You are right--just looked it up and Voldemort created six horcruxes, to have seven pieces of himself. Had been a while since I'd read half blood prince, and I had remembered wrong.
However, how then did he return to life the first time if he did not use a horcrux to do so? I thought that was the whole point--you split apart your soul so that if the body containing your first soul gets killed (and that soul sent on to the next life), you can go on living through the other piece of your soul that you've hidden away somewhere. Otherwise why else would you need to split your soul up into different pieces? (Or what good would a soul fragment do you if you never became that fragment when you died?) Maybe it comes down to differences in understanding of what a soul is...
I mean, it would make sense that when you die, you could go on living as a disembodied fragment of a soul, then you would just need to go and find a body. I assumed that's what happened to voldemort. Then when he saw that he had used up one of his horcruxes to return to life, he made another in Nagini the snake. Or if he didn't use up a soul fragment to come back to life, why did he need to create another one which he put in Nagini?
Dumbledore tells Harry at the end that he was the *seventh* horcrux, the horcrux Voldemort never intended to make. However, Harry really was the *eighth* horcrux, right?
Voldemort always intended to make 7 horcruxes: 1-the horcrux that voldemort used to regain his life after dying the first time he tried to kill Harry 2-the diary 3-marvolo's ring 4-the slytherin locket 5-the hufflepuff cup 6-the ravenclaw diadem 7-the snake (nagini)
And then Harry became the eighth horcrux, unbeknownst to Voldemort.
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OK, that makes sense.
You are right--just looked it up and Voldemort created six horcruxes, to have seven pieces of himself. Had been a while since I'd read half blood prince, and I had remembered wrong.
However, how then did he return to life the first time if he did not use a horcrux to do so? I thought that was the whole point--you split apart your soul so that if the body containing your first soul gets killed (and that soul sent on to the next life), you can go on living through the other piece of your soul that you've hidden away somewhere. Otherwise why else would you need to split your soul up into different pieces? (Or what good would a soul fragment do you if you never became that fragment when you died?) Maybe it comes down to differences in understanding of what a soul is...
I mean, it would make sense that when you die, you could go on living as a disembodied fragment of a soul, then you would just need to go and find a body. I assumed that's what happened to voldemort. Then when he saw that he had used up one of his horcruxes to return to life, he made another in Nagini the snake. Or if he didn't use up a soul fragment to come back to life, why did he need to create another one which he put in Nagini?
Dumbledore tells Harry at the end that he was the *seventh* horcrux, the horcrux Voldemort never intended to make. However, Harry really was the *eighth* horcrux, right?
Voldemort always intended to make 7 horcruxes:
1-the horcrux that voldemort used to regain his life after dying the first time he tried to kill Harry
2-the diary
3-marvolo's ring
4-the slytherin locket
5-the hufflepuff cup
6-the ravenclaw diadem
7-the snake (nagini)
And then Harry became the eighth horcrux, unbeknownst to Voldemort.