on me, because now I have to retest something to make sure whether it was f*cked up or not. And I didn't really have time to test it once, so how well is testing it again gonna go over with me, you know? I need a T-shirt that says "I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR F*CK-UP," and wear it to work every day. "Hey, Mike, that material was supposed to be NF grade, but the vendor has no idea what NF stands for!" Read the shirt. "Hey, Mike, the guy that was supposed to add x amount of preservative only added x-y instead!" Read the shirt. "Hey, Mike, remember all that rubbing alcohol we sold you? Well we mislabeled every container, because our quality control sucks and we're relying on a truck driver to make sure it was done properly!" Read the shirt.
I'm just sick of dumbasses. It seems like every extra hour of work I have to put in is to compensate for some numbnuts who couldn't or wouldn't do his job right. There's probably some Republican bumper sticker that covers my grievance much more succinctly. Something about how my tax dollars pay for some hippie to fling poop at a canvas and call it art. That never bothered me much, but it's exactly the same kind of thing I deal with in my career.
Anyway, I've spent most of today taking a nap, and generally goofing around, because I've been tire and I'm out of clean socks. Fair warning: my review this time around will suck, or at least, more so than the others have sucked.
Chapter 23: Horcruxes
(Original Japanese Title: "The Divided Soul!! Harry and Dumbledore Talk for Thirty Pages!!!")
Since I did the last few chapters out of order, I should probably do a quick recap to get everyone back on track. The following is all you really need to know.
1) Hagrid's giant stupid spider died from whatever disease it supposedly had. Personally, I'm suspecting it was lured into innnerslytherin's laser printer and got a terminal case of murdered. But it's a spider, and I'm not Hagrid, which means I don't give two craps what killed it, so long as it's dead.
2) Dumbledore's private lessons with Harry culminated in his assignment to retrieve a memory of Slughorn discussing Horcruxes with a young Voldemort. Lacking any cunning of his own, Harry took the advice of the Outsiders and used a dose of Felix Felicis, a luck potion he won in Slughorn's class at the start of the school year. Under the influence of the potion, he manipulated Slughorn into attending the spider's funeral (don't ask), getting hammered, and then handing over his memory in a fit of drunken guilt.
Chapter 23 picks up from there, as Harry returns to the school around midnight, just as the luck is starting to wear off. I think the whole notion of luck potion in this book sort of exposes the way the HP-verse is put together. When Harry ISN'T super-lucky, he's pretty much got to fight to avoid running into anyone who might give him crap. When he IS super-lucky, it's not like he's winning the Super Bowl or anything; he's just granted the ability to be mercifully undetected. It just strikes me that there aren't a whole lot of other characters around who don't yell at, order around, punish, wheedle, or otherwise irritate Harry Potter. Tonks, maybe, but that's probably only because Tonks refuses to do anything in this book.
Even the paintings give this kid a hard time, such as this one that controls the passage into his dorm. The painting refuses him entry, claiming the password was changed at midnight, so he'll just have to sleep in the hallway. Like that's not enough, the oil-based bitch actually tells Harry to take the matter up with the headmaster. Right, because it's midnight, when he'd be so scary easy to get ahold of. Then one of those ghosts shows up and tells Harry that Dumbledore just came back and is on his way to his office, so Harry runs off the other way to go meet up with him. Then the painting actually admits it was lying about the password change. Oh, magic ghosts and paintings! It's FUNDERFUL.
Just as the illustration for this chapter shows, when Harry gets to D-dore's office he gives him the little glass vial Slughorn used to bottle his own memory. The way Big Al smiles at the sight of this bottle, though, it looks a lot more like a drug deal to me. "Ah, Harry, you have given me the greatest gift a man can receive: a chance to purchase a dose of that flighty temptress, crack."
