The Long-Lost Horcrux

[blaqlives]

Discussion of the editorial The Long-Lost Horcrux by Cody Gaffney.

[DeathlyHabitue]

This a good editorial. A lot more plausible and well thought out then many other editorials. However, though its posible that Neville's wand is a horcrux, but somehow I don't think its likely. Granted, I am a little bias. My own theory about Ollivander's disaperance is that Voldy kidnaped him so that Ollivander could make a new wand for Voldemort. Voldy has made it known that he wants to kill Harry personally and Voldy cannot afford to have another wand backfiring incident such as the one in GoF.

[Beatriceblake]

I don't think Neville's wand could be a horcrux- if it was surely something nasty would have happened to Neville or he would have noticed?

[DagnytheDaft]

I would find this more plausible if Neville's wand were described as being very old, battered, worn, anything. It would be over 1000 years old if it belonged to a founder. As it stands, we have no reason to think it is anything other than a brand new wand.

[Wimsey]

I find it amazingly coincidental that Ollivander stuck around long enough to give Neville a wand, and then promptly vanished. Is this the Horcrux Ollivander found? Did Ollivander hide Voldemort’s Horcrux by selling it to his last customer

Given that the wand chooses the wizard as much as the other way around, and given that someone like Neville's grandmother would know this, wouldn't it be a bit "forced" for Ollivander to put it on Neville?

The other problem is, why is the wand a Horcrux? Voldemort wants relics of the founders, and nothing about Neville's wand indicates that it is an ancient relic.

[Emerald63]

First off... Congratulations, Cody, on being published! Exhilerating, isn't it?

Unfortunately, I have one pretty big issue with your theory. But, then again, there may be a fix for that... within you ed itself!

Neville mentions the immense publicity surrounding the Order of the Phoenix climax. With all this publicity, wouldn’t Ollivander have known Neville was close to Harry? Maybe he was trying to get the Horcrux close to Harry, to help him destroy it? Or, if the wand was intended as a weapon, should we maybe reconsider the assumption that Ollivander is on the Order’s side?

My one recurring thought as I read your ed was, "Why wouldn't Ollivander tell Dumbledore if he found a horcrux?" Dumbledore is the leader of the Order and, in case Ollivander didn't know that, DD is also the greatest wizard alive. We know two things:

1) Ollivander notified Dumbledore immediately when Harry bought the brother of Voldemort's wand. This implies he's on the Order's, or at least Dumbledore's, side.
2) Neville bought his new wand before Dumbledore died, so if Ollivander knew he had a horcrux, he would have had the opportunity to inform DD about it.

I have always been a staunch Ollivander=Order person, but lately I've been wondering if I might have that wrong. However, I'm still not sure on this. I would hate to think JKR would have Ollivander be on Voldy's side, given Harry's impression that he's creepy. That would surely be sinking her own notion that image is not everything, as portrayed so ably by Snape (at least pre-murder).

I think the only possibility for your theory working is for Ollivander to actually be on Voldy's side and to be planting a weapon. Of course this would cast aspersions on the wands of almost every witch and wizard in Britain, and that's a problem. You'd think such a dark wandmaker would have his shop down in Knockturn Alley, but having a seemingly honest one in Diagon Alley would be a truly evil way to influence many people.

Another complication is that if Ollivander is on Voldy's side, he would not have passed along a horcrux weapon without V's explicit approval. I don't know if it's general knowledge that V was very angry with Lucius for getting the diary destroyed, but DD found out someone, so others may have too. I do not think any DE with even 1/10 of a brain would pull the same thing without orders from the top.

And I'm not sure Voldy would give the go-ahead for this one. He was cavalier about the diary's soul fragment because he had to be, if he wanted the diary to be found and used as planned. If a wand horcrux were made, I think it would need to be, as you said, one of the founders' wands. However, Voldy seems to have in mind to enshrine those very items and not let them come in harm's way. That would almost surely be undermined if he made one into a weapon.

But if for some reason we can't fathom, that's what Voldy did, then Neville would be the perfect person to receive it. The Longbottoms are an old pureblood family, but one that has not joined his cause. Frank was an Auror, he and his wife were both Order members, and ones that defied Voldy three times at that. And Neville is the "also ran" for the Prophecy. Without knowing the entire Prophecy, that marking Harry as his equal was a huge mistake, Voldy might be trying to hedge his bets by getting a horcrux weapon into the hands of the one other end of July, 1980 boy - Neville.

