A Moral Question Regarding the Horcrux

An excerpt from one of his more controversial yet highly-regarded works of alchemical metaphysics, Voldemorto Quaestiones de Animo, Potestate, et Artibus Magicis Mortuo (Questions regarding the soul, power, and the magical arts in the wake of Voldemort’s death). Professor of Alchemical Metaphysics at Hogwarts, Alcuinius Windmoore Certaminus, was part of the so-called Correctio Magicorum movement, which sought to reconsider artes callidi, magicum, secreta, alchemica, astrologia — virtually all settled notions on magic in the decades following the demise of He-who-must-not-be, as he is now called. Rumored to be misanthropic in demeanor, those close to him laughed at such claims. He was, his friends would say, exactly as his alchemical recipes would suggest: a mixture of many metals, expressing the seriousness of lead, the mirth of silver, the firmness of iron, the courage of bronze, and the virtus of gold. After much debate, the following passage has been made public, while the volume within which it is drawn remains, nominally, on the index prohibitorum.

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Another Moral Quandry Implied in the Horcrux

I argue that an overlooked consequence of the horcrux curse is the creation of many souls from a single soul. This leads to a moral puzzle which all wizards of golden hearts must address.

This claim is my own, but, as others have noted, especially Lucretius Cheesebank and Cnut Sigrid II, there has long been the question of the nature of the soul or souls of the insane wizard who employs the horcrux curse. The standard question, and its several solutions, runs as follows.

The Standard Views

After the wizard has committed murder most foul, and has thereupon secured the torn portion of his soul within the horcrux, what has he created, or of how many souls is he possessed? Granting that the torn portion of soul has its origins in the murderous wizard, the success of a horcrux relies on this torn portion having an independent existence from the soul which governs the body of the wizard. (The existence must be independent, most agree, because independence is the principle by which the wizard is defended from death if his physical body is destroyed.) Now in the normal case of many individual wizards, each possessed of his own soul, the plurality of souls entails a plurality of minds — memories intellects, hearts, wills. If one soul is lost, the other souls retain their own capacities. In the case of a single soul torn asunder (and in the case of He-who-must-not-be, shattered severally), what is the status of these shattered bits of soul?

One view argues that the horcrux acts like a mirror. The two appearances, the original standing before the mirror and the reflection within the mirror, are separated yet intertwined such that the movement of the original is mirrored perfectly in the movement of the reflection.

However, there are some issues with the idea. Foremost, the value of the original and the reflection do not reflect the insurance which a horcrux is meant to provide. Take a hammer to the mirror, and the original is not damaged, but destroy the original — the soul standing before the mirror, e.g. — and the reflection does not survive. The original is commanding the copy. But with a horcrux, the standard view has been that the soul of He-who-must-not-be was split into several copies, which were themselves expendable, but that he himself could revive himself, however crudely and impotently, from any one horcrux. If the original soul, so to speak, existed within the restored body of Voldemort or even within any one particular horcrux, then on the mirror analogy, it would have sufficed to kill the original, without needing to destroy any of the others.¹ The history of the dark lord suggests, though it does not positively disprove, the view that the destruction of all horcruxes was necessary for the destruction of He-who-must-not-be.

There is another view, which was momentarily adopted, according to which the horcruxes function as portals of access and influence and escape. The strange possession of Mr. Potter, for instance, has been cited endlessly as a sign that the horcrux which was unwittingly deposited within him by He-who-must-not-be was a sort of doorway through which the dark lord might torture, interrogate, and perceive Mr. Potter’s soul. And if the “original” is under threat, his existence may “escape” into one of the horcruxes.

Despite many such interpretations, and one cannot forget Beanus Quodlibetarius Franklinson’s valiant work in their defense, such views have not satisfied entirely. While it is true that the horcrux indeed gives the evil wizard the powers of influence and access, these do not explain the protection promised in the creation of the horcrux. It falls, in fact, to the same objections as we saw with the mirror analogy. A portal cannot protect if the viewer is destroyed, nor can the viewer be revived by means of a portal. If the soul merely escapes destruction into a horcrux, in what real sense does the horcrux possess a shard of the wizard’s soul? Yet again, if we assume the horcrux’s alluring potency to be accurately described, the horcrux is sufficient as a source for revival.

