This is the second post in a series on one of John Granger's articles. See the first post, The Cave: Was Dumbledore Set Up?

Granger, author of Looking for God in Harry Potter and numerous articles on the series, asks 20 crucial questions left answered as of Book 6 of the Harry Potter series in Why Half-Blood Prince is the Best Harry Potter Novel: Stoppered Death, EVIL Slughorn, and What Really Happened. J.K. Rowling may choose to answer all or some of the questions in the final book, but no Harry Potter theory-obsession would be complete without reading this article.

Let's begin with question #1:

1. How do you make a Horcrux, that is, what is the spellwork procedure, and what are the four remaining Horcruxes? We learn a lot about what a Horcrux is in Half-Blood Prince but not about how one is made or what the four Horcruxes remaining are. Until we know this, it is impossible to speculate meaningfully about what can and cannot be a Horcrux…

Is Harry a horcrux, what are the other four, where are the other four, when did Voldemort make them, and how does one make a horcrux? We don't need to ask why because we already know. Voldemort seeks physical immortality, so he split his soul in several parts (seven?) by committing murder.

I don't believe that Voldemort made an "accidental" horcrux when he tried to kill Harry, and I was hoping I could find canonical proof that horcrux spells are complicated. I defer to Granger, who says Book 6 contains no details about how a horcrux is created. If he doesn't know, JKR probably didn't make it explicit in the books.

I'll speculate. I imagine killing someone is not as easy psychically as it seems, let alone murdering them in cold blood. For Voldemort to have murdered because of hate and to cheat death indicates a selfishly depraved mind, wouldn't you agree? Such a mind would have the mind (pardon the pun) to learn and memorize the most difficult of spells when the reward is "eternal life." We know that splitting your soul is no walk down Park Avenue since it diminishes the life you have left. Wouldn't it follow that horcrux creation necessarily involves some convoluted and out-of-the ordinary dark magic? How can one inadvertently create a soul bearer?

Based on my own impressions and not anything nothing explicit in the canon, Harry Potter (including his scar) can't be a horcrux. Although Voldemort satisfied the murder requirement (James and Lily Potter) just minutes before he advanced on Harry, he didn't have time to perform any complicated spells, and JKR wouldn't spring a "lost minutes" scenario on us in Book 7 whereby Voldy uttered some dark incantation before he struck the boy wizard; that is, if she's playing by the rules of the mystery genre.

In the next post, I'll add more thoughts about question #1 before moving on to question #2: What is the nature of Harrys scar?