[HPforGrownups] Re: CHAPDISC: HBP 23, Horcruxes

[elfundeb]

No: HPFGUIDX 160826

Snow
Could it be that the soul piece serves as a shield itself for Harry?
Some time back we had questioned if Harry could die, maybe he
couldn't; maybe this bit of Voldy acts as a shield.

Debbie:
I wouldn't count this out, but so far Harry's most valuable shield has been
his purity of heart, which protected him against Voldemort in PS/SS and GoF,
against Voldemort's attempted possession in OOP, and brought him Fawkes in
CoS.  As Dumbledore said, it's "[t]he only protection that can possibly work
against the lure of power like Voldemort's!  In spite of all the temptation
you have endured, all the suffering, you remain pure in heart . . . ."
There's no reason I can think of why that shield wouldn't protect Harry from
Voldemort's soul even if it were inside of him.

Snow:
The bits of Voldy soul that we have confronted so far have been
protected like a shield, which I always thought was due to a spell at
the time of encasement but maybe it is a born-in feature of the power
within the fragment. It may be a stretch but I don't think it's a far
stretch.

If this soul bit does act as a shield then anyone who attacks will
cause harm to themselves, such as the blackened hand with the ring.
So when Voldemort attacks Harry, he would essentially be attacking
himself but since it is a shield the AK would bounce back onto
himself like it did the first time around.

Debbie:
I tend to think that the protections are placed on the horcrux separately.
Thus, they are different for each one.  The diary may not have had any
protective curses on it, because Tom intended to allow certain people to
access the soul within.  If it did, Harry evaded them by using the basilisk
(which the diary was intended to showcase) to destroy it, with no damage
to himself at all.

Carol:
Since Deb was responding to my post, I hope it's okay for me to jump
in here and disagree with her.

Debbie:
Of course.  These aren't points that can be proven, after all, and I didn't
expect to persuade anyone who finds Harrycrux distasteful.  (I have my own
list of distateful theories, too.)

Carol:
IMO, the diary is the only Horcrux that contains a memory, in this
case specifically the memory of Tom Riddle's sixteen-year-old self,
which is much like a memory removed from Snape's or Dumbledore's head
and placed in a Pensieve. No part of their soul goes with it, it is
only an objective memory that others can enter (as opposed to a
subjective, written memory that a Muggle would enter into a diary).
The whole reason the memory is placed there is to interact with a
reader and perhaps show that reader Tom's "heroic" action in
apprehending the "culprit," Hagrid, and his monstrous friend.

No other Horcrux is intended to be interactive. They exist only to
house a soul bit and keep it earthbound. Soul bits do not in
themselves contain memories, IMO.

Debbie:
We don't have any real canon either way, so I can't prove that my opinion is
correct.  However, dictionary definitions of "soul" support the idea that a
soul includes memory.  From my desktop Websters:  "1.  an entity which is
regarded as being the immortal or spiritual part of the person and, though
having no physical or material reality, is credited with the functions of
thinking and willing, and hence determining all behavior  2. the moral or
emotional nature of man"  As our memories, i.e., our past influence our
thinking, our future actions and our moral perspective, memory seems
intertwined with the concept of soul.

There's also the fact that it is Riddle's memory that animates, or gives
life, to the diary, and I cannot help recalling that the latin root
contained in the word 'animate' means 'soul'.  Religious sources, such as
the one Tigerpatronus cited, also support this interpretation of the soul.

Carol:
As to why Harry thought he "knew" Tom Riddle from his childhood,
possibly that's part of the charm placed on the diary, something to
entice a reader into opening it and interacting with it. Ginny, an
eleven-year-old girl who wanted a confidante and loved the idea of a
diary, may not have needed such a spell, but how many schoolboys keep
a diary? There had to be some sort of charm on the diary to keep it
from being thrown away (rather like the hex or curse Ron mentions that
forces a person to keep reading a particular book).

Debbie:
That's a plausible explanation, too (though I like mine better) for why
Harry thought he "knew" Tom.  However, on the need to prevent the diary from
being thrown away, Ginny herself threw it away.

Carol:
As I say, soul bits and memories don't necessarily go
together, and Harry's sense of familiarity on encountering Tom
Riddle's name may have nothing to do with a real memory in himself. It
certainly is not an association between Tom Riddle and Voldemort.

Debbie:
I'm probably missing your meaning here, but why would Voldemort's soul bit
not be associated with Tom Riddle?  Despite all the magical transformations,
they are still one and the same, no?

Carol:
We need to remember the original reason that the diary was created, to
"carry on Salazar Slytherin's noble work." As Harry says, Tom didn't
want his efforts in finding and opening the Chamber of Secrets to go
for nothing. And as DD (IIRC) says, he wanted to be known as
Slytherin's Heir. Note the reactions of Tom's "friends" when Slughorn
says, "It couldn't be clearer that you come from good wizarding
stock." Their winking, nudging, and simpering indicate that they know
exactly which wizarding line Tom comes from.

Debbie:
IIRC, you've written a number of times that the diary was created first to
open the chamber and was made into a horcrux later.  I don't recall that the
timeline is that definitive; we know only that Riddle opened the chamber at
the end of his fifth year (when he was already 16, since we know he was born
in the winter).  He knew it wasn't safe to open the chamber and so created
the diary sometime after that, enclosing the memory he shows Harry in CoS,
to "carry on Salazar Slytherin's noble work."  According to the Lexicon
timeline,

http://www.hp-lexicon.org/timelines/timeline.php

he turned the diary into a horcrux the following September, having murdered
his father and grandparents in the summer.  There is no indication that he
had already encased the one memory into it.  Is there a particular bit of
canon you're relying on?  I tend to think that he created the ring as his
first horcrux, with very strong protective curses set around it, and then he
decided to experiment with his next horcrux in order to connect it very
clearly with Slytherin.  In a way, it is a statement that Riddle is as
powerful and creative a wizard as Salazar himself.

SSSusan:
What you're suggesting here -- that perhaps through possession of
Voldemort Harry could give back the soul bit -- would fit so very
nicely with that, I think! Harry, believing he needed to attempt to
possess Voldy and that in doing so he would give up his life, makes
up his mind to DO it. Doing it, however, results in the surprise
discovery that possessing Voldy "releases" the soul bit from Harry
and returns it to Voldy, allowing Voldy to be killed along w/ his
last soul bit *without* Harry's having to die.

Wow. Before now I have HATED the Harrycrux idea. With this
scenario, I actually like it very much.

Debbie:
Ooooh!  A convert!

What I like about this theory is that by returning a piece of Voldemort's
soul to his body, Harry doesn't have to die, and he would be restoring a
piece of Voldemort's humanity to him, perhaps lessening the pain Harry's
purity of heart causes him.

Debbie,
looking for a good acronym, but could only come up with --
Possessor Of Severed Soulbit Enters Salazar's Son, Horcrux Is Merged (
P.O.S.S.E.S.S. H.I.M.)


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