Harry Potter Theory of the Day: Harry Is a Horcrux

It’s July! Or, as it seems an Act of Congress has renamed it, Harry Potter Is Everywhere Month! We’re uncontrollably worked up over Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and all month we’ll surf the Potter fan sites, scan the message boards, and read the tie-in books to bring you up to date on all the debates, theories, and claims being made about Harry Potter before the book comes out.

(Not spoilers, mind you! Unlike Time magazine, which oddly claims that “spoilers are a myth,� we think spoilers do spoil the fun, and when, inevitably, someone manages to leak details of the book, we won’t post them.)

Let the nerdification of Vulture begin!

Theory: Harry himself is one of the seven Horcruxes in which Voldemort has stored fragments of his soul.

The argument for: Dumbledore tells Harry that Voldemort hopes to make the Horcruxes that protect his immortality out of items tied to Hogwarts’ four founders. But the only relics left of Godric Gryffindor, he tells Harry, are safeguarded in his office. Could Harry — the Chosen One, the son of two Gryffindors living in a village called Godric’s Hollow — be the Gryffindor-related item for which Voldemort searched? Harry’s scar has always been exceptionally sensitive to Voldemort’s moods, and Harry himself has a psychic connection to the Dark Lord. Is this because a part of Voldemort’s soul lives inside Harry, even inside his scar?

The argument against: Why would Voldemort safeguard his precious soul inside an enemy, and then try to kill that enemy repeatedly? Some posit that Voldemort created the Harry Horcrux accidentally, but if it’s such a complicated spell, how likely is that? And most important, wouldn’t Dumbledore — in seventeen years of searching — have thought of this idea too, and looked into it?

Our take: We’re torn, but in the end we’ll subscribe to the Harry-as-Horcrux theory; it answers too many questions about Harry’s connection to Voldemort to disregard completely.

Wade into the debate: On MuggleNet’s forums, the Harry Is a Horcrux thread’s at 58 pages and counting!