Dear Friends, How Exactly Does One Utilize a Horcrux?

[jakuako.livejournal.com]

Ok, maybe I've missed the essay on this -- it seems like a fairly obvious problem -- and if so, maybe one of you can link me to the discussion. My questions concern the nature of Voldemort's first death slash second coming. Let's recap:

First, Lily dies for Harry, offering him magical protection.
Second, Voldemort AKs Harry, but the curse rebounds and his already damaged soul is once again split in two.
Third, one half of it latches onto Harry, making him a Horcrux and Voldemort is, for the moment, vanquished.
At this point in time he now has no body and six Horcruxes: Harry, the ring, the diadem, the cup, the locket, and the diary (the agreement being, I think, that he turned Nagini into a Horcrux after he was brought back in Harry's fourth year, yes?).
Right, I'm okay with all of this so far.

The part that bothers me is the whole bodiless-weak-spirit-floating-around-Albania-for-thirteen-years thing. Maybe I'm completely off the mark, but my assumption would have been that Voldemort died that night. That there was nothing left of his soul except for the piece that made itself cozy inside Harry and the various other pieces scattered across the country. That in order to bring him back the way Pettigrew did, Pettigrew would have had to sacrifice one of Voldemort's Horcruxes (assuming he knew where one was, which, I know, he didn't), leaving him with five more Horcruxes and one active piece of soul inside his regenerated body, rather than six Horcruxes and this extra random piece that somehow survived the Killing Curse even though his body didn't. I mean, that's not how AK works, right? It kills both the soul and the body, it doesn't detach the soul from the body and allow the soul to go floating about looking for snakes to possess. So how exactly was it that Voldemort survived the rebounded curse? Yes, I know his soul split and I know his body was destroyed and I know the one remaining part of his soul was so weak it was practically worthless until he got Quirrel to slaughter some Unicorns for him, but the point is that last part of his soul was still out there ... alive.

What gives, JKR?

Comments

[witchyemerald.livejournal.com]

Really, I am not to sure about Nagini in the Horcruxes time line. I always thought she was before Harry, and thats why she was able to help find the "main soul" part.

I thought that the Horcruxes were parts of the soul that anchored the “main soul” to this plan. It was like their first job so to speak.

What I thought was odd was, other then the dairy soul, none of the others attached to living things, tried to take over. It might be because the dairy souls was the largest because it was the first. However you would think the Harry Soul would try to take over.

[thusspakekate.livejournal.com]

Nagini comes after Harry, created by the murder of Bertha Jorkins. But this has always confused me too because it means that Voldemort murdered Bertha and made Nagini into his final horcrux while in his spectral state (since Bertha is referenced as missing during GoF and Voldemort doesn't get his body back until the end of that book). How does one with no body and only a fraction of the soul AK someone? IDK man, IDK.

I saw a pie chart of the amount of Voldemort's soul that was put into each of the horcruxes once. The diary was 50% voldy, but by the time we get to Harry its something like, less than 2%. That's very little soul and it's in contention with Harry's own soul, so I think its reasonable that it wouldn't be able to take over. But it still "manifests" itself in noticeable ways: the mental connection between Harry and Voldemort, the sorting hat reading Harry as good fit for Slytherin, Harry's ability to speak parseltongue, etc.

[witchyemerald.livejournal.com]

With that saying if the pie chart is right, then how the hell could Voldemort even do magic. Unless the distoryed souls go back to the main soul, but then he would know about Harry and Co offing the Horcruxes you would think.

[thusspakekate.livejournal.com]

Found the chart!

IDK, man. All of this soul business is so difficult for me to comprehend. I don't even believe in souls so you know, I'm way out of my depth here. I think a lot of writers just hope you don't look to close or do the math when they talk about this sort of ethereal spirity stuff.

[witchyemerald.livejournal.com]

Well like the chart said, thats if it's a 50/50 spilt each time. And I don't remember that in the books, but it could be.

Even if it was 10% a time he would still be less then 53% (Harry having 6.48%) but I think what we have here this the almighty plot hole. JK might have written up to book 4 before she really worked out the soul spilting math.

But with plot holes it makes it for interesting fanfiction.

[jakuako.livejournal.com]

That pie chart is very cool. I do really like the thought that some of the Horcruxes are stronger than others. And also that Voldemort is practically soulless by the time he's come back in Harry's fourth year. Makes for a much creepier villain.

As for how he made a Horcrux out of Bertha, well, he did have that scary baby monster body that Frank the Muggle saw in the Riddle House before Pettigrew could whip up a nicer-looking body, right? So we can assume he was capable of holding a wand by the time Pettigrew brought him Bertha. And regarding him maybe being too weak to do the magic that is reqired to make a Horcrux (whatever that is), maybe it's got to do with how unstable his soul is. If it was unstable enough to rip apart when Voldemort tried to kill Harry, it's definitely unstable enough for him to easily rip it again when he kills Bertha.