Immediately, D-dore wants to check this memory out, so he rushes Harry over to the whatever it is they use to check out these flashbacks of his. You know, with the whole mentor/student thing, and the time-travel aspect, these two remind me a lot of Sherman and Mr. Peabody. And just like any episode of Rocky and Friends, this one's a rerun, as we're treated to an almost word-for-word re-enactment of the Slughorn/Tom Riddle scene from Chapter 17. I guess that's the only way to go about it, since this is the same memory and all, but I think Rowling could have at least included some new descriptions. This is Harry's second time seeing all this, so he's bound to have some new observations.
Since she wouldn't do it, I'll spare you the details and get right to the parts that Slughorn had edited out the last time. First, instead of shouting at Riddle that he'd "go wrong", Slughorn promises that he'll become Minister of Magic within twenty years--fifteen if he keeps sucking up to Slughorn, as he knows people in the Ministry who can grease the wheels. Riddle smiles and confesses he has little interest in politics. Instead of denying Riddle when he asks about Horcruxes, Slughorn is all too happy to tell the kid what he wants to know. And this is where the scene becomes new.
According to Slughorn, a Horcrux (just like the title of this cartoon!) is an object used to conceal part of a person's soul. The advantage to this is that if you split your soul into two pieces, and put a piece in some object, then you can't die if someone destroys your body, because you've still got a piece of your soul--a backup soul, if you will--perfectly safe in your Horcrux. However, as Slughorn warns, this is a very unpleasant experience, and most would prefer to simply die outright than to live on that way.
Obviously, Riddle isn't most people, so he asks how you'd go about splitting up your soul in the first place. Somewhat reluctantly, Slughorn explains that the very act itself is a crime against nature, and the only way to do it is by committing "the supreme act of evil": murder. Of course, anyone can kill a guy, but only a wizard familiar with Horcruxes would be able to encase the torn portion into an object for safekeeping. There's a spell for this, but Slughorn doesn't know what it is.
So Riddle changes his tack, asking if it wouldn't be better then to divide your soul into as many pieces as possible, thus making yourself harder to kill. Seven, as he says, is supposed to be the most powerful number in magic, so it strikes him that if you split your soul into seven pieces, you'd be in pretty good shape. Slughorn is naturally horrified at this idea, and Harry can tell that he'd finally begun to see Riddle for the budding monster he really was. Anxiously, Slughorn asks Riddle to keep this conversation to himself, since Horcruxes are a banned subject, and Dumbledore in particular has no tolerance for it. Riddle agrees, and leaves, and that's the end of the scene.
The remainder of the chapter is simply Harry and D-dore discussing the ramifications of what they've seen. For D-dore in particular, this is of great importance, because he's long theorized that Voldemort has been dabbling in Horcruxes, but until now there was no explanation for how he learned about them. To speed things along, I'm gonna dispense with the narrative and just go into the main points of their conversation.
First, D-dore is certain that Riddle's diary from Book Two was a Horcrux. This would explain certain powers the diary possessed, although the whole POINT to a Horcrux is to keep the object safe so no one messes with your backup soul, and yet here was this diary, left out where people could find it, only to be destroyed by Harry in the same book that introduced it. This was Big Al's first clue that not only had Voldemort created a Horcrux for himself, but that he had done it more than once.
Next up, when Voldemort got his body back in Book Four, he made a big speech to the Death Eaters or something, saying that he'd "gone further than anybody along the path that leads to immortality". While the Death Eaters didn't get what he meant, D-dore did: Voldemort had created more Horcruxes for himself than anyone else in Horcrux History.
This begs the question of why Voldemort wouldn't just use a Sorcerer's Stone, as seen in Book One. At least, I guess that was the point of Book One. I don't much care. Once again, Big Al fields this by suggesting that Voldemort would prefer Horcruxes, because they only depend on his own ability to create and conceal them. A Sorcerer's Stone can make you immortal, but it depends entirely upon the stone, so if you lose it or it gets stolen, you're S.O.L. Voldemort, being the quintessential loner he is, would only resort to such a measure out of desperation, but he wouldn't view it as a long-term solution.
