Horcrux

File:Riddle's Diary.jpg

Tom Riddle's diary, the first horcrux that Harry Potter encountered, as seen in the film Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

A Horcrux is a fictional magical object in the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling. The concept of a horcrux was first revealed in the sixth novel, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, although horcruxes are present in earlier novels without being identified as such. Rowling uses the character Horace Slughorn to introduce their properties. They are the main focus of the final book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Description

A Horcrux is a "receptacle in which a Dark wizard has hidden a part of his soul for the purposes of attaining immortality." With part of a wizard's soul thus stored, the wizard becomes immortal so long as the horcrux remains intact, typically hidden away in a safe location. If the wizard's body is destroyed, part of the soul remains preserved within the horcrux. However, the destruction of the creator's body leaves the wizard or witch in a state of half-life, without corporeal form. The dark magic involved in the creation of a horcrux is considered most despicable and is therefore rarely published, even in books devoted to the Dark Arts.

A horcrux can be made from any normal object, including living organisms. Destruction of the horcrux destroys the fragment of soul contained within it, ending its protection, and returning the creator to a state of normal mortality, unless of course, the creator has more horcruxes. This destruction requires the use of powerful magical means that damage the horcrux so it can't mend itself, like basilisk's venom or cursed fire. If a wizard has created more than one horcrux, he will remain immortal until they have all been destroyed. Without horcruxes, the wizard will die normally if mortally wounded.

Lord Voldemort is the only wizard explicitly mentioned as having created a horcrux (though others are known to have done so), and is the only wizard known to have created more than one.

Creation

Creating a horcrux requires one to commit a murder, which, as "the supreme act of evil, (...) rips the soul apart." After the murder, a spell is cast to infuse part of the ripped soul into an object, which becomes the horcrux. The spell can be found in the book Secrets of the Darkest Art.

There is no apparent restriction on the nature of the items that can be made into a horcrux. Inanimate objects are usually used, but a living organism can also be made into a horcrux. There is also no known limit on the number of horcruxes a wizard can create. However, as the creator's soul is divided into progressively smaller portions, he loses more of his natural humanity and his soul becomes increasingly unstable.

Under very specific conditions, a horcrux can be made without the intention or knowledge of the creator. The only time this is known to have happened is when Voldemort unsuccessfully used the Killing Curse on one-year-old Harry Potter. Voldemort's body was destroyed by the attempted murder and a portion of his soul was embedded within Harry.

Destruction

Horcruxes are extremely difficult to destroy. They cannot be destroyed by conventional means such as smashing, breaking, or burning. According to the book Secrets of the Darkest Art, a horcrux represents the exact opposite of a human in terms of containing a soul; while harm to the human body will cause no damage to the soul, the fragment of soul within a horcrux depends on this corporeal form to exist. In order to be destroyed, a horcrux must suffer damage so severe that repair through magical means would be impossible.

A horcrux can be magically undone only if the creator goes through a process of deep remorse for the murder committed to create the horcrux. The pain of this remorse is so excruciating that the process itself may kill the creator.Template:HP7

Voldemort's horcruxes

Voldemort's creation of horcruxes is central to the later storyline of the Harry Potter novels.

Believing that seven is a powerful, mystical number (see Bridget Wenlock), Voldemort intentionally created six horcruxes, intending to keep the remaining seventh portion of his soul within his body. However, Voldemort unintentionally split his soul into eight pieces: when his Killing Curse on the one-year-old Harry Potter backfired, it not only destroyed his body but inadvertently infused a part of his soul into Harry. Voldemort, unaware of this, went on to create Nagini as his seventh and final horcrux.

All of Voldemort's consciously created horcruxes were created using objects that had been important or held some sentimental value to him. Voldemort used artifacts from three of the four founders of Hogwarts (he was unable to obtain a relic from Godric Gryffindor), his childhood diary (which contained proof that he was a descendant of Salazar Slytherin), the Peverell family ring owned by his maternal grandfather, and the snake Nagini.

