All 7 Horcruxes In The Harry Potter Series Explained

There are a lot of evil forces and objects in the "Harry Potter" universe, but none are as sinister as Horcruxes. Readers and audiences don't learn the word "Horcrux" until the sixth book and movie, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince." In a flashback obtained by Harry (Daniel Radcliffe in the movies) that he shares with his mentor Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon), the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, we read and watch as a young Tom Marvolo Riddle (played as a teenager by Frank Dillane), the man who would eventually become the Dark Lord Voldemort (eventually played by Ralph Fiennes), convinces another Hogwarts professor to explain the concept. After flattering Horace Slughorn (Jim Broadbent) and plying him with gifts, a young Tom gets the answer he's looking for. As Slughorn tells him:

"Well, you split your soul, you see, and hide part of it in an object outside the body. Then, even if one's body is attacked or destroyed, one cannot die, for part of the soul remains earthbound and undamaged. But of course, existence in such a form . . ."

There's something else. The way you make the Horcrux in the first place, before the soul-splitting even occurs, is by committing murder in cold blood — basically, the darkest act one can imagine. It shouldn't be surprising, then, that a wizard as evil as Voldemort would gleefully make not just one Horcrux, but seven, to keep himself alive at any cost ... and it explains why he doesn't die when his own Killing Curse rebounds against him when he tries to kill Harry as a baby. So what does Voldemort choose as vessels for his soul, and why? Here's every Horcrux you need to know about in the "Harry Potter" franchise, fully explained.

The first Horcrux that shows up in "Harry Potter" is presented so early that it's not even called a Horcrux yet, but there's no question that it contains a piece of Voldemort's soul. In the second book and movie, "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," Harry heads to the magical Diagon Alley to do some back-to-school shopping with his best friend Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and his family; during a dustup at a bookstore, the insidious former Death Eater Lucius Malfoy (Jason Isaacs) slips a diary that once belonged to his old boss Lord Voldemort into the belongings of Ron's little sister Ginny (Bonnie Wright). This presents a huge problem when the gang, including Harry and Ron's other best friend Hermione Granger (Emma Watson), all return to school ... because someone opens the school's Chamber of Secrets, which houses a massive basilisk that starts roaming throughout the pipe system within Hogwarts. Though a basilisk can kill with a look, its victims get lucky, whether they see the giant snake through a ghost so that it's obscured or are clever enough to turn corners with a mirror just in case (this is what happens to Hermione, actually).

As it turns out, the diary is what opened the Chamber, sort of. Because it's a Horcrux — likely one of the first ones a young Tom Riddle made, if not the first — it contains a piece of teenage Voldemort's soul, so by possessing Ginny, it allows Voldemort's spirit to open the Chamber (because he's the Heir of Slytherin, a requirement to be able to open the Chamber at all). While facing off against the memory of Riddle that emerges from the diary within the Chamber itself, Harry, who also has to fight the basilisk — and, thanks to Dumbledore's phoenix Fawkes and the school Sorting Hat, is able to use the Sword of Gryffindor to kill the snake — uses a fallen basilisk fang to stab the diary. As we later learn, Horcruxes can only be destroyed by items so destructive that they render it beyond repair, and basilisk venom is included in that list because it's so deadly, so Harry accidentally makes the exact right decision in this moment.

Once Harry and Dumbledore learn more about Horcruxes and realize that Voldemort probably made seven of them, the locket is the first one they encounter. After Slytherin descendent Merope Gaunt steals the necklace from her family home and pawns it, the locket, which was once owned by Hogwarts founder Salazar Slytherin himself, finds its way into the antique collection of an old woman named Hepzibah Smith. (Put a pin in both Merope and Hepzibah; we'll circle back to them shortly.) As a young man working for a curiosity shop that dabbles in dark magic, Borgin and Burkes, Voldemort steals the locket from Hepzibah and reclaims it, making it into one of his Horcruxes and entrusting it to Regulus Arcturus Black, a pureblood wizard who just so happens to be the brother of Harry's godfather Sirius Black (portrayed by Gary Oldman on screen).

Dumbledore and Harry enter a treacherous hidden cave to find the Horcrux and have to endure a horrifying test set by Voldemort where the wizard seeking the locket must drink a torturous substance; when they emerge from the cave with Dumbledore significantly weakened, Hogwarts is under attack, and Dumbledore is killed by his apparent friend and colleague Severus Snape (the late, great Alan Rickman). Harry then discovers that the locket is a fake and contains the following note:

"To the Dark Lord, I know I will be dead long before you read this but I want you to know that it was I who discovered your secret. I have stolen the real Horcrux and intend to destroy it as soon as I can. I face death in the hope that when you meet your match, you will be mortal once more."

