Believing Harry is not a Horcrux

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 139937

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "saraquel_omphale" 
<saraquel_omphale at y...> wrote:
> Geoff wrote:
> > It's the structure where I may differ. As a Christian, I accept 
the 
> > concept of "love the Lord your God with all your heart and with 
all 
> > your mind and with all your soul".
> > 
> > To that end, I see the transfer of powers and memories that you 
list 
> > as being intellectual - i.e. of the mind. I do not see them as 
being 
> > to do with the soul and thus do not imagiane bits and pieces of 
> > Voldemort's soul moving over to Harry. Perhaps, he retained two 
> > pieces of torn soul in himself at that point.
> 
> Saraquel:
> Up-thread I posted a detailed discussion of the soul in JKRs world 
> being more akin to personality or psyche.  It is not a view that I 
> personally hold, but it is definitely a view which can be supported 
by 
> canon.  In your post Geoff, you don't say, based on my belief that 
JKR 
> is working from a Christian viewpoint of the soul being .... but 
> rather, you appear to me, to be disagreeing with the horcrux idea 
> because you personally don't like it. Was that what you meant?
> 
> As a general comment, I think, if we are speculating about the plot 
of 
> the book, then we need to make the ideas consistent with canon, as 
per 
> the rules of the list.  I would genuinely be interested to read 
your 
> canon support for your ideas Geoff.

Geoff:
To be quite frank, looking back over the almost 7000 posts which have 
arrived since 19th July, if the elves were to enforce the idea the 
ideas are consistent with canon, I think that over half would be 
rejected because the contributors are speculating and extrapolating 
their ideas on implied situations and possible hints in canon.

First of all, I have not disagreed with the idea of a Horcrux; what i 
have done is to express my own conviction that Harry is not one. Let 
me return to that later.

You say that the soul is more akin to personality or psyche. The 
word `psyche' is derived from the Greek word for `soul' so that 
hardly surprises me! From a Christian respective, I have already said 
that I see a person as body, mind and soul – a fusion of the 
physical, the intellectual and the spiritual if you prefer it that 
way. I believe that our whole being reflects our personality but 
after death, it is our soul which will continue into "the next great 
adventure".

Actually, JKR does not give us an awful lot to work on when it comes 
to Horcruxes. Slughorn defines a Horcrux as: 
"the word used for an object in which a person has concealed part of 
their soul" (HBP "Horcruxes" p.464 UK edition). 

Dumbledore then expounds a little further on this:
`"He made seven Horcruxes?" said Harry, horror-struck
.

."I am glad to see that you appreciate the magnitude of the 
problem," said Dumbledore calmly. "But, firstly, no, Harry, not seven 
Horcruxes: six. The seventh part of his soul, however maimed, resides 
inside his regenerated body. That was the part of him that lived a 
spectral existence for so many years during his exile: without that, 
he has no self at all."' (ibid. p.470)

Beyond that, we are given little; it is here that speculative 
thinking has been rife. We do not know precisely what form a Horcrux 
takes. Is it tangible? Is it invisible? How do we know that it is 
there? I have a mental vision of it being like a piece of A4 paper 
which is being torn into smaller bits; a silly idea but it is one 
that has stuck with me. As a mathematician myself, I would agree with 
those who have suggested that it doesn't divide itself neatly into 
fractions of the whole.

Slughorn's comments seem to suggest that creating a Horcrux is not 
something which has been frequently performed and to create more than 
one is, to him, unthinkable. Obviously, there are dark wizards who 
have committed more than one murder and therefore have a seriously 
damaged soul but it would seem that the torn fragments have remained 
within the person involved. Which harks back to what I said in the 
earlier post in that I believed that powers which Harry apparently 
acqruied from Voldemort were of the mind and that the soul fragment 
wasa not involved.

I have been exercised over the question of what happened to 
Voldemort's remaining fragment when he was disembodied at Godric's 
Hollow. Dumbledore's comment, quoted above, seems to suggest that it 
remained within him which again raises the question of how tangible 
is a soul? Which is also an interesting question within the real 
world. 

Were it not for Dumbledore's comment and the fact that we are told in 
POA that a person without a soul is effectively an empty shell, I 
would lean to the idea that Voldemort lost his last soul fragment at 
this point - but not to Harry. He is certainly a person who could 
truly be described as soulless. He is obsessed with power, he is 
obsessed with killing Harry, he shows no love or compassion or 
feeling for anyone else. The words of Jesus have occurred to me 
several times in the last few days: "What will it profit a man if he 
gains the whole world and loses his soul?" And this for me is the 
tragedy of Tom Riddle. He has opted for immortality but what will he 
do with it? If he achieves it, will it bring him any satisfaction or 
peace of mind? The answer is a resounding "no". I am reminded of the 
Star Trek episode in which one of the Q Continuum wanted to commit 
suicide because immortality had become unbearable.

But what of Harry? Why do I not believe that he is a Horcrux? Because 
I believe that it flies in the face of Dumbledore's now famous 
comment:
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than 
our abilities." (COS "Dobby's Reward" p.245 UK edition)

It has been observed by many contributors to the group that JKR makes 
much of choice. Dumbledore again makes the matter clear:
"Remember, if the time should come when you have to make a choice 
between what is right and what is easy, remember what happened to a 
boy who was good and kind and brave because he strayed across the 
path of Lord Voldemort" (GOF "The Beginning" p.628 UK edition).

If Harry is indeed a Horcrux than we know that he will have to die in 
order for Voldemort to be destroyed once and for all. He could make 
the choice of running away and hiding; the alternative is to face 
Voldemort knowing that he will go down with him. And that places him 
on a hiding to nothing. He has got no real choice in that 
eventuality. OK, in the real world, that situation occurs. As the 
anniversary of 11th September is almost on us, I remember that  some 
of our US friends were faced with that choice when they opted to 
tackle the terrorists on the fourth plane and brought it down. But I 
do believe that the way in which Jo Rowling has constructed her story 
has encouraged folk of all ages and for Harry not to emerge 
relatively unscathed from a final encounter would undo the integrity 
of the themes in the eyes of many people. What I have written are 
obviously subjective, personal views and not everyone will agree with 
me but I shall be deeply disappointed if Harry failed to reach the 
end of Book 7.