Small choice in rotten apples

[dungrollin]

No: HPFGUIDX 148415

Crikey, I haven't been round here for ages, and I'm now actually 
posting at the limit...

Ceridwen (thoroughly snipped):
I don't believe in Horcrux!Harry. The gyrations necessary to create 
a true Horcrux would be, if we go by the one other similar spell in 
canon, too intricate and formalized to have been able to occur at 
the time of Vaporization.  
...
So, I would buy the elegant theory, not for a formal Horcrux, but for
an accidental 'horcrux'ed Harry.  Wonderful idea!  And so simple.

Dungrollin:
Yes, perhaps I should have clarified that I thought Harry being 
Horlicksed was accidental rather than deliberate. 

Neri:
As a supporter of Horcrux!Harry I have considered this solution too.
You don't say it explicitly, so let me see if we are thinking about
the same thing: When Harry will kill Voldemort, Harry's soul will
split "at the seams", he will lose the part of his soul that was
originally Voldemort's, and Voldemort (who would be vapor again at
that point) will die completely.

Dungrollin:
Well... that's one way it could work, though it's not my favourite, 
because I'm not sure that JKR is going to let Harry off that lightly.

Since the events at GH which created UnintentionalHorcrux!Harry in 
the first place are necessarily vague,* it's a bit cheeky of me to 
start picking apart what should have to happen in order to kill 
Voldy, but what the hell...

Harry must kill in order to rip off the Voldy fragment which has 
knitted itself to his own soul. It's canon that to create a horcrux 
you have to have done this, but Slughorn says that to encase the 
torn piece there is another spell. Presumably this is the bit that 
is 'against nature', the part of the operation which gets the soul 
bit out of you and into the locket/ring/diary/cup etc. There are two 
distinct steps in the process. So even once Harry has ripped 
Voldemort's soul fragment from his own soul, the Voldy fragment will 
still be inside Harry, and will still be acting as a horcrux keeping 
Voldemort's last piece of soul, the bit inside his body, alive. He'd 
be reduced to Vapour!Mort again.

Basically, I don't think Harry would be able to get it all done with 
one Avada Kedavra on Voldy. I think that another life will have to 
be lost.

Neri:
This is certainly an elegant solution in terms of magical "soul
mechanics", but I'm not sure I like it thematically. It would suggest
that the evil part of us exist in order to fight even worse evil. 
This isn't a bad moral in itself, but the specific solution above 
would suggest that you can *get rid* of the evil part of your soul by
killing somebody more evil, in this is what I don't like.

Dung:
That would be interpreting it a little over-literally, wouldn't it? 
Is the part of Voldemort's soul residing in Harry supposed to 
symbolise 'the evil part of your soul?' I'm not sure that I see 
Horcrux!Harry and the eventual manner in which Voldemort is defeated 
as being a metaphor for how to deal with the evil impulses that 
everyone has in life. Perhaps you do – if so could you expand on it? 
Or is this a general assumption that I'm unaware of?

I like my scenario because it offers the heroes the following 
choices:

1. Harry kills someone to rip off the piece of Voldemort's soul, 
they extract and destroy it, then Harry (or someone else) rips their 
soul by killing Voldemort.
2. Harry decides he can't do it, he would rather sacrifice his own 
life to destroy the Horcrux within him, he thus forces someone else 
to rip their soul by killing him, and again when they dispose of the 
now-mortal Voldemort.

It boils down to a choice between dying innocent, by forcing the 
guilt onto the shoulders of others, or surviving by sinning 
dramatically and having to go through that whole repentance lark for 
the rest of your life. I did say it was a rotten choice, but if the 
DDM!Snapers are right, it's one that somebody else has recently had 
to make, too.

Neri:
Personally I'd prefer Harry assimilating the soul part until it loses
its connection with Voldemort. As I understand Potterverse soul 
mechanics, once this soul part is completely Harry's and not 
Voldemort's, it cannot function anymore as Voldy's Horcrux, and 
therefore Harry would not have to die.  

And similarly, houyhnhnm:
If you are saying that the negative traits we've seen arise in Harry,
which he has had to battle and overcome (the seven deadlies) are the
result of the Voldemort soul fragment trying to unite with Harry's
soul and heal itself, I like it.

I don't see how that makes it necessary for Harry to either kill or 
be killed, however.  On the contrary, I see Harry's victory over
Voldemort as an internal one.  By some supreme act of goodness on
Harry's part, the LV soul part will be purified and integrated with
Harry's own soul.  (At which time the scar will disappear.)

In other words, the only way to permanently defeat evil is for each
one of us to confront, own, forgive, and thereby overcome, the Dark
Lord within.

Dung:
Could either of you expand on how this might happen? Who does Harry 
have to forgive and what magic will this set in motion? To my mind 
it rather takes the bang out of Horcrux!Harry if he can assimilate 
the Voldy fragment and destroy the last Horcrux without having to 
make any difficult choices. How could this process of assimilation 
be thematic? And where and how is it foreshadowed, or hinted at? 

Dungrollin

* I feel relatively free to play fast and loose with what happened 
at GH because and there is very little canon to go on, and JKR has 
made it clear that what happened has never happened before or since. 
Basically, that means she can pull anything she likes out for book 
seven.