Ha, how gratifying would it be to think that Voldemort probably imagines he's getting more and more powerful with each Horcrux because it's getting easier and easier to make them, when really it's getting easier because he's getting weaker. What a schmuck. :)

[celestlyn.livejournal.com]

The pie-chart math looks accurate to me. It said in the book that killing tears a soul in half. He would have begun with a whole soul and after he made the first Horcrux he would only have half a soul. The other half would be the Horcrux in the diary. So he would then split his 50% of a soul in half again when he made the Horcrux in the ring. 25% would go in the ring with only 25% left for himself (50% of the 50% he had left is 25%). And this would go on until there was 0.7% going to Nagini on the last Horcrux and 0.7% remaining for himself. A very weird thing to think that his first Horcrux had 50% of a full soul, while he was left with only 0.7% after that last split with Nagini.

[witchyemerald.livejournal.com]

No the math is right, but chart even has IF its 50% at a time. Without grabbing my book down, I can not find any passage other then talking about a part of the soul going into the item.

Harry wiki on Horcrux - It said fragments which could be any size.

[nerakrose]

i always thought the entire point of horcruxes was that it was impossible to die because you need to kill the entire soul to die. and so when the killing course rebounded and hit voldy, his body died but (what remained of) his soul didn't, because the curse didn't hit the other parts of his soul as well... idk man.

[sesheta-66.livejournal.com]

This is how I've always understood it.

The one part of the soul that had remained with his original body when the Horcruxes were made would float around until the other parts are destroyed, because they're linked and it remains the "main" part. It could move from vessel to vessel (either taking over entirely or living alongside another, as in the case of Quirrell), or remain vessel-less and weakened. If in a vessel, it could live even if the other parts were destroyed - its new vessel would also have to be destroyed.

[jakuako.livejournal.com]

This makes a lot of sense. I hadn't thought of it that way. Killing the body can't kill the bit of soul in it, because it's anchored here by the other bits of soul. However, it's interesting to think it works in reverse. You *can* kill one piece of the soul as long as it's a Horcrux and not the "active" soul. But you can't kill the "active" soul while Horcruxes stil remain.

What then would be the point of having more than one Horcrux? I suppose just extra insurance. But if it's true that killing the body doesn't kill the active soul, then it's theoretically possible to die, allow your active soul to float around for a bit while someone brews you up a body and complete the circle over and over indefinitely, since you don't have to utilize a Horcrux each time you come back to life. Fun!

[nerakrose]

yeah, pretty much this. which i think also explains (in part) why dumbledore didn't do anything about the horcruxes before. i think he knew of them long before HBP, but voldy was bodyless for a long time...

[thusspakekate.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I think JKR's magical theory is a bit wonky here. Maybe you could say that since Voldemort had already fracture his soul, he had weakened the connection between soul and body, so that was what allowed that last bit of soul to detach, float away and chill in Albania, as some sort of self-preservation instinct. But I don't think the exact mechanics or whys and hows are every really addressed.

Another thing that doesn't make sense really is that Harry became a horcrux in the first place. An accidental horcrux, really? I'd think that with magic as dark as that, you'd need intent, or else horcruxes wouldn't be such a mysterious and hidden form of magic. Because I'm sure people AK each other all the time (people are jerks, murder happens) and if you could just create a horcrux on accident like that...well, it seems like there'd be a lot more horcruxes lying about.

[jakuako.livejournal.com]

Celestlyn had some interesting things to say on the topic of Harry's being an accidental Horcrux even without intention a few comments below. I'm with you in that there are quite a few things that remain unexplained, but I'm willing to buy into the idea that Voldemort's soul was simply so damaged already that losing a piece of his soul to Harry could have happened. If that's the case, however, think how easy it must've been to make Nagini into a Horcrux. She's got an even smaller and more unstable bit than Harry has!

[celestlyn.livejournal.com]

Dumbledore said to Harry, when explaining Horcruxes and souls, that killing split a soul in half. I took that to mean that there would be a half a soul floating around with no vessel. A true Horcrux is different in that one kills intentionally with a plan to create a Horcrux and carefully chooses the vessel it resides in,like the ring or diadem. A soul fragment from a random killing would probably just remain a useless fragment floating around, as there was no intent to kill to create a Horcrux and preserve it in a vessel, an act of unspeakable evil.

