Horcrux

They stared at it as if it was the one ring or the holy grail or a horcrux, or perhaps all of them rolled into one. An empty, plastic cat food bowl.

They were standard fit, vintage wash, pretty expensive, and I showed them to him and I said, “These are yours if you want them.” And do you know what he did? He actually flinched. Like these were haunted pants or something. Like these were Horcrux jeans with a piece of Lord Voldemort’s soul in them.

Again, he didn’t say anything and she asked him about the arrowhead—was it his Horcrux or something? was there a piece of his soul trapped inside it?—and he shrugged it off.

When I read manuscripts, I feel very aware that some part of the writer's soul lives in the pages—like a good Horcrux, say—and if I’m turning one down, I need to do so with thoughtfulness and respect.

And I loved the way they looked, all those journals lined up on a single bookshelf in my room, carving a path through time that you could follow, like a trail of bread crumbs, from that first day in Dr. Milton’s office right up to the present. It was as if I’d archived myself inside them—my own private horcruxes.

Via nostalgia and sentimentality, objects act for humans as unwitting mnemonic horcruxes (my analogy, not Schwenger’s), storing parts of our memories inside themselves for our later involuntary retrieval.