Harry not a Horcrux

[Neri]

No: HPFGUIDX 161296

 
> Dungrollin:
> Sure, I agree with you, although the scar and mind-link to Voldemort 
> have been set up since the first book, and the transferred powers 
> and Voldy's immortality-bid from book 2, so we can't really complain 
> we didn't get any foreshadowing! The theorists axiom is that that 
> book 7 will be consistent with existing canon, but (as we all so 
> frustratingly know) not necessarily predictable from it. 
> 
> Either the horcrux mechanics questions will never be answered, or 
> she can still make up whatever she likes for book 7 (although anti-
> harrycruxers will insist that she's definitively made Harrycrux 
> impossible, though I don't see how). We all rather heavily rely on 
> the fact that she's been thinking about this for a while, and isn't 
> about to change her mind about important plot points. If we do find 
> out about them, Horcrux mechanics will be canon-consistent, but not 
> necessarily predictable - just like the very existence of Horcruxes 
> was before we got our teeth into HBP; I certainly wrote my fair 
> share of speculative "Why didn't Voldy die" posts, and never came 
> anywhere near Horcruxes.
> 

Neri:
Heh. I certainly had my own share of "why didn't Voldy die" posts.
However, this analogy is perhaps not entirely fair, because "why
didn't Voldy die" wasn't actually an official mystery in the books
themselves. It was presented by JKR outside the books, with a fair
warning attached that it would be very difficult to guess (not that
this stopped any of us, naturally). Looking back I think it was meant
more as setting the tone for HBP than issuing a challenge.
 
Perhaps a more appropriate example is the mystery of the connected
Vanishing Cabinets in HBP. The solution was well prepared since Book 2
(both the cabinet at B&B and the Vanishing Cabinet at Hogwarts) with
additional information in Book 5, and the mystery ("how can Draco
smuggle things into Hogwarts?") was officially presented in Book 6.
But there was a key technical detail missing: that a pair of Vanishing
Cabinets make a passage between them. There was certainly no such
canon at any point until Draco reveals it on the tower as if it were
the most obvious thing in the world. However, if some reader was
shrewd enough to hypothesize that the cabinet in B&B could be a
Vanishing Cabinet, then hypothesizing also that it creates a passage
into the one at Hogwarts isn't a big leap at all, especially after the
official mystery "how can Draco smuggle things into Hogwarts?" is
presented.

So, it could well be that JKR also expects us to complete ourselves
the missing technical detail regarding a living Horcrux creation. When
the mystery is revealed in Book 7 some character (Aberforth?
Dumbledore in a Pensieve memory? Voldy? The soul bit itself?) will
just say something like "if anything goes wrong with a Horcrux
encasing spell, the detached soul naturally seeks the closest human")
as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. And it will be
obvious, just as it's now obvious that two Vanishing Cabinets might be
connected.

However, if Harry indeed carries a Voldy soul bit, then there's an
additional mystery: how can Harry get rid of it, or if he can't, how
can he still get rid of Voldemort? Here I think I'd feel cheated if
the solution would be some technical operation that was never even
hinted in canon before. And this is where the "no encasing spell in
GH" has a built-in advantage, because it does not require a special
operation to cleanse Harry of the soul bit.  


Neri