JK Rowling put an end to a potentially massive Harry Potter plot hole
The weird ways of the wizarding world can leave fans pretty confused from time to time so it can help clear up some Harry Potter confusion if JK Rowling herself gives a definite answer.
You might occasionally wonder why Fred and George never noticed Peter Pettigrew on the Marauder's Map, or that he always seemed to be hanging very closely around their brother Ron.
Or you could ponder why the Ministry of Magic doesn't just use truth serum to solve crimes, especially since they're apparently lacking in ethics enough to employ creatures as cruel as Dementors for punishment.
Then of course there's plenty who want to know why Dumbledore ordered all the Hogwarts students back to their dormitories when there was a troll in the dungeons and Slytherin's dorm is in the dungeons.
Advert
The answers can sometimes be pretty easy to guess, but of all the Harry Potter plot holes to be cleared up this is one of the biggies.
Why the Horcrux in Harry wasn't destroyed when he was bitten by the basilisk back in Chamber of Secrets?
To catch you up on the situation, Voldemort creates a bunch of dark magic items called Horcruxes, essentially things which contain a fragment of a person's soul and means they can never be truly killed as long as the item survives.
To stick a portion of your soul into an object, the witch or wizard must first split their soul by killing someone, making it a very evil form of magic that required great effort to destroy.
This becomes a pretty crucial plot point in the final two books as Dumbledore discovers that Voldemort has created a whole load of Horcruxes to protect him in case he gets killed, meaning that to fully destroy the Dark Lord, one would have to get rid of all the Horcruxes first.
Harry had unknowingly destroyed one of them in the climactic battle at the end of Chamber of Secrets, driving a basilisk's fang through Tom Riddle's diary.
However, in the same fight he was bitten by a basilisk and almost killed by the creature's venom, only saved thanks to some convenient application of phoenix tears.
Since the revelation that Harry himself was actually a seventh Horcrux, fans have been scratching their heads for a long time wondering why that one wasn't destroyed.
Some wonder why it didn't destroy the Horcrux when the basilisk venom seemingly did the job, while others have argued back that Harry would have had to die to destroy the shard of Voldemort's soul.
Harry Potter author JK Rowling has confirmed that this is indeed the correct answer, writing in a blog post that she gets this question all the time and for a Horcrux to be destroyed, it must be 'damaged beyond repair'.
Basically, Harry would need to have died at the end of Chamber of Secrets for the Horcrux inside him to have been destroyed, and that wouldn't have been a very good ending to the book.
Also, being killed by something other than Voldemort before the evil wizard nabbed his blood to regain his strength in Goblet of Fire would have just killed him without the chance of coming back to life.
Topics: Harry Potter, JK Rowling
Joe Harker