I'm afraid there's still a problem, though. The diary had a horcrux in it so that Tom Riddle, Jr's memory could possess whoever wrote in the diary. There's no indication in canon that a person's consciousness alone could do that. There's also no indication that a horcrux soul fragment, on its own, has any awareness of the world around it. It's the combination of soul and consciousness that allowed the diary to work as it did. If there were to be a wand horcrux weapon, there would need to be both a soul fragment AND an imprint of Voldy's conscious mind for it to be a weapon in the sense the diary was.

Voldy may well have come up with a different way of making a horcrux weapon, but I really do think one of those was enough for him. Despite the evil beauty of placing one with Neville Longbottom, between wanting the soul fragments to be safe, so there is no chance of him dying, and wanting to show his supremacy by enshrining the coveted founders' objects, I have serious doubts about yet another horcrux weapon. And since an Order-friendly Ollivander surely would have told DD he'd found a horcrux, and DD would have told Harry, I'm going to have to disagree with your theory.

The lovely thing about theories, though, is that, as you said, Cody, they can raise more questions than they answer. And thinking up new, unasked questions is a boon to all of us. They are the starting point for getting answers, even if the theory that spawned them did not have the answers we'd been hoping for. So again, Congratulations on doing a bang up job of that!

[wandaXmaximof]

I liked this editorial - it was well presented, researched and thought out- however, I think the writer was only half right in their assumption of Ollivander and the Horcrux.
I agree that a founder's wand would make a perfect Horcrux for Voldemort, and I love the idea that someone might have found it and sold it back to Ollivander.
I also agree with the thought that Ollivander would be intelligent enough to spot the wand for what it really was. However, I disagree the he sold it to Neville -- as posters above have pointed out there's nothing to indicate that there was anything unusual or special about his wand and he's had no ill effects from using it.
I believe the wand Horcrux is actually the wand Ollivander had on display in his shop window, resting on a cushion.

[Sacagawea]

Originally Posted by wandaXmaximof

I believe the wand Horcrux is actually the wand Ollivander had on display in his shop window, resting on a cushion.

I've had this theory for a long time...I just knew there's something special about that wand (why else would JKR bother to point that out in a way that didn't seem like a simple description of the shop) and it would make sense if it turned out to be a Horcrux. However, I must agree with the others - it's probably not Neville's new one (a Founder's wand would be noticably older). The idea that Ollivander planted the wand on a customer for safe-keeping is still plausible though.

[demonchild411]

This is exciting! I'm Cody, the author of the editorial. I sent this in a full year ago but I got an e-mail this morning saying "sorry it took so long... I've just posted it". Haha.

I've gotta run in a moment but let me just throw this out there to rebuke the whole "the wand wasn't described as being old or tattered" deal: Ollivander is extraordinarily powerful... can't he make an old wand look new if he really tried? Remember in the Weighing of the Wands ceremony how Harry noticed how new Cedric's wand looked after he polished it the night before? I'm just saying that the fact that JKR didn't go into detail about how the wand looked isn't solid enough evidence to write off my theory. Or maybe I'm biased because I'm still ecstatic that it was posted!

Whoever said that the wand in the front window could be a Horcrux... I really like this idea as well! I've always wondered what was so special about that wand that it gets to be displayed in front of the shop. Hmmm....

[RickmanRules]

Horcruxes look just like any other normal object. It’s the same idea behind a Portkey. If a Muggle was to come across a tattered old boot on top of a hill, they would think nothing of it, and the same is true for Horcruxes.

Actually, I think this idea is negated in Book 6. Harry wonders how they can find the horcruxes when they look like any old thing, and Dumbledore says that Harry is confusing horcruxes with Portkeys (that while Portkeys are intended to look like any object that a Muggle would overlook, Voldemort would have wanted only special objects for horcruxes).

Now, I don't think this negates the theory that a wand is a horcrux, and I think it highly likely that one of Ollivander's wands is a horcrux. Don't know if I believe that Neville has it now - presumably, Neville's been using his wand in classes and all, and wouldn't some bad things have happened by now if it was intended to be a weapon?

