Small choice in rotten apples

[dbwainwright2]

No: HPFGUIDX 148523

Dung wrote:
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.




[so, either
]
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.


Doug:
There may be another scenario (possibly with slight variations of 
the same). This one removes the need for extra parties to get their 
hands dirty, and forces Harry to genuinely `go it alone'; it doesn't 
involve soul assimilation, although it does involve a spiritual 
journey of sorts, which may not be to your liking. 

Assuming we get to the point where Harry thinks he has destroyed all 
the horcruxes, and has tracked down Voldemort: 

Harry `kills' Voldemort (perhaps by shoving Prime!Voldy through the 
veil).**

The Voldy fragment residing within Harry is disentangled from pure 
Harry.

Because the fragment still remains lodged in Harry's body, Voldy is 
reduced to Vapour!Mort. 

Vapour!Mort possesses Harry and is reunited with the other scrap of 
soul. The battle thus becomes a spiritual one – two souls fighting 
for one body. 

Harry; perhaps simply because one whole, pure soul is stronger than 
whatever remains of one that has been shorn into shreds; gains 
control of his body. 

His love of humanity etc impels him to stagger through the veil, 
taking both he and Voldemort into the afterworld. At this point the 
two souls separate and go in their various directions...
  

I'm still not sure how The Gleam works into all of this - perhaps 
the connection forged between Harry and Voldy by the transferal of 
blood is what causes Harry's soul to split such that *only* the 
voldy fragment is torn away from the bulk of same soul? Or maybe the 
connection more readily `redirects' Vapour!Mort to the soul fragment 
lodged within Harry?



**An AK might not be enough: as Voldemort helpfully points out in 
the graveyard in GoF, the protection left by Lily's sacrifice now 
runs through his own blood.  Doesn't this mean that Voldy is now 
impervious to the AK, just as Harry was? 
(perhaps that explains the `greater and more terrible than ever 
before' remark – Voldy didn't have that particular advantage first 
time round)



Dung:
It goes back to Annemehr's theory about why Horlicks is so bad. She
had the idea that the ripping of the soul caused by killing can be
healed (repentance, forgiveness etc), and the reason that splitting
the soul up is against nature is that it is deliberately putting
oneself beyond redemption, deliberately not allowing the soul to be
healed. It's so elegant it *has* to be right - and if it's not, it
should be.


Doug:
Yeah. It's all so merciless otherwise:  err once and your soul is 
damaged for all eternity. JKR is a Christian: wouldn't she believe 
that everyone, even the most callous of murderers, is redeemable in 
some way or other (except, as you say, when a deliberate violation 
of nature occurs)?

It is a good theory because it gives us a reason why Dumbledore 
would be willing to let Snape kill him for the Greater Good; 
Sevvie's soul is still salvageable, depending upon what path he goes 
down in book 7.

Doug