As implied by the memory Slughorn provided, Voldemort most likely split his soul into seven pieces. Stupidly, Harry interprets this to mean he created seven Horcruxes, which requires Dumbledore to stop and explain that he'd only need six, with the seventh part still in his body. Again, stupidly, Harry wonders how they'll ever find them all, much less destroy them, so D-Dore has to point out that a few of them have already BEEN destroyed. Harry himself destroyed that fershlugginer diary. Another Horcrux was Marvolo's ring, which Dumbledore found right where Voldemort had gotten it in the first place. After turning it into a Horcrux, he obviously didn't want to wear it anymore, so he hid it in his grandfather's house, figuring no one would think to look for it there. Yeah, real smart, buddy. Needless to say, since we all saw the thing in D-Dore's office thirteen chapters ago, Big Al tracked it down, he managed to de-soul the thing recently. The only catch was that the ring was cursed as well, which injured his left hand. According to him, Snape managed to patch him up after this incident, thus saving his life. As for his buggered up hand, Dumbledore considers it a small price to pay for having rid the world of Voldemort's evil--or at least 14.2857% of it.
So yeah, that's the big story behind Dumbledore's injured hand, the one he's been refusing to tell throughout the entire book because he wanted to do the story justice. I'm not very impressed.
So this would mean that four Horcruxes remain. Given Voldemort's propensity for trophies and magical history, it's reasonable to assume these last four Horcruxes were special objects, even if they're only of great significance to himself. Naturally, the locket and cup that he stole in the flashback from Chapter 20 would make ideal candidates, since they once belonged to Slytherin and Hufflepuff, two of the four ancient house founders. While it's possible he managed to gank something that once belonged to Ravenclaw, Dumbledore is confident that the only surviving relic of Gryffindor remains out of his hands. That would be a tricked-out sword in his office. This may have been why Voldemort wanted to come back to Hogwarts as a teacher years ago, so he could pilfer the sword and anything else he might have found upon gaining unlimited access to the premises.
At any rate, Dumbledore thinks its more likely that the sixth and final Horcrux was in fact Voldemort's pet snake Nagini. Uh-huh. Do you ever get the feeling that Dumbledore is just wingin' it sometimes?
Anyway, tracking all this crap down has been what D-dore has been doing when he was absent from the school all year. He seems confident that he's close to tracking down a third Horcrux, and when he does, he'll let Harry come along and help him break it. Or whatever you do to destroy these things.
Can Voldemort feel it when you destroy one of his Horcruxes? Probably not. Voldemort had no idea that his diary was destroyed until Lucius Malfoy told him so. This is one of the reasons Voldemort's so pissed off at the Malfoys, by the way, because it was Lucius's fault the diary was destroyed. Of course, that's what happens when you don't tell your henchmen where you put your soul.
So to summarize, Voldemort's soul is in the following places:
1) His body.
2) Slytherin's locket
3) Slytherin's ring
4) Hufflepuff's cup
5) His pet snake
6) His diary
7) Upinya.
Destroy the Horcruxes, and you rob him of his ability to survive the destruction of his own body. In spite of this point being explained a number of times, Harry still asks if Voldemort could be killed after doing away with his Horcruxes. I'd like to throttle this kid, I really would. It's like he's gone to some strange planet and let an aging purple elf dance around him for five hours to awaken his latent idiocy.
Anyway, this leads into a discussion of the whole prophecy about Harry being the lucky guy who gets to kill or be killed by Voldemort. Harry is somewhat unimpressed that his sole advantage over Voldemort is his capacity for love, and Dumbledore explains that the only reason the prophecy is even being fulfilled was because Voldemort assumed it to be true. See, he decided Harry was the Chosen One Booger Red, so he killed his parents, but this just ensured that Harry would grow up to get revenge on Voldemort, regardless of any prophecy. In this way, Voldemort's interference actually ensured that the kid most likely to be a threat to him would be dead set on kicking his ass. In spite of all the insight Harry has into Voldemort's evil machinations, he's never once been seduced by the Dark Arts, and for this Dumbledore credits Harry's ability to love. I'm not sure what the point of all this is, but I guess what Big Al's trying to say is that Voldemort believes the prophecy to be binding, while Harry's free to do as he pleases, which means that his desire to kill Voldemort is independent of any sort of destiny or wyrd or whatever you want to call it, and so when they finally throw down it'll be on Harry's terms. You know what, he's still an idiot.
