Helga Hufflepuff's Cup

Tom Riddle used a cup owned by Hogwarts founder Helga Hufflepuff to create his third Horcrux. The spell was cast after he murdered Hepzibah Smith. The cup is introduced during the twentieth chapter of Half-Blood Prince and is destroyed by Hermione Granger in the thirty-first chapter of Deathly Hallows. Hepzibah Smith, who owned the cup, was a distant descendant of Helga Hufflepuff. Riddle killed Smith, stole the cup, then framed her house elf for the murder. Voldemort entrusted the cup to Bellatrix Lestrange, who kept it protected in her family's vault at Gringotts Bank, a place that Harry guessed that the once penniless Voldemort would have always coveted a connection to. Additional protective spells, including the Gemino and Flagrante curses, were used to protect the contents of the vault. Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger stole the cup after breaking into the bank.
Hermione destroyed this Horcrux using a fang from the remains of the basilisk that appears in the Chamber of Secrets.

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Tom Riddle's Diary

Tom Riddle used his diary to create his next Horcrux during his sixth year at Hogwarts. He cast the spell after murdering his fellow student Moaning Myrtle using a Basilisk. The diary is introduced in the fourth chapter of the Chamber of Secrets and is destroyed by Harry Potter during the climax of the same book. Before Voldemort's downfall, he entrusted the Horcrux to Lucius Malfoy. While aware of its corrupting magical properties, Malfoy did not know the diary was a Horcrux. In an attempt to discredit Arthur Weasley, Malfoy hid the diary in Ginny Weasley's cauldron, amidst her other books. Tom Riddle's soul-fragment possessed Ginny and through her reopened the Chamber of Secrets. At the end of book two, Harry saved Ginny and destroyed the diary by stabbing it with the venomous fang of a Basilisk, making it the first Horcrux to be destroyed. His reports of the diary's behavior to Dumbledore were the latter's first inkling that Voldemort might have created, not just one Horcrux, but several: "What intrigued and alarmed me most was that the diary had been intended as a weapon as much as a safeguard[1," implying that Voldemort must have had backups of some sort.
To Rowling, a diary is a very scary object. She said in an interview that "the temptation particularly for a young girl, [is] to pour out her heart to a diary." Rowling's little sister Diane was prone to this, and her great fear was that someone would read her diary. This gave Rowling the idea to have a diary that is, in itself, against the confider. When asked what would have happened if Ginny had died and Riddle had managed to escape, Rowling declined to give a straight answer, but revealed that "it would have strengthened the present-day Voldemort considerably."

Tags: HORCRUX, Tom Riddle's Diary

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Marvolo Gaunt's Ring

Tom Riddle creates his first Horcrux using a ring owned by his maternal grandfather, Marvolo Gaunt, during the summer after his fifth year as a student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He casts the spell after murdering his father. The ring is introduced during the fourth chapter of the Half-Blood Prince, having already been destroyed by Albus Dumbledore but its significance not yet revealed.
In a Pensieve memory, it is revealed that Riddle had taken the gold ring, which has a black stone inscribed with a magical symbol, from his uncle Morfin Gaunt, whom he had framed for the murder of his father and grandparents. Riddle wears the ring while still a student at Hogwarts, but eventually hides it in the house where the Gaunt family had lived. It remains hidden under the floorboards, placed in a golden box, and protected by several enchantments, until Dumbledore finds it.
Dumbledore finds Marvolo Gaunt's ring during the summer break between the events of Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince. Dumbledore destroys the Horcrux with Godric Gryffindor's sword. Dumbledore is seriously injured by the ring's curses after putting the ring on his finger. The injury leaves his right arm permanently disfigured and would have killed him quickly but for the intervention of professor Severus Snape, who can merely postpone its inevitably fatal effects.[12] The damaged ring is kept for a time on a table in the Headmaster's office.
Before his death, Dumbledore hides the ring's black stone inside a Golden Snitch and wills the Snitch to Harry Potter. Dumbledore had learned that the stone is, in fact, the Resurrection Stone, one of the three Deathly Hallows. This was why he had put it on his finger: he had hoped to activate it and apologize to his long-dead family, quite forgetting it was also a Horcrux now, and thus likely to be protected by destructive enchantments. Voldemort remained unaware of the stone's additional magical properties throughout his lifetime.