The founders' objects had protection distinctive to their elements; Slytherin's locket with water, and Hufflepuff's cup with earth. Although Ravenclaw's diadem did not have any special protection set by Voldemort (he was in a rush at the time), Harry had to catch it on a broom after it was flung into the air by the Fiendfyre beasts. Its destruction by fire corresponds with the destruction of other horcruxes by the fourth founders' relic, Gryffindor's sword, which is represented by the same element.

In his arrogance, Voldemort dropped subtle hints about having created horcruxes to his followers. Having overheard one such boast, Regulus Black guessed correctly that Salazar Slytherin's locket was a horcrux and sacrificed his life to retrieve it.

Each horcrux is destroyed by a different person, as shown in the following table:

Horcrux	Created with the murder of	Hiding place	Destroyed by	Destroyed using	Notes
Tom Riddle's diary	Moaning Myrtle	In the care of Lucius Malfoy	Harry Potter	Basilisk fang	Lucius Malfoy planted the diary on Ginny Weasley to reopen the Chamber of Secrets, not knowing it was a horcrux
Marvolo Gaunt's Ring/Resurrection Stone	Tom Riddle Senior	Gaunt's Shack	Albus Dumbledore	Sword of Gryffindor	Voldemort created this horcrux, not knowing the ring was also the Resurrection Stone, the second of the three Deathly Hallows
Salazar Slytherin's Locket	A Muggle tramp	A Seaside Cave	Ron Weasley	Sword of Gryffindor	Stolen from Hepzibah Smith, along with Hufflepuff's Cup. Originally recovered from the cave by Regulus Black and Kreacher
Helga Hufflepuff's Cup	Hepzibah Smith	Gringotts Bank, in the Lestrange's vault	Hermione Granger	Basilisk fang	Stolen from Hepzibah Smith, along with Slytherin's Locket
Rowena Ravenclaw's Diadem	An Albanian peasant	The Room of Requirement in Hogwarts	Vincent Crabbe	Fiendfyre	Stolen by Rowena Ravenclaw's daughter, who hid it in Albania. Discovered by Voldemort and moved to the Room of Requirement. Found by Harry, but destroyed by the fire while escaping the room from Crabbe's Fiendfyre curse.
Harry Potter	N/A	N/A	Lord Voldemort	Killing curse	When the attempted Killing curse rebounded, a part of Voldemort's soul flew into the nearest living thing, Harry Potter. Since a spell was not cast and the creation unintentional, it is impossible to determine who's death (if anyone's) led to Harry becoming a Horcrux.
Nagini	Bertha Jorkins	N/A	Neville Longbottom	Sword of Gryffindor	Dumbledore believed that the horcrux was created through the murder of Frank Bryce, however J. K. Rowling stated that the horcrux was formed earlier with the murder of Bertha Jorkins

Tom Riddle's diary

Riddle's diary is the first horcrux encountered by Harry, appearing in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. It was created by Voldemort during his sixth year at Hogwarts with the death of Moaning Myrtle. Before Voldemort's downfall, he left the horcrux with Lucius Malfoy. Aware of its corrupting magical properties but ignorant of its importance to his master, Lucius hid the diary in Ginny Weasley's possessions. In doing so he hoped to ruin the career of Ginny's father, his nemesis and a well-known Muggle supporter, by attributing to his daughter the murder of Muggle-born wizards. Ginny tries to flush it down a toilet to dispose of it, but steals it back after it ends up in the hands of Harry Potter. The spirit inside the diary possesses Ginny and she opens the Chamber of Secrets. Harry destroys the diary, unaware of its status as a horcrux, by stabbing the Basilisk's venomous fang into its pages.

Harry takes the diary back to Dumbledore´s office, where he and Dumbledore confront Lucius Malfoy. Harry returns the diary to Malfoy in a plot to free Dobby the house-elf, but it is not stated what became of it. Dumbledore later realises that the diary was a horcrux, one of many, and speculates that Voldemort only discovered that the horcrux had been destroyed when he "forced the truth out of Lucius Malfoy", and "that his anger was terrible to behold".