So I guess all this Horcrux stuff explains the name "Death Eaters", since Voldemort's strategy for beating death revolves around using human sacrifices to increase your own power. And I guess this would explain the urgency for stopping them, since you can't exactly let however many Death Eaters there are kill six people apiece just to make themselves immortal.
I guess I'll give this chapter a pass since it actually focused on the plot rather than the typical side-stuff that's been going on for the last three hundred pages. It demonstrates how thin the book is, though, that this is all finally coming to light HERE, in a conversation between two characters as they tie all the little details together from the rest of the book. What was the point of setting up Marvolo's heirlooms in Chapter 10 if their sole purpose was to be revealed as Horcruxes in Chapter 23? Why tease some amazing tale of Dumbledore's injury when it really only needed a few sentences to tell? The only setup it needed was an explanation of WHY he was exorcising a cursed ring in the first place, and that could have been explained at any time. This business of hunting down soul fragments could have been Chapter 3, and the rest of the book could have been devoted to that endeavor, instead of blowing the whole thing setting it up in between Ron and Hermione macking on each other.
It doesn't really matter much to me. What does matter to me about Horcruxes is this...
SLUGHORN: Ah, good morning Severus. I'm afraid I'm feeling a bit under the weather today. Had a bit too much to drink over the weekend, yes, yes I did. And how was your day off? Dear me, are those claw marks?
SNAPE: Never you mind. Just get out of my way so I can go to my office.
SLUGHORN: Ah, that's the spirit! Carpe diem as they say! Oh, by the way, I wanted to let you know that I was having a little pitch-in for Sherri's birthday later today. I thought you might like to sign her card, and have lunch with us in my office. I'm to understand that there'll be pasta salad, hmm?
SNAPE: Thank you, but no. As you can see, Professor, I have my Dukes of Hazzard lunchbox with me this morning, and inside it is everything I'll be needing in the way of sustenance. And before you ask, no you can not have my pudding cup, which I'm sure by now you've already determined is banana flavored.
SLUGHORN: Ah yes, I had neglected to consider your midday fondness for Bo and Luke. Well, I suppose I shall just have to turn to my emergency pudding supply in the boiler room then. In that case, until we meet again...
SNAPE (in his office): Tubby freeloading jackass... now then, I'll just set this on the bush that's inside my office, which makes perfect sense, and I can finally get back to grading these abysmal papers. Let's see, F, F, the DC comics logo, F, F, a motivational sticker that says "NEEDS IMPROVEMENT", F, F... Merlin, but that was a great theme song.
Just the good ol' boys,
Never meanin' no harm,
Beats all you've ever saw, been in trouble with the law since the day they was born.
Straight'nin' the curve,
Flat'nin' the hills.
Someday the mountain might get 'em, but the law never will.
Makin' their way,
The only way they know how,
That's just a little bit more than the law will allow.
Just good ol' boys,
Wouldn't change if they could,
Fightin' the system like a true modern day Robin Hood.
RATING: GOOD
NEXT: Sectunsempra. If I can only find out what this word can mean, I'll be the smartest bird the world has ever seen.
--Me working a 24 hour shift on Tuesday, because everyone who manufactures, sells, distributes, and supplies chemicals has excrement where their brains should be.
--Me trying to do double duty, because I got transferred to replace the guy who quit two weeks ago, but they still haven't bothered hiring the guy who's supposed to replace the guy who gets transferred to replace me.
--Me pulling a fifteen hour shift on Friday, because somebody else screwed up their work and I have to wait around to find out what we're gonna do about it.
