Math of ripping (was: Every killing tears the soul?)

[Edis]

No: HPFGUIDX 141551

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "ellecain" <ellecain at y...> wrote:
>Nowhere is it said that *every* killing rips the soul. 
> And if this was the case, Voldemort would have his soul in any 
> number of pieces by now. He has loads of people. GH itself would 
> not have happened. Lily and James' deaths had already torn his 
> soul. The significance of the magical power inherent in the number > 
seven would be lost.

We all know that JKR is lousy at Mathematics. I rather suspect she may 
not have worked out the strict implications of the Canon procedural 
satement 'creating horcruxes as a rsult of ripping the soul in two' -
unless there is a magical method not yet covered by Canon.

The simpe  case is creating first Horcrux. Murder done with inetntion 
of Horcrux creation. Soul rips in two, half goes to Horcrux, half 
stays in Voldy. No counting problems.

But what happens for second Horcrux? Voldy has half his soul left in 
him. If this rips apart for the second Horcrux, a quarter of his 
original soul  remains in Voldy and a quarter is encased in the second 
Horcrux

For the third Horcrux, Voldy has a quarter of his original soul 
remaining. One eight stays with him, one eight encases in the third 
Horcrux.

And so on, so that for the seventh Horcrux Voldy would be left with 
1/128th of his original soul and 1/128th encased in Horcrux number 
seven.

My reading of canon suggests that JKR does not intend to imply this, 
and implies instead that each Horcrux ends up with an equal share of 
Voldy's soul with an equal remainder in Voldy's body. That would be 
1/8th of the original soul in each. Implying some interconnection 
between teh Horcruxes -which is contradicted by Canon statement on 
Voldy not being aware that two Horcruxes have been destroyed.

I think there may be agenuine difficulty on this one that JKR may not 
have figured out as yet, even realise there is a problem. Or she may 
surprise as all!