A possible Voldemort failure mode: due to them both being Tom Riddle, Voldemort’s Horcrux network might accept Harry upon his death and somehow hurt Voldemort (leaving Harry able to coordinate others through Resurrection Stone). Killing Harry is either the next step of Voldemort’s plan, or a possible move on Harry’s part. Killing Harry seems prudent, alluded to in Ch. 108 and throughout in Harry’s internal monologue:
“So use an axe, it’s hard to get a prophecy-fulfilling spell backfire out of an axe,” Harry said and then shut up.
“I decided the safest path was to try to fulfill the prophecy on my own terms,” Professor Quirrell said. “Needless to say, the next time I hear a prophecy I do not like, I will tear it apart at every possible point of intervention, rather than trying to play along.”
This time, the potential problem is not the spells used in the killing (where an axe would be a workaround), but the consequences of death governed by Horcrux 2.0. Problems with Voldemort’s Horcrux due to some sort of interference (feint with Hermine) and also Voldemort’s limited understanding due to insufficient testing were foreshadowed. A more careful plan might be to recreate the whole setup on disposable victims, together with infant copies that are grown up, and check how Horcrux 2.0 responds to the death of a copy who doesn’t have a Horcrux of their own; and how it responds to a copy creating a Horcrux 2.0 of their own etc., while keeping Harry sedated somewhere in a way that wouldn’t register as death.
Even after re-reading the horcrux stuff a couple times, I’m still confused.
There are two types of horcuxes, v1 and v2. v1 only captures your mindstate as it was at the time of creation. v2 updates all horcruxes to the current mindstate. v1s were hidden in the canonical places (diadem, slytherian’s locket, etc), v2 in the hard to reach ones (mariana trench, pioneer probe).
After 10/31/1981, Tom’s mindstate bounced around the v2 horcruxes. In 1992, Quirrell found a v1 horcrux (“one of my earliest”). How does that work? How can a v1, which hasn’t updated, give rise to the current Voldemort?
He wouldn’t have Slytherin’s monster’s power, or knowledge of anything after the horcrux’s creation.
Also, how are those current v2 backups handling two Toms? Which mindstate is getting backed up? Probably the QQ one, but how does V know the system even works??
And isn’t it suspicious that Quirrell finds this horcrux just a few months before Harry is to attend Hogwarts?
Upon rereading 108, it’s ambiguous if QMort is telling the full truth about horcruxes. His Parseltongue confirmation comes later, after his horcrux explication.
Don’t have it in front of me, but my sense was the timeline was more nuanced. First he made some Horcruxes. Then he invented the True Horcrux, and made some of those. Then he invented the True Horcrux Hiding Place, and made about a zillion of them. Quirrel found Horcrux v2 in Hiding Place v1.
A possible Voldemort failure mode: due to them both being Tom Riddle, Voldemort’s Horcrux network might accept Harry upon his death and somehow hurt Voldemort (leaving Harry able to coordinate others through Resurrection Stone). Killing Harry is either the next step of Voldemort’s plan, or a possible move on Harry’s part. Killing Harry seems prudent, alluded to in Ch. 108 and throughout in Harry’s internal monologue:
This time, the potential problem is not the spells used in the killing (where an axe would be a workaround), but the consequences of death governed by Horcrux 2.0. Problems with Voldemort’s Horcrux due to some sort of interference (feint with Hermine) and also Voldemort’s limited understanding due to insufficient testing were foreshadowed. A more careful plan might be to recreate the whole setup on disposable victims, together with infant copies that are grown up, and check how Horcrux 2.0 responds to the death of a copy who doesn’t have a Horcrux of their own; and how it responds to a copy creating a Horcrux 2.0 of their own etc., while keeping Harry sedated somewhere in a way that wouldn’t register as death.
Even after re-reading the horcrux stuff a couple times, I’m still confused.
There are two types of horcuxes, v1 and v2. v1 only captures your mindstate as it was at the time of creation. v2 updates all horcruxes to the current mindstate. v1s were hidden in the canonical places (diadem, slytherian’s locket, etc), v2 in the hard to reach ones (mariana trench, pioneer probe).
After 10/31/1981, Tom’s mindstate bounced around the v2 horcruxes. In 1992, Quirrell found a v1 horcrux (“one of my earliest”). How does that work? How can a v1, which hasn’t updated, give rise to the current Voldemort?
He wouldn’t have Slytherin’s monster’s power, or knowledge of anything after the horcrux’s creation.
Also, how are those current v2 backups handling two Toms? Which mindstate is getting backed up? Probably the QQ one, but how does V know the system even works??
And isn’t it suspicious that Quirrell finds this horcrux just a few months before Harry is to attend Hogwarts?
Upon rereading 108, it’s ambiguous if QMort is telling the full truth about horcruxes. His Parseltongue confirmation comes later, after his horcrux explication.
Don’t have it in front of me, but my sense was the timeline was more nuanced. First he made some Horcruxes. Then he invented the True Horcrux, and made some of those. Then he invented the True Horcrux Hiding Place, and made about a zillion of them. Quirrel found Horcrux v2 in Hiding Place v1.
That seems to be the only thing that makes sense, but does the text say that anywhere?
It does not. It doesn’t quite not say it, either:
1) At 15, Voldemort creates his first Horcrux from Abagail Myrtle.
2) After he “grasp[s] the stupidity of ordinary people”, Voldemort decides to invent a better ritual.
3) He spends “years” refining it in his imagination.
4) Quirrel finds one of the Horcruxes which Voldemort had hidden in the “hopeless idiocy of [his] youth”
So, is “when he grasped the stupidity of ordinary people” + “years” < “youth”? It seems unlikely. But I do not think that it is quite ruled out.
I thought it was that ALL of the horcruxes were updated to 2.0.