--Me eating a meat lover's bowl at Denny's. Well, this wasn't so bad. One of the perks to being a chemist who works weird hours is that sometimes you have an hour to kill and you can go eat at Denny's because you have time.
I don't mind the hard work necessarily, but I really didn't know going in that it'd get this hairy. I think next week will go a little smoother just because I'll know what I'm in for, and I can make sure to come in earlier so I can get things ready before the rush begins. Just the same, I'm a little irritated that everyone around me seems to be making my job more difficult. When someone f*cks up, that's more work on me, because now I have to retest something to make sure whether it was f*cked up or not. And I didn't really have time to test it once, so how well is testing it again gonna go over with me, you know? I need a T-shirt that says "I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR F*CK-UP," and wear it to work every day. "Hey, Mike, that material was supposed to be NF grade, but the vendor has no idea what NF stands for!" Read the shirt. "Hey, Mike, the guy that was supposed to add x amount of preservative only added x-y instead!" Read the shirt. "Hey, Mike, remember all that rubbing alcohol we sold you? Well we mislabeled every container, because our quality control sucks and we're relying on a truck driver to make sure it was done properly!" Read the shirt.
I'm just sick of dumbasses. It seems like every extra hour of work I have to put in is to compensate for some numbnuts who couldn't or wouldn't do his job right. There's probably some Republican bumper sticker that covers my grievance much more succinctly. Something about how my tax dollars pay for some hippie to fling poop at a canvas and call it art. That never bothered me much, but it's exactly the same kind of thing I deal with in my career.
Anyway, I've spent most of today taking a nap, and generally goofing around, because I've been tire and I'm out of clean socks. Fair warning: my review this time around will suck, or at least, more so than the others have sucked.
Chapter 23: Horcruxes
(Original Japanese Title: "The Divided Soul!! Harry and Dumbledore Talk for Thirty Pages!!!")
Since I did the last few chapters out of order, I should probably do a quick recap to get everyone back on track. The following is all you really need to know.
1) Hagrid's giant stupid spider died from whatever disease it supposedly had. Personally, I'm suspecting it was lured into innnerslytherin's laser printer and got a terminal case of murdered. But it's a spider, and I'm not Hagrid, which means I don't give two craps what killed it, so long as it's dead.
2) Dumbledore's private lessons with Harry culminated in his assignment to retrieve a memory of Slughorn discussing Horcruxes with a young Voldemort. Lacking any cunning of his own, Harry took the advice of the Outsiders and used a dose of Felix Felicis, a luck potion he won in Slughorn's class at the start of the school year. Under the influence of the potion, he manipulated Slughorn into attending the spider's funeral (don't ask), getting hammered, and then handing over his memory in a fit of drunken guilt.
Chapter 23 picks up from there, as Harry returns to the school around midnight, just as the luck is starting to wear off. I think the whole notion of luck potion in this book sort of exposes the way the HP-verse is put together. When Harry ISN'T super-lucky, he's pretty much got to fight to avoid running into anyone who might give him crap. When he IS super-lucky, it's not like he's winning the Super Bowl or anything; he's just granted the ability to be mercifully undetected. It just strikes me that there aren't a whole lot of other characters around who don't yell at, order around, punish, wheedle, or otherwise irritate Harry Potter. Tonks, maybe, but that's probably only because Tonks refuses to do anything in this book.
Even the paintings give this kid a hard time, such as this one that controls the passage into his dorm. The painting refuses him entry, claiming the password was changed at midnight, so he'll just have to sleep in the hallway. Like that's not enough, the oil-based bitch actually tells Harry to take the matter up with the headmaster. Right, because it's midnight, when he'd be so scary easy to get ahold of. Then one of those ghosts shows up and tells Harry that Dumbledore just came back and is on his way to his office, so Harry runs off the other way to go meet up with him. Then the painting actually admits it was lying about the password change. Oh, magic ghosts and paintings! It's FUNDERFUL.