Harry ultimately traces this note back to Regulus and learns that he chose to betray Voldemort, and from there, he, Hermione, and Ron track the locket to their former evil Hogwarts professor Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton), who, in Voldemort's dystopian government, heads a task force that interrogates Muggleborn witches and wizards about "stealing" magic from purebloods. Harry steals the locket back, and despite significant difficulties, he and Ron use the Sword of Gryffindor to destroy it once and for all, even if it does psychologically torture Ron in its very last moments.

A golden cup once owned by another Hogwarts founder, Helga Hufflepuff, serves as yet another Horcrux thanks to Hepzibah Smith (remember her?) A self-described descendent of Hufflepuff herself, Hepzibah takes a liking to a young pre-Voldemort Tom Riddle while he works at Borgin and Burkes and, as was previously mentioned, shows him all of her collected antique goods. Besides Slytherin's locket, she shows off the golden cup to Tom and tells him that she's particularly excited about this trinket. "Can you keep a secret, Tom?" Hepzibah asks the young man in "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," during a chapter where Harry and Dumbledore dive into memories associated with Voldemort's Horcrux journey. "Will you promise you won't tell Mr. Burke I've got it? He'd never let me rest if he knew I'd shown it to you, and I'm not selling, not to Burke, not to anyone!" (Hepzibah is cut entirely from the film adaptation.)

Tom, obviously, does something evil. He poisons Hepzibah, performs a memory charm on her loyal house-elf Hokey to convince her that she poisoned her beloved mistress, and absconds with the cup. Ultimately, it ends up in the possession of one of Voldemort's most devoted Death Eaters, Bellatrix Lestrange (Helena Bonham Carter), who tucks it away into her vault at Gringotts Bank for safe-keeping. In both the book and film of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" — the movie is split into two parts, and this happens in "Part 1" — this presents an obvious problem, but it's nothing a little Polyjuice Potion and Harry's trusty Invisibility Cloak can't fix.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione manage to infiltrate Gringotts by disguising Hermione as Bellatrix herself and, after some difficulties, they do steal the cup ... but they no longer have Gryffindor's sword (having promised it to a goblin named Griphook, played on-screen by Warwick Davis, in exchange for help getting into Gringotts in the first place) and can't destroy it. When the gang returns to Hogwarts to search for another founder's signature object that happens to be a Horcrux, Ron and Hermione head down to the abandoned Chamber of Secrets to collect basilisk fangs and use one to take down the cup, knocking another item off of their very dangerous to-do list.

Realizing that Voldemort fixated on the three founders of Hogwarts who aren't named Godric Gryffindor, Harry, Ron, and Hermione reluctantly return to Hogwarts in the second half of "Deathly Hallows" to try and find a magical item associated with Rowena Ravenclaw and are ultimately led to her diadem, which represents the wisdom of the "intellectual" founder. Despite the fact that the diadem does seem to be lost to history, Harry manages to track down one figure with some concrete information — Ravenclaw's house ghost the Grey Lady, who, as it turns out, is Helena Ravenclaw, daughter of Rowena. (When Harry confronts her in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2," she's played by Kelly Macdonald.)

Helena stole the diadem from her mother, jealous of the power and brilliance it conferred to the holder, and fled to Albania to hide ... but Rowena made an enormous error by sending a baron in love with Helena to collect her from the woods where she hid the trinket. The baron ultimately killed Helena when she refused his advances, turning them into two of Hogwarts' ghosts; Helena becomes the Grey Lady of Ravenclaw, while the baron becomes the Bloody Baron of Slytherin. Still, the diadem stayed hidden in a tree in Albania, and any "Harry Potter" fan worth their salt knows that Voldemort quite famously hid in Albania after being defeated by baby Harry, so that's how he got his hands on the artifact.

The diadem, which is hidden in Hogwarts' constantly shifting Room of Requirement, is a Horcrux, but when Harry, Ron, and Hermione track it down, they're confronted by his nemesis and fledgling Death Eater Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton in the films) and his flunkies Crabbe and Goyle. (In the movie, the actor playing Crabbe, Jamie Waylett, didn't return for either of the "Deathly Hallows" films, and so Goyle's actor Josh Herdman is joined by Louis Cordice's fellow Slytherin Blaise Zabini instead). Depending on whether it's the book or movie, Crabbe or Goyle casts an irreversible "fiendfyre" curse, creating a blaze so destructive that not only is the Room of Requirement forever damaged but the diadem is destroyed; Crabbe perishes in the fire in the book, but in the film, Goyle dies while Harry and Ron reluctantly rescue Draco and Blaise.

