Seven Pieces of a Soul?

Immediately afterward, the surrounding scene rippled like water, and Dumbledore landed beside Wade.

The two stood in a corner of the office within the memory and heard Slughorn say, "Then ask quickly, my boy, ask..."

"Sir," young Tom said softly, looking at Slughorn with a standard, mask-like smile on his face, "I wanted to ask if you knew about... Horcruxes."

Slughorn froze slightly. Staring at the politely smiling Tom, he said evasively, "...A Defense Against the Dark Arts topic, is it?"

Tom shook his head and said sincerely, "No, sir. I read about them in a book, but I don't quite understand."

"Mm... yes..."

Slughorn grew a little nervous, fine beads of sweat seeping across his forehead.

He said vaguely, "It's difficult to find a book at Hogwarts that gives a detailed introduction to Horcruxes, Tom. They are very evil things. Very evil."

Candlelight cast shifting shadows across Tom Riddle's handsome profile. He leaned forward slightly and said respectfully:

"But you clearly know a great deal about them, sir? I mean, a wizard like you..."

Wade watched as Tom, like a masterful anatomist, used his words as scalpels to gradually cut through Slughorn's psychological defenses and extract every step of creating a Horcrux from him—

Murdering someone, splitting the soul, and using that act of destruction to seal away the separated fragment of soul inside some object.

That way, even if the original body was killed, one would not truly die, because part of the soul still remained in the world.

Slughorn's fat fingers twisted together, and his handkerchief was soaked through with sweat. He clearly did not want to explain it in such detail.

But perhaps Tom was simply too good with words, or perhaps Slughorn did not want to appear ignorant. In any case, the plump professor sweated