Just as the illustration for this chapter shows, when Harry gets to D-dore's office he gives him the little glass vial Slughorn used to bottle his own memory. The way Big Al smiles at the sight of this bottle, though, it looks a lot more like a drug deal to me. "Ah, Harry, you have given me the greatest gift a man can receive: a chance to purchase a dose of that flighty temptress, crack."
Immediately, D-dore wants to check this memory out, so he rushes Harry over to the whatever it is they use to check out these flashbacks of his. You know, with the whole mentor/student thing, and the time-travel aspect, these two remind me a lot of Sherman and Mr. Peabody. And just like any episode of Rocky and Friends, this one's a rerun, as we're treated to an almost word-for-word re-enactment of the Slughorn/Tom Riddle scene from Chapter 17. I guess that's the only way to go about it, since this is the same memory and all, but I think Rowling could have at least included some new descriptions. This is Harry's second time seeing all this, so he's bound to have some new observations.
Since she wouldn't do it, I'll spare you the details and get right to the parts that Slughorn had edited out the last time. First, instead of shouting at Riddle that he'd "go wrong", Slughorn promises that he'll become Minister of Magic within twenty years--fifteen if he keeps sucking up to Slughorn, as he knows people in the Ministry who can grease the wheels. Riddle smiles and confesses he has little interest in politics. Instead of denying Riddle when he asks about Horcruxes, Slughorn is all too happy to tell the kid what he wants to know. And this is where the scene becomes new.
According to Slughorn, a Horcrux (just like the title of this cartoon!) is an object used to conceal part of a person's soul. The advantage to this is that if you split your soul into two pieces, and put a piece in some object, then you can't die if someone destroys your body, because you've still got a piece of your soul--a backup soul, if you will--perfectly safe in your Horcrux. However, as Slughorn warns, this is a very unpleasant experience, and most would prefer to simply die outright than to live on that way.
Obviously, Riddle isn't most people, so he asks how you'd go about splitting up your soul in the first place. Somewhat reluctantly, Slughorn explains that the very act itself is a crime against nature, and the only way to do it is by committing "the supreme act of evil": murder. Of course, anyone can kill a guy, but only a wizard familiar with Horcruxes would be able to encase the torn portion into an object for safekeeping. There's a spell for this, but Slughorn doesn't know what it is.
So Riddle changes his tack, asking if it wouldn't be better then to divide your soul into as many pieces as possible, thus making yourself harder to kill. Seven, as he says, is supposed to be the most powerful number in magic, so it strikes him that if you split your soul into seven pieces, you'd be in pretty good shape. Slughorn is naturally horrified at this idea, and Harry can tell that he'd finally begun to see Riddle for the budding monster he really was. Anxiously, Slughorn asks Riddle to keep this conversation to himself, since Horcruxes are a banned subject, and Dumbledore in particular has no tolerance for it. Riddle agrees, and leaves, and that's the end of the scene.
The remainder of the chapter is simply Harry and D-dore discussing the ramifications of what they've seen. For D-dore in particular, this is of great importance, because he's long theorized that Voldemort has been dabbling in Horcruxes, but until now there was no explanation for how he learned about them. To speed things along, I'm gonna dispense with the narrative and just go into the main points of their conversation.
First, D-dore is certain that Riddle's diary from Book Two was a Horcrux. This would explain certain powers the diary possessed, although the whole POINT to a Horcrux is to keep the object safe so no one messes with your backup soul, and yet here was this diary, left out where people could find it, only to be destroyed by Harry in the same book that introduced it. This was Big Al's first clue that not only had Voldemort created a Horcrux for himself, but that he had done it more than once.
Next up, when Voldemort got his body back in Book Four, he made a big speech to the Death Eaters or something, saying that he'd "gone further than anybody along the path that leads to immortality". While the Death Eaters didn't get what he meant, D-dore did: Voldemort had created more Horcruxes for himself than anyone else in Horcrux History.
