The Look Of Triumph

[Ken Hutchinson]

No: HPFGUIDX 159513

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Katherine Coble <k.coble at ...> wrote:
>
> I'm coming out of lurkdom to bounce a theory off the group.
> 
> I'm in the middle of my semi-annual re-read and something has just  
> occured to me.
> 
> We've discussed a lot about Harry being the Horcrux and (possibly)  
> having to die in order to defeat Voldemort.
> 
> I do not want Harry to die.   I'll say that up front.  

Ken:

A lot of us who believe that Harry is, or could be, a Horcrux do not
believe that this means he has to die. Nothing in the books says that
a living horcrux has to be killed in order destroy the soul bit
embedded in it. Nothing in the books says that killing a living
horcrux would be sufficient to destroy the soul bit embedded in it. DD
does not tell Harry that a living horcrux is risky because it can be
killed, he says it is risky because it can think and act on its own.
That could just as well imply that a living horcrux can decide to take
action on its own to expel or destroy the soul bit embedded inside it
without (fatal) damage to itself. The fate of a living horcrux is not
necessarily linked to that of the soul bit it contains. Any statement
you read that asserts one opinion or the other on this is just an
opinion, a theory. Most of us expect that book 7 will answer this
question one way or the other but then it is entirely possible that
there are *no* living horcruxes in which case book 7 won't answer the
question but it won't matter then either.

Harry's fate is in JKR's hands whether he is a horcrux or not. She can
be a cold hearted goddess and that makes a lot of us nervous. 

Your no-longer-horcrux-Harry theory does have some appeal. Slughorn's
description of how horcruxes work implies that when a horcrux owner is
attacked with lethal force the soul bit inside him/her does die and
the spirit or whatever is anchored to the Earth by the soul bit in the
horcrux(es). That would mean that LV's regenerated body has no soul,
which is the opinion that many of us hold of him if not so literally.
You supply a means by which he could have gotten a soul bit for his
new body. Unfortunately one of the things that makes some of us
believe that Harry is a horcrux is the pain in his scar and the
linkage between him and LV. Both of those continue after the graveyard
scene and that would argue against your theory unless only part of the
soul bit in Harry was transferred to LV's new body at the graveyard.
But in that case Harry would still be a horcrux. On the third hand
many believe that the scar pain and LV/Harry link have nothing to do
with horcruxes anyway and that would rescue your once was but not now
horcrux theory.

One theory is as good as another at this point. It isn't likely that
we will unravel the story before book 7 comes out because there are so
very many possibilities and so very many conflicting clues.

Ken