Marvolo Gaunt's ring / Cadmus Peverell's Resurrection Stone

Marvolo Gaunt's Ring is the second horcrux destroyed in the Harry Potter novels. Events of Tom Riddle's earlier life, as revealed in the Pensieve, suggested that he took Marvolo Gaunt's ring when he framed his uncle, Morfin Gaunt, for the murder of the rest of the Riddle family (which he confessed to after a memory change; Voldemort was the real murderer). The ring was made into a horcrux with the murder of Voldemort's father, Tom Riddle Sr.

Tom Riddle wore the gold-and-black ring at Hogwarts and it appears on his hand in Horace Slughorn's pensieve memories. In book 7, it is disclosed that Voldemort had placed the ring in a golden box, hidden under the rotting floorboards of the Gaunt House protected by enchantments.

Dumbledore found Marvolo Gaunt's ring in the Gaunt shack during the summer shortly before the start of Harry's sixth year at Hogwarts. Dumbledore destroyed the ring horcrux with Godric Gryffindor's sword, which had absorbed the venom of the Basilisk that Harry had killed with it during his second year at Hogwarts. Before destroying it, he succumbed to temptation and tried on the ring, which was horribly cursed. He was seriously injured, with his hand appearing blackened and burned, and had less than a year to live according to Severus Snape. Snape aided Dumbledore after his terrible encounter with the ring, but he was angry with Dumbledore for trying on the ring. Dumbledore then revealed that he wanted Snape to kill him at some point before the pain of the curse took full effect.

The damaged ring, with its black stone cracked down the middle, was kept for a time on a little table in the Headmaster's office; Harry later noted that it was no longer there, but received no explanation from Dumbledore.

It was revealed in the final book that the black stone had been encapsulated inside the first Snitch Harry ever caught, and left to him by Dumbledore in his will. The Snitch could be opened only when Harry was about to face his death.

The stone itself was important for another reason entirely: it was the Resurrection Stone, one of the three Deathly Hallows, making it the only artifact to be both a horcrux and a Hallow. It could bring the dead back for a time in a manner both like and unlike a ghost, even after it was cracked by Dumbledore's destruction of the horcrux. Voldemort did not know that the stone was a Deathly Hallow however, and in fact knew nothing of the Hallows at all; he was only aware of the Elder Wand, and did not understand its wider significance. Dumbledore's knowledge of its nature, on the other hand, was what motivated him to try on the ring in the first place.

Salazar Slytherin's locket

Slytherin's locket was passed down through the generations and eventually ended up in the possession of Merope Gaunt, Voldemort's mother. When Merope was homeless and starving after Tom Riddle Senior abandoned her during her pregnancy, she sold the locket to Caractacus Burke for a fraction of the Locket's true value (10 Galleons), either not knowing or not caring that it was priceless. After Hepzibah Smith bought it from Burke, Riddle murdered her and stole the locket along with Hufflepuff's cup, and then made the Locket into a horcrux and hid it in a cave by the sea in which he had once terrorized two of his fellow orphans years earlier. The protection he placed around the locket corresponds with Slytherin's element of water, fittingly enough; visitors must brave a swim through cold ocean water, sacrifice blood, and drink a kind of memory potion to get to the locket. The infiltrators then must fend off water-dwelling Inferi to get out. The locket was made into a horcrux with Voldemort's murder of a Muggle tramp soon after stealing the locket and the cup and killing Hepzibah Smith.

Regulus Arcturus Black, also known as R.A.B, and his house elf Kreacher then stole the Locket and left a note to Voldemort explaining what Regulus had done. Unfortunately, Regulus did not destroy the locket - rather than force Kreacher to drink the terrible potion that guarded it, as Voldemort has done, he did so himself and died, dragged under water by the Inferi after attempting to refreshen his throat from the burning potion. Regulus realized that Voldemort had made a horcrux, but not that he had made more than one. As he was being hunted by Death Eaters who wished to punish him for defecting from their cause, death by drowning was not a useless sacrifice. He did not, however, anticipate that the house-elf would find the task of destroying the Locket impossible. As a result the locket came to reside at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place.

