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“Then you told me, two years later, that on the night that Voldemort returned to his body, he made a most illuminating and alarming statement to his Death Eaters. ‘I, who have gone further than anybody along the path that leads to immortality.’ That was what you told me he said. ‘Further than anybody,’ And I thought I knew what that meant, though the Death Eaters did not. He was referring to his Horcruxes, Horcruxes in the plural, Harry, which I do not believe any other wizard has ever had. Yet it fitted: Lord Voldemort has seemed to grow less human with the passing years, and the transformation he has undergone seemed to me to be only explicable if his soul was mutilated beyond the realms of what we might call ‘usual evil’ …”

“So he’s made himself impossible to kill by murdering other people?” said Harry. “Why couldn’t he make a Sorcerer’s Stone, or steal one, if he was so interested in immortality?”

“Well, we know that he tried to do just that, five years ago,” said Dumbledore. “But there are several reasons why, I think, a Sorcerer’s Stone would appeal less than Horcruxes to Lord Voldemort.

“While the Elixir of Life does indeed extend life, it must be drunk regularly, for all eternity, if the drinker is to maintain their immortality. Therefore, Voldemort would be entirely dependent on the Elixir, and if it ran out, or was contaminated, or if the Stone was stolen, he would die just like any other man. Voldemort likes to operate alone, remember. I believe that he would have found the thought of being dependent, even on the Elixir, intolerable. Of course he was prepared to drink it if it would take him out of the horrible part-life to which he was condemned after attacking you, but only to regain a body. Thereafter, I am convinced, he intended to continue to rely on his Horcruxes: He would need nothing more, if only he could regain a human form. He was already immortal, you see … or as close to immortal as any man can be.

“But now, Harry, armed with this information, the crucial memory you have succeeded in procuring for us, we are closer to the secret of finishing Lord Voldemort than anyone has ever been before. You heard him, Harry: ‘Wouldn’t it be better, make you stronger, to have your soul in more pieces … isn’t seven the most powerfully magical number …’ Isn’t seven the most powerfully magical number. Yes, I think the idea of a seven-part soul would greatly appeal to Lord Voldemort.”

“He made seven Horcruxes?” said Harry, horror-struck, while several of the portraits on the walls made similar noises of shock and outrage. “But they could be anywhere in the world — hidden — buried or invisible —”

“I am glad to see you appreciate the magnitude of the problem,” said Dumbledore calmly “But firstly, no, Harry, not seven Horcruxes: six. The seventh part of his soul, however maimed, resides inside his regenerated body. That was the part of him that lived a spectral existence for so many years during his exile; without that, he has no self at all. That seventh piece of soul will be the last that anybody wishing to kill Voldemort must attack — the piece that lives in his body.”

“But the six Horcruxes, then,” said Harry, a little desperately, “how are we supposed to find them?”

“You are forgetting … you have already destroyed one of them. And I have destroyed another.”

“You have?” said Harry eagerly.

“Yes indeed,” said Dumbledore, and he raised his blackened, burned-looking hand. “The ring, Harry. Marvolo’s ring. And a terrible curse there was upon it too. Had it not been — forgive me the lack of seemly modesty — for my own prodigious skill, and for Professor Snape’s timely action when I returned to Hogwarts, desperately injured, I might not have lived to tell the tale. However, a withered hand does not seem an unreasonable exchange for a seventh of Voldemort’s soul. The ring is no longer a Horcrux.”

“But how did you find it?”

“Well, as you now know, for many years I have made it my business to discover as much as I can about Voldemort’s past life. I have traveled widely, visiting those places he once knew. I stumbled