Professor Horace Slughorn

Even though he was right.

Another character is Slughorn.

I think his performance was very good.

Yeah.

While Voldemort is bloody and tattered and in a state of constant suffering, Which, ipso facto, you tarnish your soul, you lose your ability to produce a Patronus.

But then, how does one tarnish their soul? Well, said Slughorn uncomfortably, you must understand that the soul is supposed to remain intact and whole.

Splitting it is an act of violation.

It is against nature.

So Voldemort clearly understood that there was some sort of connection between them, but given his extensive knowledge of Horcruxes, why didn't he ever suspect that Harry might be carrying a piece of his soul? I think there may be a few different explanations for this, but I'm going to start with the circumstances under which Harry became a Horcrux in the first place.

As we learn from Professor Slughorn in Half-Blood Prince, a Horcrux is created through an extraordinarily dark magical process that begins with murder.

By killing another person, a witch or wizard damages their own soul, tearing it apart through an act that violates the natural order.

But murder alone isn't enough to create a Horcrux.

It suggested that he must have made, or been planning to make, more Horcruxes, so that the loss of his first would not be so detrimental.

I did not wish to believe it, but nothing else seemed to make sense.

Dumbledore's suspicions were eventually confirmed by Slughorn's memories, which revealed Voldemort's interest in dividing his soul into seven pieces, and it was with this knowledge that Harry's unusual connection to Voldemort began to make sense.

And so the irony here is that Dumbledore ultimately understood the consequences of Voldemort's pursuit of immortality better than Voldemort himself.

I hadn't meant to impart that we felt there was no hope.

Slughorn was back at work on the potions quadrant of the lab rooms, ordering around student interns.

Vasil has two of four walls covered with various sketches, branches of possibilities and other theorising.

Draco is amused to see the overstuffed armchair in the corner, with Salvatore splayed belly down atop it and supervising solemnly.

Horace, can you come in here?

She calls over her shoulder.

Slughorn waddles in and takes an equally solemn place next to Vasil.

We didn't intend to make her give up, but Horace has been strengthening her daily potions for several years now without telling her.

So then we got, you know, the end of the explanation here, which I think is kind of interesting because Harry's going to explain, you know, exactly what we know happened.

You know, he drank the poison from Slughorn and it says, and then I got the bezoar down his throat and his breathing eased up a bit.

Slughorn ran for help.

McGonagall and Madame Pomfrey turned up and they brought Ron here.

They reckon he'll be all right.

But yeah, so there we go.

A couple more luckies laid out there.

Also just more of Harry... being just as like humble as Harry always is like it reminds me of Order of the Phoenix where they're like recruiting him to be the leader of the DA and they're like listing off all of his accolades and you know he's sort of like yeah but I had like a lot of help you know and so you know George is saying like it's lucky you thought of a bezoar And Harry's just sort of like, well, I was lucky there was one of the room, but it's like, when you go back to that scene, Slughorn freezes, freezes.

But there are some examples of great Slytherins.

We get Slughorn in the original series, who's heroic.

I mean, he has some faults, too.

Don't get me wrong.