In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the locket, deemed impenetrable, is discarded by members of The Order, unaware of its importance, whilst cleaning out the house. Kreacher, however, who cherished the locket, as it belonged to his beloved master, Regulus, retrieved it from the rubbish heap and hid it in his cupboard, along with other Black family heirlooms. Mundungus Fletcher then stole it while stripping the house of things he could sell and Dolores Umbridge then acquired it from Mundungus as a bribe when she found him selling it, as she thought it would enhance her pure blood credentials (she claims the "S" stands for "Selwyn," and that she is related to the Selwyns and to most other pureblood families). Harry, Hermione, and Ron then infiltrated The Ministry of Magic to steal it. They achieved this and it was then opened by Harry by speaking "open" to it in Parseltongue, and destroyed by Ron with the sword of Godric Gryffindor. As Ron raised to strike the two panes of glass in the locket though, it presented an apparition, to try and corrupt him: Hermione and Harry, altered into beautiful but terrible versions of themselves, who viciously belittle Ron and then kiss passionately. This revealed the horcrux's ability to see the darkest parts of others' souls, taunting Ron with one of his greatest fears, namely, that he was so insignificant compared to his best friend that the girl he loved preferred Harry. Ron, however, overcame the vision and brought the sword down, destroying the locket.

Helga Hufflepuff's cup

Helga Hufflepuff's cup was once owned by Hepzibah Smith, a distant descendant of Hufflepuff. Tom Riddle stole the Cup from her as well as the Locket, then killed Hepzibah and made the Cup into a horcrux, using her murder to do so.

Voldemort entrusted the Cup to Bellatrix Lestrange, who kept it in her family's vault at Gringotts Bank, protected by duplication and heat spells (specifically Gemino and Flagrante curses). Upon contact with foreign human flesh or clothing, the contents of the vault (including the cup) would replicate into searingly hot copies. Harry, Ron, and Hermione broke into Gringotts to steal it. Hermione destroyed this horcrux by using a fang from the remains of the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets. All of the Cup's protections corresponds roughly to Hufflepuff's element, earth; Gringotts is underground, the enchanted treasure is made from metal.

Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem

Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem was stolen by her daughter, Helena. She eventually became the Grey Lady, the ghost of Ravenclaw House. Before she died, Rowena wished to see her daughter again and sent a would-be-suitor after her, the Bloody Baron. Shortly before he found her in an Albanian forest, Helena hid the Diadem in a hollow tree.

Years later, Helena's spirit was tricked into revealing the Diadem's resting place by the charming Tom Marvolo Riddle. Riddle travelled to Albania, found the Diadem, and transformed it into a horcrux with the murder of an Albanian peasant.

Later, Voldemort returned to Hogwarts and asked Dumbledore to appoint him to the Defence Against the Dark Arts position. While there, he hid Ravenclaw's horcrux in the one place which he arrogantly believed that he alone knew about, the Room of Requirement. Harry deduced the Diadem's location in the Room of Hidden Things (a manifestation of the Room of Requirement). He had inadvertently moved the horcrux in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince when he hid his potions book there.

The diadem was accidentally destroyed by a Fiendfyre spell cast by Vincent Crabbe, who died in the resulting fire.

Harry Potter

Harry, as a baby, was the only living entity left in the room when Voldemort's fatal Killing Curse backfired on himself. Voldemort's soul had been so weakened and destabilized by his continuous murders and creation of horcruxes that, when he was ripped from his body after the Curse backfired, a fragment of his soul was lost and attached itself to Harry. This gave Harry a window into the Dark Lord's mind and his gift of Parseltongue. It may also have been a factor in the Sorting Hat's inclination to place him in Slytherin House—though as Dumbledore points out in Chamber of Secrets, Harry naturally possesses many of Slytherin's ideal traits anyway ("Resourcefulness... determination... a certain disregard for rules") and might well have earned the recommendation regardless.

