The Darkest Harry Potter Mystery Still Hasn’t Been Solved (& the Reboot Doing It Would Break a Big Rule)

Across the course of seven books and eight movies, Harry Potter revealed a lot of secrets and uncovered a lot of mysteries. From Severus Snape’s true allegiance to him being the Half-Blood Prince, the identity of R.A.B., how Harry truly survived Lord Voldemort’s killing curse, and how the Dark Lord was able to return, a lot was cleared up before the climax. And the end of Harry Potter didn’t mean the mysteries stopped being solved, as J.K. Rowling, whether in interviews or on Pottermore, continued to reveal secrets, such as Albus Dumbledore being gay and having been in love with Gellert Grindelwald, or, erm, how wizards use (or don’t use) the restroom.

While it had seemed like they were on a mission to ensure every bit of canon had a definitive answer, whether it was a question anybody was asking or not, not every mystery has been solved. The veil in the aptly named Department of Mysteries is still under a, well, veil of secrecy, and we don’t know much about Harry’s extended family. But the darkest mystery that hasn’t been solved relates to something that the entire endgame hinges on: Horcruxes. We know that it requires an act of murder to split the soul, but Rowling refused to give exact details, while making the mystery even bigger in a 2007 PotterCast interview, saying:

“I see it as a series of things you would have to do. So you would have to perform a spell. But you would also– I don’t even know if I want to say it out loud, I know that sounds funny. But I did really think it through. There are two things that I think are too horrible, actually, to go into detail about. One of them is how Pettigrew brought Voldemort back into a rudimentary body. ‘Cause I told my editor what I thought happened there, and she looked as though she was gonna vomit. And then– and the other thing is, how you make a Horcrux. And I don’t even like– I don’t know. Will it be in the Encyclopedia? I don’t know if I can bring myself to, ummm… I don’t know.”

Harry Potter Will Probably Never Explain Exactly How Horcruxes Are Made

The mystery was intriguing anyway, because of how important Horcruxes become in the final two books, but those comments make it much more interesting. What could possibly be so bad that it cannot be included in source material, or seemingly even spoken about? And how much worse can it be than murdering a bunch of people?

One of the most popular theories is that it involved cannibalism, which would certainly tick the box. The idea here is that consuming the flesh of the victim would be a means to cement that bond that then turns the soul fragment into a Horcrux, but it doesn’t fit entirely neatly. Even allowing for Harry being an accidental Horcrux, we know that when Tom Riddle murdered his parents (making one of his first Horcruxes), there were no signs of injury or illness on their bodies, so how could cannibalism have been involved?

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The other prevalent idea is that it’s some kind of self-mutilation, having to inflict serious damage upon oneself alongside murdering another, which (it’s proposed) is why Voldemort looks the way he does. It doesn’t have the same canon issues because there’s plenty of room for the Dark Lord to have been doing this, albeit without any way of knowing for certain. Another option, going back to cannibalism, is that it’s part of the person’s soul that is consumed by the killer.

In truth, it’s the kind of mystery that seems designed to be unsolvable. Rowling may say she knows exactly how it’s done, but it’s also quite likely that the answer either does not exist, and/or would never live up to the imagination of how gruesome and horrifying it really is. That’s why HBO’s Harry Potter remake, even though it’s going to expand upon a lot of things from the page, will almost certainly not give any more information on it either. It works better not knowing, rather than revealing too much, a lesson that could perhaps have been applied to some other areas of lore as well.

The Harry Potter movies are available to stream on HBO Max. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (TV series) premieres this Christmas on HBO and HBO Max.

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