Among the standard views, one cannot fail to mention the view of “psychic ubiquity.” On this view, the soul within the horcrux (or, perish the thoguht, several horcruxes) and the soul of the wizard are still, somehow, the very same soul. He-who-must-not-be is in his body and the very same one exists, in a torn and shattered way, in each of the horcruxes.

There are a few implications of this view, some of them merely remarkable, others that militate against its plausibility. We leave to the side, at present, the many marks in its favor, especially the kind of protection and unity of soul it retains. Among the remarkable, the horcrux is a means of dividing the powers of a single soul at a distance. The selfsame soul, e.g., is spread out far and wide, with perfect coordination and, strange to say, harmony with itself. It is like splitting one’s voice into several instances of the same voice, where the pitch, tone, volume, and utterance is exactly the same. If you happened to hear three instances of it speak at the same time, one in front of you and two to the sides, you would only be able to discern a difference of location, nothing more.

Another remarkable quality of the horcrux, on this view, is that the soul is still one, despite the plurality of experience. The experience of the soul, e.g., within the ring hidden away within the cave is not the same as the soul within the serpent and is entirely not the same as the bit of soul latched onto Mr. Potter’s soul. If nothing else, one of the unique qualities of the soul is the unsharable qualia of its own experience. Without sliding into an infinite regress, each soul has the experience of being this-here experiencer. And for each experiencer, they do not experience contrary experiences at the same time and in the same sense. The experiences of one soul may change radically, as in the case of werewolves or animagi or those with a taste for Pollyjuice potion. But nowhere else in magical literature do we find a spell or incantation or potion which allows a soul to have different, wholistic experiences at the same time and call these these experiences of the same soul. What would it mean for a soul to experience coldness as a state of being while the same soul experiences warmth as a state of being, or pitch darkness and radiant light at the same time. Perhaps most profoundly, what are we to make of the idea that Voldemort experiences the closest most intimate presence of Mr. Potter and experiences the security of his distance at the same time. I do not label this as liability, as some do. If it is true, it reveals to us a kind of magic we have not yet discovered.²

The real deficit, in my view, is that it offends the dignity of individual existence. I am happy to admit my failures of imagination upon correction. Yet I see nowhere in either magical or mundane metaphysics which allows for the existence of many things without the privilege, and the obligation, of each individual to possess something unsharable — namely, their charge over this-here instance of Being.

Many marvels are possible. I grant that a single person experiencing contraries may even be possible, but it is their own experience of the contraries which cannot be dolled out to another. No one can truly grasp what it is like to be another soul without remainder. Each soul has something, itself, which cannot be shared.³

The way in which the soul, that special creature of mysterious qualities, acts out its existence is through the marriage of will and intellect, between the portion which supplies reasons and the portion which says “let it be done.” This is what it means to be a soul, or rather, what it means to act out of the existence of a soul. A particular flower’s share in being obliges the flower be this-here flower. A rock’s share in being obliges it it be this-here rock. A soul’s obligation, likewise, is to be this-here soul.⁴ What I cannot imagine is that the souls have been split, remain souls (however ruined), and yet lack the dignity which every other individual possess: to be this-here thing. If the torn portions of the dark lord’s soul are still souls, they are those-there souls.⁵

A Proposed Alternative View

There is, therefore, another possibility, which I have suggested elsewhere.⁶ It shares with the mirror analogy a few imponderables, yet it serves at least to widen our imagination and deepen the profound evil of this peculiar curse. It begins by imagining that, within the rituals and horrid violence of the curse, the soul, however mangled, torn, and shuddering, retains all the dignity which we attribute without quarrel to all souls. In placing a portion of his soul into the horcrux, the malevolent wizard is depositing something with its own will, its own intellect, its own existence. It’s origin is a dreadful one, yes. Unlike the soul of a newborn babe, which comes from nothing and from someone — a treatment of which will take us too far afield — the existence of this soul begins out of violence, and carries with it, if one can put it this way, the momentum of the soul from which it is torn, an idea we will explore further below. Yet, crucially, it is possessed of those powers which we attribute to souls as distinct souls. They are, a mind, a heart, an intellect, a memory, a will. The wizard, in splitting his soul, has created someone else within himself, and the horcrux is its body. It possess the dignity of living out its life precisely how a soul does: in willing and thinking and being itself.