Years later, Voldemort used some of Harry's blood to resurrect himself, as described in the fourth book. By doing so, Voldemort thus built Lily's protection into his physical form ("His body keeps her sacrifice alive"). Thus, ironically, when Voldemort attempted to make himself "invincible" by killing the Chosen One, he set in motion a series of events that created the opposite—rendering Harry impervious to death, whether by Voldemort's hand or another's, so long as Voldemort remained in his newly-created body. This accounts for the "gleam of triumph" in Dumbledore's eyes in the fourth book: by using Harry's blood, Voldemort essentially guaranteed his own defeat.

Dumbledore never directly suggested to Harry that he could be a horcrux; instead he asked Severus Snape to reveal this information to Harry near the end of his task, hoping Harry would be able to sacrifice himself willingly. Thus, Voldemort attempted to kill Harry, unaware of the multiple protections Harry had against him (Lily's sacrifice, his status as a Horcrux, his status as rightful owner of the Elder Wand), and, by being willing to die, Harry ensured that when he was no longer a Horcrux, the connection between them broken and both he and Voldemort mortal, he could fully return to life and be able to defeat the Dark Lord.

Nagini

Nagini was made into a horcrux with the murder of Bertha Jorkins. Not knowing that he had inadvertently made Harry into a horcrux, Voldemort believed Nagini to be his sixth and final horcrux necessary to split his soul into the magically significant seven pieces.

As with the diary, Voldemort intended Nagini to be a tool rather than a safeguard of his immortality. He frequently sent her to perform various tasks for him. Nagini, ask in the fifth book listened to Voldemort even though he was no longer in mortal state.

Once Voldemort realized that his other horcruxes (except Harry, which he did not know of) were no longer functional, he cast a powerful bubble-like protective shell around Nagini. He, however, removed this bubble once he thought Harry Potter was dead, mistakenly believing himself to be safe from harm.

When Voldemort became distracted, Neville Longbottom, acting on Harry's previous instructions to kill the snake should the opportunity present itself, brought the Sword of Godric Gryffindor down on Nagini, severing her head and rendering Voldemort vulnerable once more.

Similar objects in mythology and other works of fiction

• Koschei, an evil person in Russian mythology, whose soul is hidden inside a needle.
• In Tolkien's books about Middle-earth there are notable examples of magic used to store or bond a portion of the soul or power to objects, such as Sauron's One Ring and Morgoth's `Ring´ (Morgoth's Ring was in fact the whole of Middle-earth). However, these actions were not aimed at immortality, as Sauron and Morgoth (both Ainur) were in fact already immortal, their true purpose was to create a bond with the material world, so they could use their power to influence it.
• Genie, a supernatural being in Arabic mythology and Islam. In Western culture, genies are generally conceived as immortal beings concealed in an object (most often an oil lamp).
• In Oscar Wilde's book, The Picture of Dorian Gray, the portrait serves to keep Dorian alive and youthful while he commits acts of evil.
• Lich, a type of undead creature in modern fantasy fiction. A lich is a necromancer who stores its soul in a magical receptacle called a phylactery. Until the phylactery is destroyed, the lich cannot be permanently killed.
• In Lloyd Alexander's book Taran Wanderer, the enchanter Morda infuses his littlest finger with his life force, cuts off the finger, and hides it in the woods, making him essentially invincible until the protagonist manages to snap the finger bone and kill Morda.
• In the anime series Yu-Gi-Oh!, there are Ancient Egyptian artifacts known as the Millennium Items. The Millennium Puzzle contains the soul of a Pharaoh, and the Millennium Ring contains a fragment of a demon named Zorc, who is the evilest demon of them all. The 'Spirit of the Ring' is able to make copies of himself and transfer himself into other inanimate objects or people's minds.

• The Soulstones in the popular Diablo computer games are much like Horcruxes, as they contain the souls of Mephisto, Diablo and Baal, and they allow the three Demons to regain corporeal form once again, after the stones have been inserted into a new body.

References

Online resources

1. Frazer, James George, Sir. "The Golden Bough: The External Soul in Folk-Tales".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
2. Rowling, J.K. "J.K. Rowling's Official Site". {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |accessmonthday= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)