Killing tears the soul apart redux. WAS: Re: Snape's penance?

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 139823

Gatta wrote:  
> What I am puzzled about is how the horcruxes work divisionwise. Can>
Voldemort control how much of his soul goes into the horcrux du jour?
It sounds like not; Dumbledore says that *murder* rips the soul, so he
would be left with whatever pieces of whatever size the killing
bestows upon him. If the ripping proceeds along the lines of 
mathematical division, putting half of the soul he has left into the
horcrux, he would end up with an arrangement like so:
> 
>   http://www.katmac.cncdsl.com/horcrux.GIF
> 
> Which leaves him with about 1/64th of a soul left when he faces
Harry in the final battle, <snip> I should think that would leave
Voldemort rather depleted, to say the least, when he has to confront
Harry.


Carol responds:
I've wondered the same thing, but possibly JKR hasn't thought about
it. For her, the soul seems to be sufficiently tangible to be sucked
out of a body by a Dementor--through the mouth--which suggests a
concept something like that of the ancient Greek word "psyche" (can't
do Greek letters, sorry), meaning "breath," "spirit," "animating
principle," or maybe "pneuma," meaning "wind" or "breath" but
associated with the Latin "spiritus" in early Christian writings and
in Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind," which plays beautifully on these
related meanings. For the curious, here's a link:

http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem1902.html

What I'm trying to say is I don't think that the soul in the
Potterverse is a solid object that can be divided into halves and
quarters and so forth like a pie, with each succeeding "half" being
smaller until the portion of soul remaining in Voldie is so small that
it is hardly worth dividing. It's not even like air molecules (a
balloon that's lost half its air is visibly smaller than a full balloon). 

Instead I think the soul expands (metaphorically or literally) to fill
the space formerly occupied by the complete soul when part of it is
split off, so that the Horcruxes all have equal portions of soul and
that the *size* of Voldie's soul, if it could be measured, has not
changed. That being the case, his soul would have multiplied by
dividing (think cell division as opposed to mathematical division),
and he would actually have *more* soul (quantitatively speaking) than
he would if his soul were intact inside his body. We see that he was
able to survive with what JKR probably conceives of as one seventh of
his soul, a concept only possible is all the parts are equal sized.
(We know JKR is not mathematically gifted, so she may not even know
that she's confused here. Or maybe I'm attributing my own confusion to
her.)

The quality or purity of Voldie's soul, OTOH, may have become
progressively tainted. Or killing his father and grandparents at age
sixteen may have corrupted his soul to the point that further
corruption was scarcely possible. (By the time of HBP, it's so putrid
and rotten that a Dementor wouldn't want it.)

Okay, I haven't cleared anything up, I realize, and I may have just
blurred the picture further. But I've tried various mental models--a
pie, plasma, earthworms (which form two new adults when cut in half),
amoebas (which multiply by dividing and expand or grow to adult size),
wind-breath-spirit, and I can't find a model that works for me. Does
anyone have a model or paradigm that more effectively solves the
problem of progressively smaller soul pieces and is consistent with
soul-sucking Dementors? (No algebra, Valky, please. ;-) )

One more thing that confuses me. Slughorn says that killing (or
murder) splits the soul, yet Dumbledore says that only one wizard
besides LV (almost certainly Grindelwald) has split his soul, meaning
made a Horcrux. So splitting the soul seems to have two different
meanings. Maybe murder *enables* a powerful and evil wizard to split
his damaged soul and create a Horcrux (if he knows the ancient magic
required to do so).

Carol, wondering what happens to the soul of a ghost like NHN who
fears to go beyond the veil