Certainly, there are some shocking implications of this view. First, it would seem that this commits the same error which was attributed to other views, that it does not assume that the horcrux curse works as advertised. I grant there is some debate on this issue, but it seems to me that on this reading, we may grant that the essentials of the curse are maintained and that we admit of a certain ambiguity within its promise. The curse says that one splits the soul and may deposit the parts into another object. The aim of the curse is self-preservation. Destroy one and the others survive. “In other words, one cannot die,” as one professor in the great history once interpreted the curse. On these points, all wizards agree, including myself.

However, as is so often the case with curses, their descriptions often conceal a double meaning. There are many kinds of death, and many kinds of life.

Life can mean unity; it can also mean a kind of continuation. As students and scholars of metalurgy, if not yet alchemy, will have learned, the above principle is present when we consider a block of, say, silver. Consider this fair element, a cube of it, say. If I cut the cube in half, and kept one half and melted the other half into oblivion, I suppose I can say that in the remaining half the cube itself lives on.⁷ I might use this half to fashion a new, complete cube. But no one would say that the remaining half is simply the same thing as the cube from which it was cleaved.

A shattered plate is a more apt example for our purposes.⁸ Some may be familiar with the small but honorable tradition of reconstituting a bowl, using a single shard as the inspiration. Even as her sight grew murkier, my mother was among the older tradition who persevered in this art. Once, when visiting the small, many-windowed room where she worked, I saw four bowls on the work bench. One was small, another wider. The third had a handle like a mug, and the last was rather deep. She had not yet painted them, and the white shard which inspired each was clearly visible against the fresh brown clay. Looking more closely at the shards, I discerned that they came from the same thing. What appeared in each case, however, was a form which, though in perfect consonance with the vestigial curves and shape of the shards, were their own thing.⁹ Even if my mother had made four bowls, all of the same shape, they would have been forever different in one way: the shape of each distinct shard.

The original bowl — if, indeed, it was a bowl — has in a sense lived on. But in an important sense, its life is in the life of another; it lives on within the shard(s) which lives on in the life of the new bowl. The former bowl is no longer the subject, but (its shard is) a passenger, a parasite, a part of something else. And this new thing’s life is not the same as the complete bowl. This is to say something very simple. The very reason why the horcrux is dreadful to contemplate, the real dark magic of the spell, is this: the soul of the murderer is not the same soul of the man prior to committing evil.¹⁰ The splitting of the soul in two has many consequences. One of them is that his soul is decidedly not united within itself as it once was. It is not in every sense still alive. The soul is no longer one. It should not, it seems to me, be surprising to us if the curse deceives us in believing that the soul preserved is the soul in its state of unity before committing murder most foul, when in fact the curse preserves the soul in its state of brokenness.

The one crucial fact is this: There was no Tom Riddle after his first murder. To speak of “Tom Riddle before the crime” and “Tom Riddle after the crime” is to speak of two different states of soul. Otherwise, one risks equivocation. There were only pieces of what used to be him. The silver cube has been cute in two; the bowl has fallen to the floor. The curse cannot preserve what it assumes is no more; it cannot secure a unity whose annihilation is the one thing needful for the curse to obtain; it cannot keep “Tom Riddle” from death, when it works from his disintegration. The Horcrux is a means of safeguarding the pieces, not the whole.

