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

[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.