Harry Horcrux redux

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 155103

Neri wrote:
<snip>
> I really don't see why you consider Slughorn such an expert on
> Horcruxes. He tells us himself that he's no expert. The only
sentence in which he mentions a spell is: "there is a spell, do not
ask me, I don't know!" Hardly sounds to me like a reliable source for
concluding anything.

Carol responds:
Unfortunately, his testimony and Dumbledore's are all we have to go
on. And neither of them provides the slightest hint that a Horcrux can
be created accidentally. Also, Slughorn as DADA teacher may know more
than he's telling. Otherwise, why would he be so terrified of the very
idea?

Neri:
> Dumbledore, OTOH, who probably knows about Horcruxes more than
> Slughorn, never mentions a spell and never tells us that it can't
> happen by accident. <snip>

Carol:
Dumbledore doesn't need to tell Harry that a Horcrux is created by a
spell. Slughorn has already done that (twice, since they visit that
memory twice). Harry is unlikely to forget that important piece of
information. And never telling us that something can't happen by
accident does not constitute evidence that it can.

Neri:
> I never heard about detaching the ripped soul. Are you saying that
if a person who had just committed a murder is killed, then only one
of his soul parts leaves his body, while the ripped part remains
there? Doesn't sound logical to me. <snip>

Carol:
What? No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that the soul
of a murderer may be torn, but it normally stays with the main soul,
damaged but not encased in a Horcrux. Only rarely does the murderer
actually detach the soul bit (remove it from the main soul housed
inside himself) and encase it in a container using the spell that
Slughorn denied knowing. So the parts of Voldemort's soul that were
damaged by the murders Voldemort committed--not only the murders of
James and Lily but all the murders he committed but didn't use for
Horcruxes--must have stayed with the main soul that became Vapormort
when the AK backfired. Alternatively, all those many soul bits could
have gone off beyond the Veil or whatever happens to soul bits when
their Horcruxes are destroyed, in which case Voldemort now has
considerably less than one seventh of a soul.

Neri:
<snip> I tend to assume that a usual murder
> rips the soul apart, but normally both pieces remain together within
> the body of the murderer, so with time they might rejoin, although
> probably not in a seamless way. But if immediately after a fresh
> murder the body of the murderer is destroyed, I'd say the most
> reasonable consequence would be that at least two parts of his soul
> would be released.

Carol:
So you're saying that soul bits can just float around loose and
possibly possess people? If that's the case, the loose bits of
Voldie's soul could still be floating around the WW, or they could
have possessed Hagrid, the first person to show up at Godric's Hollow
after the murders. And what's the point of destroying Horcruxes if the
soul bit isn't, so to speak, deactivated, not merely released from the
Horcrux but rendered harmless? If the soul bits from Voldemort's
various murders were released from the main soul at Godric's Hollow,
it seems logical to me that they went where the soul normally goes
when a person dies, the same place the Horcrux bits must go when the
Horcrux is destroyed. (Since the soul is immortal, they wouldn't be
destroyed themselves. Destroying a Horcrux is not an act of murder or
partial murder, especially in the case of a wizard who has already
been struck by his own deflected AK and is rightly dead.) If the soul
bits weren't released, OTOH, they must still with the main soul.

Also, I disagree that a Horcrux must be created using a "fresh"
murder. Certainly Tom Riddle didn't know how to make a Horcrux when he
returned to school wearing Marvolo Gaunt's ring. He would have had to
do some research either in the summer of 1945 (death year of
Grindelvald, not coincidentally the year that Tom finished school) or
at Borgin and Burke's before he created the ring Horcrux (which almost
certainly used his father's murder, the most significant to that
point) and converted the diary to a Horcrux, perhaps using Moaning
Myrtle's murder (or another Riddle if you prefer, though that seems
less apt). None of those murders would have been "fresh." I see no
reason to believe that the damaged soul had healed itself. I think
that the soul bits were still detachable, still available for
placement in a Horcrux.

Neri:
So we have a plan to create a Horcrux in GH, we
> have more than one murder, and we have a torn soul part of a Dark
> wizard who's an expert in possession released into the same room with
> a baby whose forehead has just been punctured by a Dark curse. Your
> honor, I'd say we have the means, the motive and the opportunity. <snip>

Carol:
We have the motive to create a Horcrux from Harry's murder, not to
make Harry into a Horcrux, which would be self-defeating. But we have
neither the means nor the opportunity because Voldemort is vaporized:
powerless, wandless, and capable only of possessing animals. He
doesn't even possess Harry, who is miraculously still alive. He simply
goes off in terrible pain to who knows where.

> Neri:
> Even if Nagini is a Horcrux, Harry already thinks she is and he can
> find her. But finding the Hufflepuff Cup, or the Ravenclaw Horcrux
> that Harry doesn't even know what it is, this would certainly be
> easier if Harry was a Horcrux that was created after they were. And
it would also fit nicely with Dumbledore's words that Voldemort, by
> attacking Harry, had created his worse enemy and gave him the tools
> for the job.

Carol:
But we don't need Harry to be a Horcrux for Voldemort to have handed
him the tools for the job. All we need is those powers--Parseltongue,
which wil come in handy with Nagini, the special form of Legilimency
which enables him to read Voldemort's mind (though that power may be
lost to him now), and possession, which IMO would be the perfect means
of creating intolerable pain for Voldemort--the power of Love inside
him. How it will work out is of course for JKR to determine. and as
for the other Horcruxes, one is Nagini, and he will, I predict, hav
help from Bill the Curse Breaker (why else is he in the books?) and
the resident HP expert on Dark magic, Severus Snape. As for the
Ravenclaw Horcrux, I'm betting that Harry will find it in the RoR.

Much as you would like to have Harry have access to all of Voldemort's
memories (a heavy burden if there ever was one) there's no evidence
that Horcruxes in general contain memories. The diary contained the
memory of sixteen-year-old Tom Riddle, but it was a special instrument
whose original purpose was to release the basilisk to kill
"Mudbloods," as Voldemort evidently told Lucius Malfoy when he placed
it in his care. Most Horcruxes are not interactive. Their sole purpose
is to protect the soul bit from destruction. So even if Harry's
special powers result from being possessed by a soul bit (despite
evidence that he isn't possessed), there's no evidence that such
accidental possession would result in memories that weren't his. As I
said before, all he's seen so far is what's happening in the present.
As for that deceptive feeling that Tom Riddle was an old friend, it
could either be part of the seductive magic of the diary itself
(Ginny, too, trusted Tom as a friend she could confide in) or it could
be part of the bond between Harry and Voldemort created by the scar
connection. No soul bit required in either case.
>
Carol, sure that she's not the only opponent of the Harry!Horcrux
theory and asking for reinforcements as she ends her fifth post of the day