A Plausible Argument in its Favor

It is this view — what I propose we call creatio ē vī or multi ē vī creatī ¹¹ — which raises a serious moral matter. But before we consider it, we must show that this view is plausible.¹² Perhaps the reader has already considered one point: where the standard views are strongest, this view seems the weakest. How, after all, does He-who-must-not-be show powers of influence and access, when what he is accessing is not his own? According to the mirror analogy, the portal theory, or psychic ubiquity, the capacity of the dark lord to influence, interact with, torture, and peer into the mind and soul of Mr. Potter seems the foremost obstacle to this view’s viability.

What’s more, there is another problem, if this view is correct: how does He-who-must-not-be himself not know this fact? In all the accounts, the dark lord shows no awareness of there being in the horcruxes another soul which is not, in every sense, his own. And if these souls were, in fact, possessed of their own existence and therefore their own privileged capacity to live out themselves, why do we see no ready instance when one of the sundered souls diverged from the others in its inclinations, designs, or desires?

I openly admit that I have yet to find a moment in the accounts of the dark lord which proves this (and only this) view to be true. An absence of evidence is not evidence of an absence, as the school wizards say. Yet as many of my comrades and peers have noted, the theory of creatio ē vī, for all its intrigue, cannot thrive on such a meagre diet. At present, I find this view plausible for two reasons, mainly: first, the prevailing theories do seem to contradict basic features of the soul, as surveyed above; and second, this view recognizes the life and existence of the soul and does not contradict the accounts of the soul and existence.

There are many objections to this view. Among them: a) the dark lord shows no awareness that the souls within the horcruxes are souls possessed of their own individual existence, life, and determination, b) the souls themselves show no signs of forging their own lives but remained, it seems, perfectly in line with that of the dark lord’s soul, and c) the dark lord has power and influence through the horcruxes.¹³ What follows is a plausible account only.

As I see it, there is already a widely accepted phenomenon which goes a great deal toward resolving all three objections at once. Wizards and Mugils alike have long observed that certain kinds of twins exhibit many qualities which are relevant to our study.¹⁴ Twins, when separated by any amount of distance, have a premonition of danger if their counterpart is in danger. There are reports of shared dreams, shared tastes, shared magical strengths, shared memories and experiences, and this despite the twins having been separated at birth and brought up under wildly different circumstances. They have the capacity to share in each others joys and support each other in their trials. Twins are often chosen by wands of similar cores or potencies. Their Patronus charms often, but not always, manifest in the same creature.¹⁵ At Hogwarts, the predilection of the sorting hat in the case of twins is so reliable that among the older students ill-got fortunes have been made by practicing upon the ignorance of the unlearned.¹⁶

Before apprehending these qualities, Mugil scholars had already named a special set of such twins “congenital,” which is a very apt term; these twins are of the same genus, the same kind of source. Among wizards and witches, the terminology is less standardized, but the significance of the various terms in the several wizarding worlds is often the same: Engiscles, nafshadad, symphies.¹⁷ Even the ugly term, synpsychics, found within a rare set of ancient wizarding texts, speaks to what we are looking for: a oneness of soul, despite the obvious independent possession of their own soul. In searching for the cause of their uncanny psychic powers, Mugil scientists will point out that identical (and congenital) twins emerged from the splitting of one zygote into two independent embryos, a point which must strike us here as especially intriguing.

The natural creation of congenital or engiscle twins leads to a life of special harmony and intimacy between two souls. What about the creation of “twins” through violence? Here it is not so easy, thank the stars, to appeal to analogies in other dark curses or rituals. The horcrux curse is unique in its consequences.¹⁸ Yet I believe the phenomenon of engiscle twins is a helpful analogy.¹⁹

As with many things sui generis, it is I dare say impossible to liken it with anything with any exactitude. We are exploring the hidden, hideous effects of creating a soul, possessed of its own existence and life and future, through the violent seizure of another’s life. Here, the path forward is shadowy and uncertain.