This begs the question of why Voldemort wouldn't just use a Sorcerer's Stone, as seen in Book One. At least, I guess that was the point of Book One. I don't much care. Once again, Big Al fields this by suggesting that Voldemort would prefer Horcruxes, because they only depend on his own ability to create and conceal them. A Sorcerer's Stone can make you immortal, but it depends entirely upon the stone, so if you lose it or it gets stolen, you're S.O.L. Voldemort, being the quintessential loner he is, would only resort to such a measure out of desperation, but he wouldn't view it as a long-term solution.
As implied by the memory Slughorn provided, Voldemort most likely split his soul into seven pieces. Stupidly, Harry interprets this to mean he created seven Horcruxes, which requires Dumbledore to stop and explain that he'd only need six, with the seventh part still in his body. Again, stupidly, Harry wonders how they'll ever find them all, much less destroy them, so D-Dore has to point out that a few of them have already BEEN destroyed. Harry himself destroyed that fershlugginer diary. Another Horcrux was Marvolo's ring, which Dumbledore found right where Voldemort had gotten it in the first place. After turning it into a Horcrux, he obviously didn't want to wear it anymore, so he hid it in his grandfather's house, figuring no one would think to look for it there. Yeah, real smart, buddy. Needless to say, since we all saw the thing in D-Dore's office thirteen chapters ago, Big Al tracked it down, he managed to de-soul the thing recently. The only catch was that the ring was cursed as well, which injured his left hand. According to him, Snape managed to patch him up after this incident, thus saving his life. As for his buggered up hand, Dumbledore considers it a small price to pay for having rid the world of Voldemort's evil--or at least 14.2857% of it.
So yeah, that's the big story behind Dumbledore's injured hand, the one he's been refusing to tell throughout the entire book because he wanted to do the story justice. I'm not very impressed.
So this would mean that four Horcruxes remain. Given Voldemort's propensity for trophies and magical history, it's reasonable to assume these last four Horcruxes were special objects, even if they're only of great significance to himself. Naturally, the locket and cup that he stole in the flashback from Chapter 20 would make ideal candidates, since they once belonged to Slytherin and Hufflepuff, two of the four ancient house founders. While it's possible he managed to gank something that once belonged to Ravenclaw, Dumbledore is confident that the only surviving relic of Gryffindor remains out of his hands. That would be a tricked-out sword in his office. This may have been why Voldemort wanted to come back to Hogwarts as a teacher years ago, so he could pilfer the sword and anything else he might have found upon gaining unlimited access to the premises.
At any rate, Dumbledore thinks its more likely that the sixth and final Horcrux was in fact Voldemort's pet snake Nagini. Uh-huh. Do you ever get the feeling that Dumbledore is just wingin' it sometimes?
Anyway, tracking all this crap down has been what D-dore has been doing when he was absent from the school all year. He seems confident that he's close to tracking down a third Horcrux, and when he does, he'll let Harry come along and help him break it. Or whatever you do to destroy these things.
Can Voldemort feel it when you destroy one of his Horcruxes? Probably not. Voldemort had no idea that his diary was destroyed until Lucius Malfoy told him so. This is one of the reasons Voldemort's so pissed off at the Malfoys, by the way, because it was Lucius's fault the diary was destroyed. Of course, that's what happens when you don't tell your henchmen where you put your soul.
So to summarize, Voldemort's soul is in the following places:
1) His body.
2) Slytherin's locket
3) Slytherin's ring
4) Hufflepuff's cup
5) His pet snake
6) His diary
7) Upinya.
Destroy the Horcruxes, and you rob him of his ability to survive the destruction of his own body. In spite of this point being explained a number of times, Harry still asks if Voldemort could be killed after doing away with his Horcruxes. I'd like to throttle this kid, I really would. It's like he's gone to some strange planet and let an aging purple elf dance around him for five hours to awaken his latent idiocy.