Throughout the book of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," we're treated to a lot of flashbacks surrounding both the Horcruxes and Voldemort's past, all but two of which are cut from the films (the only ones depicted on screen are Dumbledore meeting a young Voldemort at his orphanage and the aforementioned one with Slughorn). One that doesn't physically involve Voldemort at all, because he's not born yet, involves the Gaunt family, which is where we learn about a ring that once belonged to the ancient pureblood Peverell family that becomes a Horcrux later on.

When a Ministry official named Bob Ogden, who provided the memory to Dumbledore, goes to the rundown Gaunt house to investigate an attack on a local non-magical Muggle, he meets patriarch Marvolo and his two children Merope and Morfin. Morfin, as it turns out, did attack a local Muggle, and while Marvolo is hassling Bob over his investigation, he shoves a ring into the man's face, yelling:

"See this? See this? Know what it is? Know where it came from? Centuries it's been in our family, that's how far back we go, and pure-blood all the way! Know how much I've been offered for this, with the Peverell coat of arms engraved on the stone?"

Here's how things go for the Gaunts after this memory ends. Merope runs away with a wealthy and handsome Muggle named Tom Riddle, who leaves her after she stops dosing him with love potions; she gives birth to the future Voldemort and dies. Marvolo dies, Morfin picks up the ring, and Tom Marvolo Riddle, named for his father and grandfather, kills his uncle and steals the ring. So how does it become a Horcrux, and how is it destroyed? As Dumbledore explains to Harry in "Half-Blood Prince," he took it for himself and paid a horrible price:

"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."

The ring did, however, contain a Deathly Hallow — specifically, the Resurrection Stone — which explains Dumbledore's interest in it. Luckily, by the time Harry realizes it's a Horcrux, it's already destroyed.

This Horcrux is pretty simple, despite the fact that it's a living creature. Putting aside Nagini's frankly ridiculous and retconned backstory introduced in the "Fantastic Beasts" franchise, Nagini is a massive and murderous snake that hangs out with Voldemort all the time, and he keeps her so close because she's a Horcrux. In the book version of the fourth "Harry Potter" installment, "The Goblet of Fire," Harry learns about a missing woman named Bertha Jorkins, whom we eventually learn was killed by Voldemort and his helper Peter Pettigrew (Timothy Spall in the films) after they got important information from her. (Bertha does not appear in the film franchise at any point.) As we ultimately learn, killing Bertha allowed Voldemort to turn Nagini into a Horcrux. So, when you keep in mind that Nagini is Voldemort's most closely guarded Horcrux, how do Harry, Ron, and Hermione kill her?

They don't, actually; Harry's Gryffindor classmate and newly minted hero Neville Longbottom does. Neville, played in the films by Matthew Lewis, goes through an incredible glow-up throughout the series and becomes one of Hogwarts' bravest warriors, and after Harry learns something incredibly vital that we'll circle back to in just a second, he tells Neville to kill the snake. Thanks again to the Sorting Hat, who gifts the Sword of Gryffindor to true Gryffindors in their moments of need — just as it did for Harry while he fought the basilisk — Neville obtains the weapon, which is infused with basilisk venom, and decapitates Nagini, taking down the second-to-last Horcrux. So what's the last one?

Yes, that's right; the final Horcrux is Harry himself, which accidentally happened when Voldemort tried to kill Harry as a baby after murdering his parents James and Lily Potter. (He tries to kill Harry in the first place because of a prophecy, which is a whole thing.) Dumbledore tells this to Snape, which Harry then sees in a memory gifted to him by Snape as the Potions Master dies, and imbued with this knowledge, Harry heads towards Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest on Hogwarts' grounds to sacrifice himself so that Voldemort will be out of Horcruxes and perish for good.

After Voldemort casts a Killing Curse against Harry, who doesn't even try to resist, he ends up in a sort of limbo with the apparent ghost of Dumbledore, who helpfully explains everything that just happened to both Harry and the audience. As he reveals:

"You were the seventh Horcrux, Harry, the Horcrux he never meant to make. He had rendered his soul so unstable that it broke apart when he committed those acts of unspeakable evil, the murder of your parents, the attempted killing of a child. But what escaped from that room was even less than he knew. He left more than his body behind. He left part of himself latched to you, the would-be victim who had survived."

Now that Harry "died" by sacrificing his own life, he can make the choice to return to the world of the living and take down Voldemort once and for all. He obviously does, killing the now human and defenseless Dark Lord and saving the day. So there you have it: Voldemort's 7 Horcruxes explained, including the one he never even intended to create. The "Harry Potter" movies are available to stream on Peacock and HBO Max now.