After a much needed dose of sobriety,²⁰ I think we can see in the horcrux and in the cases of engicle twins many parallels, the obvious difference being how the twins in each case were formed. In every other respect, however, the relationship between engicle twins and that between He-who-must-not-be and his horcruxes offers a possible, even plausible, path forward. Just as engiscle twins share a great many pyschic connections, so did the dark lord with his horcruxes, experiences, memories, desires, ambitions, all no less true for being the distinct properties of several entities. In the case of (natural) engiscles, the gamete is divided with some kind of magic the agency of which we know not except that we know it to be a lover of harmony, unity, and joy. In the case of the dark lord and the horcruxes, the soul is torn like a wing from a pleading bird, by the bloody grip of the wizard’s selfishness.

When, after many memories and experiences, decisions and loses, cruelty and seething resentment, plans and patience — when the soul is split after so much has passed in one’s own life, I at least can imagine that the many shredded pieces of the soul afterwords must share in that formative history. In the case of the horcrux, the forces between the pieces may be stronger and more magnetic than exists between naturally born twins. We may also suppose that the curse itself may lend some kind of potency to the bonds. The influence of their shared past may very well be the same for each piece. The voluntary direction of each part may, at least for a great length of time, remain the same. (The strength and determination of the will before the curse is spoken seems the deciding factor.) There is perhaps, in short, a kind of psychic momentum which, after the event of rupture, ensures the several pieces of the soul maintain the same heading. Indeed, one reason why the several souls do not diverge from the original path is precisely because the several souls do not believe they are independent existences. This returns us briefly to the deception of the curse. The wizard who deals with a horcrux does not focus on the dreadful consequences of tearing his soul into pieces, but upon the present unity of his soul; his fear and confidence trust too much in the curse. He-who-must-not-be is as unaware as his newly formed twins are that they are free of each other, and more to the point, that they are not guarantors of his invincibility; in combination with the special tenacity of his spirit and the single-mindedness of his attention, a great disturbance would be required to convince these souls that they are free from each other. But in his loneliness and distrust, such a possibility seems unlikely. He, like so many dark lords before him, believed the curse. He felt sure it would procure his life unambiguously.²¹

This is not to say that the curse was a dud. If the embodied dark lord was somehow destroyed and his followers made recourse to a horcrux in order to revive him, the newly embodied soul, hailed as the dark lord reborn, would carry all the malice, cruelty, and hardened intention as the previous dark lord. Perhaps, over time, his followers may notice a strange change in the “new” dark lord. Perhaps, as is reported in so-called “mirror twins,” the dark lord prefers his left hand when before his followers would have sworn he preferred his right. Of course, the right hand is considered superior to the left by all wizards of golden hearts.²² I do not insist upon such particulars. I do hold the view that the horcrux is just as dangerous as was believed in the short period of his terrible reign. Indeed, perhaps it is more dangerous. One consequence of this view is this: if the curse allowed it, or if some alterations were stable enough to effect it, it is possible that the several horcruxes could have been re-embodied at the same time. I share the disbelief of my reader. Such an idea is enough to question whether magic is a gift or a curse.²³ The nature of the horcrux, it’s history and essentials, is among the darkest corners of scholarship.²⁴

I own the fact that these speculations are not fully worked out.²⁵ Many a scholar is at work, and I urge others to donate from their generous wisdom whatever solutions or reflections, and even aggressive rebuttals, they believe will aid in our inquiries.

The Moral Quandry Involved

What remains, to close, is the moral quandry. For the sake of argument, let us suppose that the creatio ē vī theory accurately describes how the horcrux curse works. With each murder, another “twin” is formed. Each portion of the soul has a potent connection with the others, rendering, for the most part, a means to share and engage with each portion. Each soul — the soul of the embodied dark lord, and the several souls within the horcruxes — possess its own existence; each is a soul.

The essential conundrum is this: can the witch or wizard who creates a horcrux be restored?²⁶

We are all familiar with the three unforgivable curses. The standard definition for these curses is well known to all first year students at Hogwarts and elsewhere: they earn you a one-way ticket to Azkaban. What is less-often mentioned is that their legal standing is in service of their alchemical or moral standing. As ought to be the case, law follows morality, rather than morality following law. At bottom, these curses are of special evil since their effects are irreversible. To kill, torture, or possess another soul cannot be undone.²⁷

While creating a horcrux implies committing murder, it is the murder, not the horcrux, while is unforgivable. Should the current standard be altered? Should we include horcruxes as among the unforgivables, or is there a means to restore the wizard, reverse the curse, and make right the wrong?

