Harry Potter and the Seven Horcruxes

 

        Harry Potter: the “Young wizard.” “The chosen one.” “The boy who lived.” Yes, we have all heard about Harry Potter and we all love the stories. The entire series is… So creative and unique that it is hard to put into words. There are so many concepts that no one else has really thought of. J. K. Rowling made up vocabulary and concepts that can be recognized around the world. We all followed Harry though out his life and, most importantly, his journey to find and destroy every last horcrux keeping Voldemort alive; ever remnant of his malicious and broken off soul.

          In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, one thing we were not told at the end of the movie is that Tom Riddle’s diary that was so often referenced throughout the movie is actually a horcrux. A horcrux is used to create a sense of immortality. When someone kills another, a piece of their soul is literally broken and ripped from the rest, dismembering your soul. Evil wizards would then put those torn off pieces of souls into another object so that they could never truly die.

          At the end of the movie, Harry used the fang of a basilisk to stab the diary and, inadvertently, destroys one of the horcruxes. A few moments prior, Harry himself had been bitten by the same basilisk he had taken the fang from. Harry is later discovered to be the final horcrux of Voldemort. My question is, why would the fang destroy the horcrux of the diary but not Harry?

          I have a few theories about why the bite of the infamous basilisk might not have worked on Harry in this particular scenario. One theory is that the destruction of the horcrux, when in a living being, is only destroyed when that person is completely dead, which seems like an obvious answer. My second theory is that the destruction of the horcrux is not instantaneous. The phoenix had come to the chamber of secrets and had healed Harry after the venom of the basilisk had begun to spread through his body. In theory, a phoenix like the one from the movie can heal and repair any sickness, injury, or ailment. Perhaps, when Harry was starting to die from the bite, that could have also been his body started to destroy the horcrux as he himself died, but being healed had halted the process of destroying the horcrux.