 . . ." "Yes, sir," said Riddle. "What I don't understand, though - just out of curiosity - I mean, would one Horcrux be much use? Can you only split your soul once? Wouldn't it be better, make you stronger, to have your soul in more pieces, I mean, for instance, isn't seven the most powerfully magical number, wouldn't seven - ?" "Merlin's beard, Tom!" yelped Slughorn. "Seven! Isn't it bad enough to think of killing one person? And in any case . . . bad enough to divide the soul . . . but to rip it into seven pieces . . ." Slughorn looked deeply troubled now: He was gazing at Riddle as though he had never seen him plainly before, and Harry could tell that he was regretting entering into the conversation at all. "Of course," he muttered, "this is all hypothetical, what we're discussing, isn't it? All academic . . ." "Yes, sir, of course," said Riddle quickly. "But all the same, Tom . . . keep it quiet, what I've told - that's to say, what we've discussed. People wouldn't like to think we've been chatting about Horcruxes. It's a banned subject at Hogwarts, you know. . . . Dumbledore's particularly fierce about it. ..."
"I won't say a word, sir," said Riddle, and he left, but not before Harry had glimpsed his face, which was full of that same wild hap-piness it had worn when he had first found out that he was a wiz-ard, the sort of happiness that did not enhance his handsome features, but made them, somehow, less human. . . . "Thank you, Harry," said Dumbledore quietly. "Let us go. . . ." When Harry landed back on the office floor Dumbledore was ; already sitting down behind his desk. Harry sat too and waited for Dumbledore to speak. "I have been hoping for this piece of evidence for a very long time," said Dumbledore at last. "It confirms the theory on which I have been working, it tells me that I am right, and also how very far there is still to go. ..." Harry suddenly noticed that every single one of the old head-masters and headmistresses in the portraits around the walls was awake and listening in on their conversation. A corpulent, red nosed wizard had actually taken out an ear trumpet. "Well, Harry," said Dumbledore, "I am sure you understood the significance of what we just heard. At the same age as you are now, give or take a few months, Tom Riddle was doing all he could to find out how to make himself immortal."
"You think he succeeded then, sir?" asked Harry. "He made a Horcrux? And that's why he didn't die when he attacked me? He had a Horcrux hidden somewhere? A bit of his soul was safe?" "A bit... or more," said Dumbledore. "You heard Voldemort, what he particularly wanted from Horace was an opinion on what would happen to the wizard who created more than one Horcrux, what would happen to the wizard so determined to evade death that he would be prepared to murder many times, rip his soul repeatedly, so as to store it in many, separately concealed Horcruxc. No book would have given him that information. As far as I know - as far, I am sure, as Voldemort knew - no wizard had ever done more than tear his soul in two." Dumbledore paused for a moment, marshaling his thought, and then said, "Four years ago, I received what I considered certain proof that Voldemort had split his soul." "Where?" asked Harry. "How?" "You handed it to me, Harry," said Dumbledore. "The diary, Riddles diary, the one giving instructions on how to reopen the Chamber of Secrets." "I don't understand, sir," said Harry. "Well, although I did not see the Riddle who came out of the di-ary, what you described to me was a phenomenon I had never wit-nessed. A mere memory starting to act and think for itself? A mere memory, sapping the life
out of the girl into whose hands it had fallen? No, something much more sinister had lived inside that book. ... a fragment of soul, I was almost sure of it. The diary had been a Horcrux. But this raised as many questions as it answered. What intrigued and alarmed me most was that that diary had been intended as a weapon as much as a safeguard." "1 still don't understand," said Harry. "Well, it worked as a Horcrux is supposed to work - in other words, the fragment of soul concealed inside it was kept safe and had undoubtedly played its part in preventing the death of its owner. But there could be no doubt that Riddle really wanted that diary read, wanted the piece of his soul to inhabit or possess some-body else, so that Slytherin's monster would be unleashed again." "Well, he didn't want his hard work to be wasted," said Harry. "He wanted people to know he was Slytherin's heir, because he couldn't take credit at the time." "Quite correct," said Dumbledore, nodding. "But don't you see, Harry, that if he intended the diary to be passed to, or planted on, some future Hogwarts student, he was being remarkably blase about that precious fragment of his soul concealed within it. The point of a Horcrux is, as Professor Slughorn explained, to keep part of the self hidden and safe, not to fling it into somebody else's path and run the risk that they might destroy it - as indeed happened: That particular fragment of soul is no more; you saw to that.
