Harry as a horcrux

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 156960

Amanda wrote: 
> I'm not much a talker on this group, actually not at all, but I was
reading a lot of theories where everyone thinks that Harry is a
Horcrux.  I personally don't think that is possible. From A Sluggish
Memory: where Slughorn is explaining how a Horcrux works.  Voldemort
has to kill someone and then split his soul to implant it into another
person.  Remember what Dumbledore explaining to Harry the number of
horcruxes created and that he didn't make the 6th Horcrux at Godric's
Hollow as he planned.  Dumbledore said, "Voldemort was still at least
one Horcrux short of his goal of six when he entered your parents'
house with intention to kill you.  He seems to have reserved the
process of making Horcruxes for particularly significant deaths.. I am
sure that he was intending to make his final Horcrux with your death".
 p 473 HBP (British Edition: hardcover).  He had planned to use
Harry's MURDER as his sixth Horcrux, not Harry as the Horcrux. 
Voldemort would have wanted Harry to survive in order to have Harry as
his Horcrux. Harry dead, would not help his case for immortality. 
Instead he made it with the Muggle Frank Bryce.  From this we can
conclude that he did not use Harry as a Horcrux.  He could not have
been; Voldy lost his powers before he could perform the powerful spell
to create the Horcrux.  Dumbledore also thinks that Nagini is the 6th
Horcrux, and how often is Dumbledore wrong?!!!!! <snip>

Carol responds:
Hi, Amanda. You're not the only one who thinks that Harry is not a
Horcrux. However, Dumbledore is only deducing, based on what he knows
of Horcruxes and Riddle/Voldemort, not stating facts, so he could be
wrong on more than one point. (He does seem to be wrong in stating
that Voldemort used Nagini to kill frank Bryce, but that could just be
a Flint.) I happen to think that Nagini *is* a Horcrux, but that she
was made one much earlier, and with a more significant murder than
Frank Bryce's. Also, Voldemort wsn't really in any condition to make a
Horcrux using Frank's murder--he was in fetal form (Baby!mort), barely
able to hold a wand and wholly dependent on Wormtail to feed him, etc.
Since creating Horcruxes seems to involve some sort of physical
transformation (smearing his features or making him more snakelike) I
don't think he would or could have done it then, if only because
Wormtail would be surprised by any change in his appearance and might
start arriving at his own conclusions about LV's immortality. Since LV
was already snakelike before Godric's Hollow (the DEs in the graveyard
recognize him and show no surprise or horror at his appearance), I
think Nagini was already a Horcrux before GH--which does not make
Dumbledore wrong about LV still being one Horcrux short at Godric's
Hollow--he would have the ring, the locket, the cup, something from
Ravenclaw, and Nagini. So he could still want to use Harry's murder to
create a Horcrux, but he certainly would not have intentionally made
Harry, the Prophecy Boy he wants to kill, into a Horcrux.

So, in essence I agree with you, and I agree that it's probably
impossible to create an accidental Horcrux. However, the procedure
seems to be killing a person, which automatically splits the soul,
then casting some sort of spell (I suspect that an elaborate ritual is
involved since this is magic of the Darkest sort). I agree that the
killing precedes the Horcrux creation--LV doesn't prepare a Horcrux
and bring it with him to the murder scene as some people have
suggested), but he wouldn't use Harry's murder *as* a Horcrux; he
would use it to *create* one--after the fact and in secrecy, without
Wormtail or anyone else being present to witness its creation.

What object he would have used, we don't know--perhaps he was still
hoping to obtain something from Gryffindor at a later time--but it
certainly would not have been Harry or the scar that did not exist
until the AK backfired (and actually, it was a cut, not a scar, at
that point).

I think that some of the powers that Voldemort lost when the AK
backfired went into Harry through that open cut. (How LV regained
them, we don't know, but it's canonical that he did, and it certainly
was not done by recovering lost soul bits.) I don't think that the
powers are in the soul. Magic seems to be in the blood, so maybe a bit
of LV's blood got into Harry's cut at GH. That makes more sense to me
than a soul bit getting in. IMO, when a soul bit escapes from a
destroyed Horcrux, it goes wherever the soul of a dead person goes
(beyond the Veil?). If LV had any loose soul bits--and he'd committed
a lot of murders that weren't used for Horcruxes--they would, IMO,
have floated off and been lost. But I don't think they were actually
loose, or he'd have considerably less than one seventh of a soul
(let's not look into the mechanics of soul-splitting and how
equal-sized parts could be removed, each one exactly one-seventh
regardless of how many murders he had committed!). I think that they
were split off through the act of murder but not actually detached or
removed from the main soul--the Horcrux-creating spell would be
required to detach the soul bit and encase it in something other than
the murderer's body--a complex bit of magic that can't be performed
accidentally.

It's much simpler and cleaner for Harry to have acquired some of LV's
powers without acquiring a bit of his tainted soul, which IMO his body
would reject in any case because of the love magic, just as love
forced Voldemort himself out of Harry when he attempted to possess him
physically. If Harry is a Horcrux, I see no way for him to destroy
Voldemort without dying at the exact same time. (How can he
kill/destroy Voldemort if he, the last Horcrux, is dead? And how can
he kill/destroy Voldemort if he, the last Horcrux, is still alive?
We'd be back to Vapormort, with no Chosen One to destroy him. If Harry
*isn't a Horcrux, then JKR doesn't have to deal wit this vicious
circle of unnecessary plot complications.)

In any case, Harry!Horcrux is *not* a given, and not everyone accepts
the theory. I am quite sure that DD would have thought of it and
mentioned it to Harry when he told him "everything." It has already
been established that Harry is not possessed or possessable. I'm
pretty sure that he's not "Horcruxable," either, and that Harry
acquired some of LV's *powers,* as DD has said at least twice, without
acquiring any of that filthy and contaminated soul.

Carol, who can provide links to her other "Harry is not a Horcrux"
posts if anybody wants them