In favor of its inclusion among the unforgivable curses, the horcrux does entail something irreversible. Once a soul has been created, there is no way to un-create it, no way for it to be annihilated entirely, no way to render it null, void, nothing. We know that death is not, as some believed long ago, the nonexistence of the soul, but is simply its continuation upon its journey. In fact, the creation of a soul implies an everlasting set of obligations, demands, and relations. The creation of a soul is, if anything, even more irreversible than the evil of the unforgivable sins.²⁸ The existence of a soul leaves a permanent mark upon the cosmos. One can no more erase its presence than one can alter a single phoneme of the heavenly grammar. A soul is looked after by powers and incantations and potencies far stronger and more foreboding than the darkest desires of the darkest dark lord. These potencies are indomitable; their patience is endless; their memory, deep. They may shudder as we do when a soul is torn in two, but their care over each and every soul obliges their attention and care toward every soul, no matter its history.

The restoration of the souls, which the wizard has not only torn into pieces but has locked into material prisons for the sake of his own selfish protection, may require special work. But I suspect the following: I believe the restoration of the wizard’s many souls will look like two things: I think the wizard himself may be lost to us, beyond hope of restoration in this life. This is not held firmly, but prudentially. I.e., one may well be required to destroy the mad wizard who has lost his form and his mind in crafting a horcrux. This is a political decision, and there is warrant. Mr. Potter and his friends were right to destroy He-who-must-not-be. The same fate may befall the souls within the horcruxes. Again, we must rely on prudence, and Mr. Potter is against vindicated, in my view, in his plan to destroy the horcruxes. However, what I cannot solve is this: that the dark lord has forever impressed onto the page of the world himself severally. That is to say, he has burdened the potencies above, those in charge of souls, with himself in manifold. The cosmos is forever stained with many souls whose origin is in the originally intact soul of poor Tom Riddle. The restoration of this situation seems unspeakable to me. I cannot say if restoration looks like the restoration of many back into one soul, or if the many souls are restored individually. But it is, as far as my powers of imagination can stretch, an irrevocable act. I lean toward the notion that the many souls remain many.

Magical thought is perhaps not yet mature enough for such questions. Yet it is perhaps the one strain of thought, amid the vast horrenda of the horcrux, worth exploring. For at the end of it, we would learn something, not about the nature of evil, but about the nature of unity, restoration, love, and the deeper harmony which binds all souls together.

Footnotes

1. While the dark lord has been vanquished, scholarly norms have been slow to use his name still. It has for this reason been a sign of boldness to use the name of He-who-must-not-be but rarely. At present, publishing houses have given authors license to use the word once “within each quire of standard folio size.” While most scholars have decided to forego using the name at all, others have felt courage enough to redeem their ticket once within the entire publication, and it is at the crescendo of their work where they write out the name. (Before the publication of the above work, they failed to consider the possibility that anyone would be so brazen as to put the name on the cover; the publisher was fined, but the sales across libraries and private collections were more than enough to cover the indiscretion.) Alcuinius uses the word within every quire, at random, as if in using the word as much as he may, yet without much care, there is a point being made all its own. ↩

2. (Alcuinius’ footnote) My introduction to alchemy, written with students in mind, makes allusions to this, if one has eyes to see. ↩

3. (Alcuinius’ footnote) It cannot be done on this side of the magical wood, that is. Debate swirls about the status of souls on the other side of the magical wood, as many call the place past the veil of death. Perhaps all souls merge into one soul; perhaps they retain their plurality; perhaps there is a way of understanding and experiencing unity and plurality at the same time such that neither are repugnant to the other’s perfect realization. Whatever the case may be, we are concerned here with souls whose individuality is insured and maintained by the possession of material bodies, whose plurality is the sign of the plurality of soul. ↩

