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

[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.