Anyway, this leads into a discussion of the whole prophecy about Harry being the lucky guy who gets to kill or be killed by Voldemort. Harry is somewhat unimpressed that his sole advantage over Voldemort is his capacity for love, and Dumbledore explains that the only reason the prophecy is even being fulfilled was because Voldemort assumed it to be true. See, he decided Harry was the Chosen One Booger Red, so he killed his parents, but this just ensured that Harry would grow up to get revenge on Voldemort, regardless of any prophecy. In this way, Voldemort's interference actually ensured that the kid most likely to be a threat to him would be dead set on kicking his ass. In spite of all the insight Harry has into Voldemort's evil machinations, he's never once been seduced by the Dark Arts, and for this Dumbledore credits Harry's ability to love. I'm not sure what the point of all this is, but I guess what Big Al's trying to say is that Voldemort believes the prophecy to be binding, while Harry's free to do as he pleases, which means that his desire to kill Voldemort is independent of any sort of destiny or wyrd or whatever you want to call it, and so when they finally throw down it'll be on Harry's terms. You know what, he's still an idiot.
So I guess all this Horcrux stuff explains the name "Death Eaters", since Voldemort's strategy for beating death revolves around using human sacrifices to increase your own power. And I guess this would explain the urgency for stopping them, since you can't exactly let however many Death Eaters there are kill six people apiece just to make themselves immortal.
I guess I'll give this chapter a pass since it actually focused on the plot rather than the typical side-stuff that's been going on for the last three hundred pages. It demonstrates how thin the book is, though, that this is all finally coming to light HERE, in a conversation between two characters as they tie all the little details together from the rest of the book. What was the point of setting up Marvolo's heirlooms in Chapter 10 if their sole purpose was to be revealed as Horcruxes in Chapter 23? Why tease some amazing tale of Dumbledore's injury when it really only needed a few sentences to tell? The only setup it needed was an explanation of WHY he was exorcising a cursed ring in the first place, and that could have been explained at any time. This business of hunting down soul fragments could have been Chapter 3, and the rest of the book could have been devoted to that endeavor, instead of blowing the whole thing setting it up in between Ron and Hermione macking on each other.
It doesn't really matter much to me. What does matter to me about Horcruxes is this...
SLUGHORN: Ah, good morning Severus. I'm afraid I'm feeling a bit under the weather today. Had a bit too much to drink over the weekend, yes, yes I did. And how was your day off? Dear me, are those claw marks?
SNAPE: Never you mind. Just get out of my way so I can go to my office.
SLUGHORN: Ah, that's the spirit! Carpe diem as they say! Oh, by the way, I wanted to let you know that I was having a little pitch-in for Sherri's birthday later today. I thought you might like to sign her card, and have lunch with us in my office. I'm to understand that there'll be pasta salad, hmm?
SNAPE: Thank you, but no. As you can see, Professor, I have my Dukes of Hazzard lunchbox with me this morning, and inside it is everything I'll be needing in the way of sustenance. And before you ask, no you can not have my pudding cup, which I'm sure by now you've already determined is banana flavored.
SLUGHORN: Ah yes, I had neglected to consider your midday fondness for Bo and Luke. Well, I suppose I shall just have to turn to my emergency pudding supply in the boiler room then. In that case, until we meet again...
SNAPE (in his office): Tubby freeloading jackass... now then, I'll just set this on the bush that's inside my office, which makes perfect sense, and I can finally get back to grading these abysmal papers. Let's see, F, F, the DC comics logo, F, F, a motivational sticker that says "NEEDS IMPROVEMENT", F, F... Merlin, but that was a great theme song.
Just the good ol' boys,
Never meanin' no harm,
Beats all you've ever saw, been in trouble with the law since the day they was born.
Straight'nin' the curve,
Flat'nin' the hills.
Someday the mountain might get 'em, but the law never will.
Makin' their way,
The only way they know how,
That's just a little bit more than the law will allow.
Just good ol' boys,
Wouldn't change if they could,
Fightin' the system like a true modern day Robin Hood.
RATING: GOOD
NEXT: Sectunsempra. If I can only find out what this word can mean, I'll be the smartest bird the world has ever seen.