4. (Alcuinius’ footnote) This does not entail the obligation, nor the right, of the flower, rock, or soul to being other than a flower, rock, or soul. To choose against its nature is not a prerogative; rather, it is, according to many, the first step into the temple of dark magic. ↩

5. (Alcuinius’ footnote) Again, it is the body — the reliquary, or object, if you will, of the horcrux — which is the sign of the soul’s individuality. It is this-here soul because I can point to the ring, to the diadem, to Mr. Potter, to each of the horcruxes in turn, and like all naturally embodied souls, their bodies make them distinct; matter is the principle of the plurality. If you are pointing in two different directions, at two different bodies, you cannot be pointing to the same soul. (This is true even in the case of possession; but that is for another time.) ↩

6. (Alcuinius’ footenote) Look, if granted permission, in my Theories of Human and Human-like Souls. If not granted permission, try anyways. ↩

7. (Alcuinius’ footnote) More fundamental still: once I have cut the cube in half, no one would claim that the cube, as a unity, still exists in the world. What we have now are two halves of what was once a complete cube. ↩

8. (Alcuinius’ footnote). One example: The light from a fire does not “perish” if an ember is taken from the fireplace and taken elsewhere, given fresh tinder and breathed upon. But, again referring to individual existence, it is not always clear that the new thing is the very same as its origin. A fire is an old example, and something of a riddling one. ↩

9. (Alcuinius’ foonote) I did not have the heart to tell my mother this until much later, wishing not to offend her efforts. When I finally did tell her, she laughed and shuffled back to the kitchen for more tea, chuckling the whole way. ↩

10. The underlining is found in the manuscript copy from which this excerpt is drawn. It is unclear if the lines were drawn by Prof. Certaminus himself, that is, whether his writing hand or his editing hand (or another’s hand). For more on his potion, colloquially called ambarum potio manuum, see footnote ²⁰ ↩

11. (Alcuinius’ footnote) Creation out of violence, which stands in contrast to an old strain of thought which claims that all things were made creatio ex nihilo, “creation out of nothing.” ↩

12. (Alcuinius’ footnote) Research continues on the matter. It is my wish to adhere as faithfully as possible to the history of the events. At present, there seems to be no part of the story which contradicts my account, nor, sadly, is there evidence which affirms without contest that this view is necessarily true. As I read the story, the shriveled, fetal creature which Mr. Potter encounters on the other side of the magical wood is suggestive. ↩

13. (Alcuinius’ footnote) While I am firmly comitted to the theory of creatio ē vī, what follows is far more speculative on my part, and there may be other accounts which prove far more illustrative. ↩

14. (Alcuinius’ footnote) Most of the twins here considered are all “identical,” as they are called by mugil scientists, or are other kinds of identical twins. ↩

15. (Alcuinius’ footnote) Some scholarship shows that in many cases, the animals at least share similar attributes, such as flight, or size, or magical significance. This seemed questionable to me in earlier writings, but I confess a growing curiosity in the matter. ↩

16. (Alcuinius’ footnote) Students of Ravenclaw are notorious criminals in this field, and we needn’t name the house whose young are most often the guillible victims. ↩

17. (Alcuinius’ footnote) Engiscles > Eingeistlichen. One-soul-ish; Nafshadad > Nafsho had am had (ܢܦܫܐ ܚܕ ܥܡ ܚܕ), Symphies > Symphonia ↩

18. (Alcuinius’ footnote) Of course, as the scholarship within the index prohibitorum widens and deepens, we may discover yet other terrible possibilities. I do not count the Gemini curse, since those who have attempted to use this curse to create copies of themselves have suffered tragicomical consequences; nor do I include the Time-turning magical object used by Mr. Potter and his friends; while it does create a temporal “twin” of one’s self, constituting it’s own difficulties and risks, it is not considered a curse and is no guarantee of protection and does not qualify as dark magic. ↩