[furrygreenthing]

i think this is a very plausible theory, but i'm not sure that ollivander had to know anything about the horcruxes for it to work. perhaps you combine the theory that the wand is a horcrux (presumably gryffindor's wand) and voldemort kidnapping ollivander to make him a new wand... as far as the neville coincidence, who ever said that an old wand couldn't choose a new wizard? neville is a gryffindor, so that would make sense for him to have gryffindor's wand... also, i don't think that the wand is a weapon, at least not yet, because something would have happened to neville already. great editorial though!

[hpboy13]

Originally Posted by Sacagawea

I've had this theory for a long time...I just knew there's something special about that wand (why else would JKR bother to point that out in a way that didn't seem like a simple description of the shop) and it would make sense if it turned out to be a Horcrux. However, I must agree with the others - it's probably not Neville's new one (a Founder's wand would be noticably older). The idea that Ollivander planted the wand on a customer for safe-keeping is still plausible though.

I agree with this, I thought up this theory days after I read HBP and stick with it. This was a great editorial, but I'm afraid there are some loopholes.

If Ollivander is loyal to the Order, he would have told DD abotu the wnadcrux. But if he isn't loyal, why would he have told DD about Harry and Voldemort sharing wand cores? Woudn't it make more sense to let Dumbledore try teachign Harry all kinds of spells, only to have it blow up in his gface by finding out that Haryr and Voldemort can't duel.

This doesn't rule out the Imperius Curse or anything, but like mentioned before, Neville's wand doesn't appear to be old or anything. I'm not completely ruling this out as it is a rather ingenious theory, but I think it's unlikely.

Also, am I the onyl one noticing that Mugglenet appears to finally be clearing otu their editorial inbox? First they posted mine (submitted 7 months ago), then yours (submitted a year ago). They've posted more editorials in the last week that in the two months before it combined.

[Nidale93]

I liked this, it was really really good and very well thought out. I like the theory that Ollivander has a Horcrux, but I doubt it's Neville's wand. Don't you think something would've happened by now? Ginny started talking to the diary as soon as she got it, right? I think maybe the wand in Ollivander's window could be a Horcrux, but I doubt Neville got it -- as someone above me said, don't you think it would be described as being old and battered or something, instead of just cherry with unicorn hair? Otherwise, very well thought out, very nice editorial!

[halo2]

It would be more interesting if Harry's wand was a Horcrux. That would explain some things but more than likely Dumbledore would have noticed something I suppose.

[hpfreak731]

Great ideas! Ollivander is very smart, after all.

However, I am convinved Ollivander was captured to make a wand for Voldemort...possibly a super-wand that could help him get rid of Harry.

[negaprion]

I too liked this editorial. I think that the wand is a horcrux, but I don't think that Ollivander knew it. I do think that he knew Voldemort was coming to get it, though, and he gave it to Neville. This is kind of forshadowed in GoF when Moody gives Neville the book on water plants, thinking Harry would find it there.

How did Ollivander come by the wand? I think that Bellatrix had it - Voldemort in the past trusted her with his most precious.....? When Bellatrix and her husband went to Azkaban, who knows what happened to her things. Everything could have been sold or given away. Ollivander would have known Ravenclaw's wand when he saw it, so he would have bought it if he could have.

[Chamberlain]

What about the wand on display in Ollivander's window in the first book?
"A single wand lay on a faded purple cushionin the dusty window."

[sondra]

I'm glad you wrote this editorial. I had this idea for a long time. When I read S.S. I thought Harry got the wand on the cushion, when the movie came out I had to go back and reread (p.82 A single wand lay on a faded purple cushion in the dusty window). When Ollivander went missing I remembed the wand and wondered did it belong to Ollivander's ancestor, one of the founders. It would have been easy to give Neville the wand. The only problem, when did Voldemort turn it into a Horcrux I guess we will find out in July.

[iamsirius]

I don't know if the wand is a horcrux or not, but couldn't Neville's new wand just be a way to give us more insight into Neville's character? The wand is made out of cherry wood and has a unicorn corn. What qualities do these two properties represent?

I do like the idea of a wand being a Horcrux, as it has been suggested in previous editorials that the tarot card deck represents the four Hogwarts Houses. Wands, cups, swords and ? (Can't recall if these are correct or not).

[sfgilgalad]

hmmhmm... locket... rhmm
(the sword was meant to be an other horcruxe, but voldemort couldn't)