Tags: HORCRUX, Marvolo Gaunt's Ring

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CREATION & DESTRUCTION OF A HORCRUX

Rowling uses Professor Slughorn's expository dialogue to reveal that the creation of a Horcrux requires one to commit a murder, which, as "the supreme act of evil, (...) rips the soul apart." After the murder, a spell is cast to infuse part of the ripped soul into an object, which becomes the Horcrux. Rowling has never published the actual enchantment. In the final book of the series, Hermione Granger finds the spell in a book titled Secrets of the Darkest Art.
Both inanimate objects and living organisms have been used as Horcruxes, though the latter is considered riskier to use, since an organism can move and think for itself. There is no limit to the number of Horcruxes a wizard can create. However, as the creator's soul is divided into progressively smaller portions, he loses more of his natural humanity and his soul becomes increasingly unstable.
Under very specific conditions, a soul fragment can be sealed within an object without the intention or knowledge of the creator. While the object thus affected will, like any Horcrux, preserve the immortality of the creator, it does not become a "Dark object." The only time this is known to have occurred is when Voldemort unsuccessfully used the Killing Curse on one-year-old Harry Potter. Voldemort's body was destroyed by the attempted murder and a portion of his soul was embedded within Harry.
Horcruxes are extremely difficult to destroy. They cannot be destroyed by conventional means such as smashing, breaking, or burning. In order to be destroyed, a Horcrux must suffer damage so severe that repair through magical means would be impossible. (Known specific means for accomplishing this are enumerated and detailed below.) Once a Horcrux is irreparably damaged, the fragment of soul within it is destroyed.
A Horcrux can be magically undone only if the creator goes through a process of deep remorse for the murder committed to create the Horcrux. The pain of this remorse is so excruciating that the process itself may kill the creator.

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HORCRUXES---A WAY TO IMMORTALITY

A Horcrux is a fictional magical object in the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling. It is a Dark Magic device created for the purposes of attaining immortality. The concept is first introduced in the sixth novel, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, though Horcruxes are present in earlier novels without being identified as such. Rowling uses the character Horace Slughorn to introduce their properties. The retrieval and destruction of Lord Voldemort's Horcruxes forms the main focus of the final two books in the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
In an online diary entry, Rowling described a Horcrux as a "receptacle in which a Dark wizard has hidden a part of his soul for the purposes of attaining immortality." With part of a wizard's soul thus stored, the wizard becomes immortal so long as the Horcrux remains intact. For this reason, Horcruxes are typically hidden in a safe location. Even if the wizard's body is destroyed, a portion of his soul will remain preserved within the Horcrux. However, the destruction of the creator's body leaves the wizard or witch in a state of half-life, without corporeal form. The dark magic involved in the creation of a Horcrux is considered most despicable and is therefore rarely published, even in books devoted to the Dark Arts.A Horcrux can be made from any normal object, including living organisms. Destroying a Horcrux will destroy the fragment of soul contained within it, ending its protection and returning the creator to a state of mortality. If a wizard has created more than one Horcrux, he will remain immortal until all are destroyed. Once destroyed, the wizard will die normally if mortally wounded. The portion of soul within a Horcrux also has the ability to take spiritual possession of other people. This possession is limited to those who become emotionally attached to the Horcrux. Once possessed, the soul within the Horcrux can take total control of the person's actions while the person remains completely unaware of the connection. Once a person has become possessed by a Horcrux, the Dark Wizard has the ability to take corporeal form by draining the life force of the possessed person. None of these spiritual connections extend to a wizard's other Horcruxes. The portions of soul also possess some level of sensory awareness, being able to sense when in danger and defend themselves.Lord Voldemort is the only wizard explicitly mentioned as having created a Horcrux (though others are known to have done so), and is the only wizard known to have created more than one. In a recent interview J.K. Rowling mentioned that Herpo the Foul, parselmouth and first breeder of a basilisk, created the first Horcrux.

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