19. (Alcuinius’ footnote) It may even point to the source of the nefarious curse; as all curses must break what is natural, perhaps it is the natural phenomenon of engiscles which gave this curse a foothold in the world. ↩

20. Sobriety was not one of the professor’s chief qualities. Alcuinius was known for drinking a great deal of butterbear mixed with some potion the recipe for which remains a topic of much gossip. It’s special power, it seems, was to give him the ability to write with both hands at once; one would write, while the other would edit. While usually helpful, there were times when the editing hand’s desire for commentary and correction and the writing hand’s liking for its words devolved into a sort of war of the quills. One student is supposed to have entered his office to find two quills gazing at each other like the tongues of two great snakes waiting to strike. Beneath their tense attention, a page was splotched, scribbled, re-scribbled, torn, and scratched. The ink bottle was overturned, and the professor was as tense as the two quills were. Since Alcuinius’ professorial involvement in the house of Slytherin, this story has enjoyed incredible augmentations and acquired whispered symbolisms. ↩ ↩²

21. It is this point, which is still very much debated, which was a strong reason why this passage was finally given the magical imprimatur. The history of the dark lord has forever changed Horcrux studies, and the possibility that the curse does not work “as intended” has been seen as a idea which may limit the interest in its future employment. ↩

22. This line is struck through in the original manuscript. Since it is unclear what relevance the line has to the professor’s argument, the sentence seems in all likelihood a provocation written by his right hand and line struck through, his left hand’s immediate response. For more on his two hands, see ²⁰ ↩

23. (Alcuinius’ footnote) As many scholars know, this question is among the oldest among wizards and witches: whether the existence of magic is a good which can be turned toward evil, or an evil which can be turned to good. I offer no reflection on the point here, except this: one reason why the horcrux has been forbidden for so long is that many of the wisest magi have worried it may compromise the goodness of magic. It might tip the scales among the young and the ambitious, as one wizard put it to me. ↩

24. (Alcuinius’ footnote) The bleak darkness of which only the faintest thread of light is cautiously being cast. My colleagues who have been granted permission into these tomes, lamellae, and inscriptions still hesitate to utter what they have found. We may never know, or may know something after a long period of dreadful work by humble, disturbed minds. The historiography of dark magic is, as many know all too well, a story of gloom and tragedy. Many a scholar who ventured in never returned himself, and many did not return at all. It is unlikely, even under the leadership of the present minister of magic, that the available funds, tools, and most importantly, spiritual aid, will be provided in any amount more than nominally noteworthy (i.e., an amount which the prime minister can report as cautious, courageous, and prudential, without being any of those things really). ↩

25. (Alcuinius’ footnote) What is more, I pray we never have the chance to test them out and will stand against those who persuade others otherwise. Some wizards, influenced by the barbaric practices among some mugils, have proposed experiments and tests to be practiced upon murderers imprisoned in Azkaban. “We may learn a great deal about the nature of the soul and the effects of murder, if permitted to create a horcrux from the soul of a convicted murderer.” There are fewer ambitions more insidious to my mind. ↩

26. (Alcuinius’ footnote) There are many other issues besides: Is each soul culpable for the crimes committed by the embodied dark lord? I.e., are they joint aggressors, or is it possible that the embodied dark lord is the only agent of murder and mayhem, and the horcruxes are accessories, accomplices, or mere witnesses? Another one: When one has destroyed the embodied dark lord, and then destroys the horcrux (or -xes, pl), how many magical creatures has he destroyed? Etc. ↩

27. (Alcuinius’ footnote) N.b., they cannot be reversed on this side of existence. We leave to the side if these curses can be reversed when we include the other side of magical wood, beyond which portal new magic and new remedies unknown to us may provide resolution. ↩

28. (Alcuinius’ footnote) I, too, abhore the intensification of absolutes (e.g., more best, more true, less empty, etc.). In this case, however, I believe we have warrant, when we consider that the unforgivable curses are irreversible on this side of the magical wood, whereas the creation of a soul is irreversible on this and the other side of the magical wood. ↩