“I am glad to see you appreciate

“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 across the ring hidden in the ruin of the Gaunt's house. It seem that once Voldemort had succeeded in sealing a piece of his soul in

side it, he did not want to wear it anymore. He hid it, protected by many powerful enchantments, in the shack where his ancestors had once lived (Morfin having been

carted off to Azkaban, of course), never guessing that I might one day take the trouble to visit the ruin, or that I might be keeping an eye open for traces of magical

concealment.

“However, we should not congratulate ourselves too heartily. You destroyed the diary and I the ring, but if we are right in our theory of a seven-part soul, four

Horcruxes remain.”

“And they could be anything?” said Harry. “They could be oh, in tin cans or, I dunno, empty potion bottles...”

“You are thinking of Portkeys, Harry, which must be ordinary objects, easy to overlook. But would Lord Voldemort use tin cans or old potion bottles to guard his own

precious soul? You are forgetting what I have showed you. Lord Voldemort liked to collect trophies, and he preferred objects with a powerful magical history His pride,

his belief in his own superiority, his determination to carve for himself a startling place in magical history; these things, suggest to me that Voldemort would have

chosen his Horcruxes with some care, favoring objects worthy of the honor.”

“The diary wasn't that special.”