The careless way in which Voldemort regarded this Horcrux seemed most ominous to me. It suggested that he must have made - or had been planning to make - more Horcruxes, so that the loss of his first would not be so detrimental. I did not wish to be-lieve it, but nothing else seemed to make sense. Then you told me, two years later, that on the night that Volde-mort returned to his body, he made a most illuminating and alarm-ing statement to his Death Eaters. 'I who have gone further than anybody along the path that leads to immortality.' That was what you told me he said. 'Further than anybody!' And I thought I knew what that meant, though the Death Eaters did not. He was referring to his Horcruxes, Horcruxes in the plural, Harry, which I don't believe any other wizard has ever had. Yet it fitted: Lord Voldomort has seemed to grow less human with the passing years, and the transformation he had undergone seemed to me to be only explainable if his soul was mutilated beyond the realms of what we might call 'usual evil' . . ." "So he's made himself impossible to kill by murdering other people?" said Harry. "Why couldn't he make a Sorcerer's Stone, or steal one, if he was so interested in immortality?" "Well, we know that he tried to do just that, five years ago," s;n«l Dumbledore. "But there are several reasons why, I think, a Sorcerer's Stone would appeal less than Horcruxes to Lord Voldemort, "While the Elixir of Life does indeed extend life, it must lie drunk regularly, for all eternity, if the drinker is to maintain the immortality. Therefore, Voldemort would be entirely dependant on the Elixir, and if it ran
out, or was contaminated, or if the Stone was stolen, he would die just like any other man. Voldemort likes to operate alone, remember. I believe that he would have found the thought of being dependent, even on the Elixir, intolerable. Of course he was prepared to drink it if it would take him out of the horrible part-life to which he was condemned after attacking you, but only to regain a body. Thereafter, I am convinced, he intended to continue to rely on his Horcruxes. He would need nothing more, if only he could regain a human form. He was already im-mortal, you see ... or as close to immortal as any man can be. But now, Harry, armed with this information, the crucial memory you have succeeded in procuring for us, we are closer to the se-cret of finishing Lord Voldemort than anyone has ever been before. You heard him, Harry: 'Wouldn't it be better, make you stronger, to have your soul in more pieces . . . isn't seven the most powerfully magical number . . .' Isn't seven the most powerfully magical number. Yes, I think the idea of a seven-part soul would greatly appeal to Lord Voldemort." "He made seven Horcruxes?" said Harry, horror-struck, while several of the portraits on the walls made similar noises of shock mid outrage. "But they could be anywhere in the world - hidden - buried or invisible -" "I am glad to see you appreciate the magnitude of the problem," said Dumbledore calmly. "But firstly, no, Harry, not seven Hor-cruxes: six. The seventh part of his soul, however maimed, resides inside his regenerated body. That was the part of him that lived a spectral existence for so many years during his exile; without that, he has no self at all. That seventh piece of soul will be the last that anybody wishing to kill Voldemort must attack - the piece that lives in his body."
"But the six Horcruxes, then," said Harry, a little desperately, "how are we supposed to find them?" "You are forgetting . . . you have already destroyed one of them. And I have destroyed another." "You have?" said Harry eagerly. "Yes indeed," said Dumbledore, and he raised his blackened, burned-looking hand. "The ring, Harry. Marvolo's ring. And a ter-rible curse there was upon it too. Had it not been - forgive me the lack of seemly modesty - for my own prodigious skill, and for Professor Snape's timely action when I returned to Hogwarts, des-perately injured, I might not have lived to tell the tale. However, a withered hand does not seem an unreasonable exchange for a sev-enth of Voldemort's soul. The ring is no longer a Horcrux." "But how did you find it?" "Well, as you now know, for many years I have made it my business to discover as much as I can about Voldemort's past life. I have traveled widely, visiting those places he once knew. I stumbled across the ring hidden in the ruin of the Gaunt's house. It seem that once Voldemort had succeeded in sealing a piece of his soul in side it, he did not want to wear it anymore. He hid it, protected by many powerful enchantments, in the shack where his ancestors had once lived (Morfin having been carted off to
Azkaban, of course), never guessing that I might one day take the trouble to visit the ruin, or that I might be keeping an ey