Horcruxes and Unhappy Dark Lord

Čt 29 dubna 2021

Originally published as “Quest for Immortality by the Unhappy Dark Lord” on Reddit.

I was thinking about this very unhappy adept for the Dark Lordship, Tom Riddle:

  1. Hufflepuff’s Cup — while Tom Riddle was still travelling after leaving Borgin and Burkes, and he considered dropping it into The Mariana Trench as the safest place to be. Safe it was, but the diary was squashed by the weight of the water (15,750 psi, 1107.33 kg/cm², 10 kilometres depth), a ton on each square centimetre was just too much even for the magical protections on the cup.
  2. Diary — while still travelling he left it in the middle of the Sahara desert, specifically at Reggane … surely, nobody would find one small book in the middle of Sahara!; which unfortunately was the place of French Nuclear tests in 1960 completely evaporating it.
  3. Marvolo Gaunt’s Ring — left in the Gaunt’s shack, which was a miserable ruin with an unknown owner (Gaunts didn’t bother to register their ownership in the Muggle land registry). So, when Muggles were building a motorway pass, it was silently eliminated (better to ask for forgiveness than permission). A hundred metric ton bulldozer was not impressed by few slithering snakes and run through wards over the shack without even noticing them. The ring in the box was later found by a construction worker, who was immediately killed by the curse. After even the emergency doctor, who was investigating the incident, has been killed, the company decided to cover up the whole disaster, and threw the ring (holding it in the protective cover) into a blast furnace, which quickly overcame all Horcrux protections and it was destroyed.
  4. Slytherin’s locket — he left it in the cave near the sea and it was salvaged by Regulus Black. Kreacher was not clueless, he asked for help His Mistress (a bit of elvish sophistry … when she is dead, she is not a member of the family any more, so he could tell her whatever he needed) and found a book in the Black Library, and after learning how to, he made a trip to Rockall and using Fiendfyre.
  5. Ravenclaw diadem — it was left in the Room of Hidden Things, and later found by Winky, who was cleaning up all things left in the castle by her now-imprisoned young Master, Barty Crouch Jr., when he was still nineteen, but excessively smart and planning for DADA Mastery. While looking for some lost stuff in the Room, she found an excessively Dark magical object. She knew that her young Master would like to preserve it, so she travelled with it for him to Azkaban (wards didn’t stop the elf’s apparition), but she was attacked there by Dementors. In a panic, she dropped the diadem, apparated away, and the horcrux was immediately sucked dry by a Dementor savouring extra Dark piece of soul.
  6. Harry’s piece of soul — Dumbledore was not an idiot, even without knowing what it was exactly, before Harry was deposited with Dursleys, Dumbledore scraped out an unknown piece of Dark Magic matter in Harry’s head, while it was still fresh and it still didn’t take a root in his skull. It went out easily and without the support of anything living died on the pavement of Privet Drive, Surrey.

So, when Harry got to Hogwarts in September 1991, there were no Horcruxes remaining and Harry had wonderful seven years of study, where the most memorable events of his life were his Quidditch victories and his first date with ${somegirl}.

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