Dumbledore was trying to save Draco from damaging his soul by carrying out his plan to kill Dumbledore. He wasn't creating a Horcrux, but just the act of intentional killing would have damaged/split his soul. Severus then asked him, "What of my soul?" To which Dumbledore replied, "His (Draco's) soul is not yet damaged." (Meaning Draco had not yet killed anyone intentionally and Severus had. Dumbledore was telling Snape that his soul was already damaged from killing and killing again would not be as tragic as it would if Draco damaged his still innocent soul. No Horcruxes were being created though.

[ashindk.livejournal.com]

Interesting question! http://hd-writers.livejournal.com/187545.html#comments (http://hd-writers.livejournal.com/187545.html#comments) Maybe Harry wasn't a Horcrux at all...

[celestlyn.livejournal.com]

JKR has said that Harry was an unintended Horcrux. There wasn't much of a soul left by that time, anyway. Voldemorts soul was so damaged by then that Harry didn't receive a very large chunk. She has said that because of the state of the soul and how it happened (by accident, not by design) it was really an incomplete Horcrux that was left residing in Harry. Just enough to create a bit of havoc and gift Harry with a few unusual skills. And wasn't Harry seeing through Nagini's eyes when he attacked Arthur Weasley? I always wondered how that happened. I just got the impression that a wee bit of a fragmented soul flew into Harry's scar and he retained a few things from Voldemort, but none of it was intended and Voldemort didn't even know about it for a long time.

[jakuako.livejournal.com]

So if Harry is an "incomplete" Horcrux, I wonder what sort of limitations that would have on Voldemort. Say all the rest of the fragments of his soul are destroyed but the one in Harry. Likely he wouldn't be able to regenerate since the Horcrux magic isn't there, but could he still be considered alive? Not fully dead, at least?

[celestlyn.livejournal.com]

I would suppose the only immortality he would achieve from that would be the fragment in Harry and that might only live as long as Harry. Remember Harry had to 'die' for that soul fragment in Harry to be destroyed. With Harry alive, I doubt if there would be enough soul to be truly alive in a conscious way, but certainly not dead, either. (That almost reminds me of the explanation of the 'half-life' of anyone daring to try to keep themselves alive by drinking unicorn blood.)

I honestly don't really understand how those things worked. Voldemort tried time and time again to come back. I don't think he was utilizing any of the Horcruxes in SS/PS when he was lurking about in the Forbidden Forest drinking unicorn blood or camping-out on the back of Quirrell's head. He apparently was in book two with the diary Horcrux. And I don't think he used any Horcruxes when Peter resurrected him at the end of book four. So it seems a bit random as far as how the things were to be used.

[jakuako.livejournal.com]

Good point about the randomness of Voldemort's methods. That bit with the diary in CoS really doesn't jive too well with the rest of what we know about Horcruxes. It seems strange that that Horcrux tried to take on a corporeal form by itself, like it had a will of its own, while the active bit of Voldemort's soul which had recently fled Quirrell's body was waiting around for another buddy to help him come back. Maybe it can be contributed to the fact that the diary has the largest piece of Voldemort's soul in it. Maybe that's what Horcruxes are *supposed* to do in order to give the person a second chance at life, but Voldemort's other Horcruxes can't quite manage it beacuse they're smaller bits of soul and the magic isn't really intended for anything less than half of one's soul. Hmm.

[khalulu]

I don;t know the answer - but the idea that you can stay alive by leaving your soul elsewhere in safe-keeping is also found in Slavic folk-lore in tales of Koshchei the Deathless. In fact the Wikipedia aritcle on him said he was the inspiration for Voldemort, but they had no citation for that. He was described as an ugly old man who goes in for kidnapping the hero's love interest, and here's what he did with his soul - HOW he did it I don't know:

"Koschei cannot be killed by conventional means targeting his body. His soul is hidden separate from his body inside a needle, which is in an egg, which is in a duck, which is in a hare, which is in an iron chest (sometimes the chest is crystal and/or gold), which is buried under a green oak tree, which is on the island of Buyan in the ocean. As long as his soul is safe, he cannot die. If the chest is dug up and opened, the hare will bolt away; if it is killed, the duck will emerge and try to fly off. Anyone possessing the egg has Koschei in their power. He begins to weaken, becomes sick, and immediately loses the use of his magic. If the egg is tossed about, he likewise is flung around against his will. If the egg or needle is broken (in some tales, this must be done by specifically breaking it against Koschei's forehead), Koschei will die."

That's from Wikipedia. Russain fairlytales are great.

[celestlyn.livejournal.com]

Wow! Thaat is really interesting. I wonder if he truly was the inspiration for Voldemort. Sure sounds like it.

[jakuako.livejournal.com]

That is very cool. I love the idea that he who possesses the soul controls the body... That could make for some very interesting fan fiction. Hmm...

It also brings to mind Davy Jones, who kept his heart, rather than his soul, in a chest.