CHAPDISC: HBP 23, Horcruxes

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 160402

Carol earlier:
> I'm not sure what you mean by "obtain characteristics of a Horcrux."
> Possibly "obtain" is the wrong verb, but aside from that, the only
> characteristic of a normal Horcrux (cup, locket, ring, etc.) is its
> capacity to keep a bit of Voldemort's soul earthbound.
> 
> Snow:
> 
> A Horcrux holds a portion of Voldemort; therefore Harry does have
the same characteristics as a Horcrux since he also holds a portion of 
> Voldemort.

Carol again:
Forgive me, but you're begging the question here by taking your point
for granted. As I said, we don't know the characteristics of a
Horcrux, other than that a Horcrux contains a soul fragment, anchoring
the main or core soul to the earth and preventing the wizard from
dying. And the "bit" of Voldemort contained in Harry seems to be some
of his powers, including Parseltongue. We do not know and have not
been told either by DD or the narrator that that "bit" is a soul fragment.
> 
Snow:
> According to the Encarta dictionary the definition of obtain: as a 
> transitive verb get something: to get possession of something, 
> especially by making an effort or having the necessary qualifications
> 
> Harry did (obtain) get possession of something (a bit of Voldemort) 
> that is characteristic of all the other Horcruxes.

Carol responds:
Thanks for the clarification. If you'll forgive me, I think "acquire"
might be closer to your intended meaning since "obtain" implies
intention, and Harry certainly made no effort to "obtain" a bit of
Voldemort, whether we're speaking of powers or a soul fragment. 
> 
Carol earlier:
> 
> We can't deduce the characteristics of a Horcrux from the properties 
> of the diary,
> which was always an interactive magical object different from the
> others, and Nagini, if she is a Horcrux, is also atypical.
> 
> Snow:
> 
> Harry does possess a feature that is quite necessary when creating a 
> Horcrux, which is a bit of Voldemort, however that does not make 
> Harry a Horcrux like the other items mentioned since they are all 
> inanimate objects (even the Diary without Ginny's soul) as opposed
to Harry who is a living soul. 

Carol responds:
Here I agree with you. The Voldiebit, whatever it is (and it may not
be a soul bit) does not necessarily make Harry a Horcrux, any more
than Ginny was a Horcrux when Diary!Tom possessed her. The diary, even
without Ginny's soul, is different from the other Horcruxes because it
contains at least one *memory* of Tom Riddle in addition to the soul
bit. Consequently, we can't use it to determine the characteristics of
a standard Horcrux, which is merely an object (preferably a valuable,
magical object) in which a soul bit is encased. It may or may not
contain a protective curse, as the ring did. (I expect that the locket
and the cup will be similarly protected, but we just don't know.) As
for Nagini, her closeness to Voldemort is the antithesis of Harry's
enmity, and Voldemort can possess her without killing or even paining
her (Harry seeing from the snake's pov felt no pain)--very different
from the pain Harry feels in his scar even before Voldie is restored
using his blood. So, yes, I agree. Harry is not like any of the
Horcruxes, including Nagini, who is a living being with a will of her
own whether or not she has a soul.
> 
Snow:
> Let's see how Harry does fit the Horcrux definition. 
> 
> "A Horcrux is the word used for an object in which a person has 
> concealed part of their soul." HBP pg. 497

Carol:

And right away it appears that he isn't a Horcrux because Voldemort
hasn't concealed anything in him. All he's done is try, more than
once, to kill him.
> 
Snow:
> The three stages to make a Horcrux as conveyed by Slughorn are step:
> 
>     (1) "By an act of evil – the supreme act of evil. By committing 
> murder. 498
> 
> What could be more evil than to kill an unarmed mother who is not 
> even attempting to fight back? I would say that Voldemort secured
the first stage of making a Horcrux that night at GH.

Carol:
Certainly, he murdered Harry's mother though it was Harry he intended
to murder, and the soul bit created by Harry's murder that he intended
to encase. To me, that's clearly the reason that he wanted Lily to
step aside. The soul fragment detached by her death would be too
insignificant, in his view, for a Horcrux. (We're left to presume that
James's death in a duel or battle didn't qualify as a murder for the
purpose of creating a Horcrux, however unfair Voldemort's tactics, and
to wonder what became of the soul fragments from all those other
murders. Did they go floating off, too? If so, Voldie is left with
considerably less than one-seventh of a soul, even assuming that he
can detach an exact seventh each time he creates a Horcrux regardless
of the number of murders he's committed.) But a split soul does not a
Horcrux make, or most of the Death Eaters and every other murderer in
the WW would have one. (We don't even know whether all killing results
in a split soul or what exactly a split soul means.)
> 
>     (2)	"and hide part of it in an object outside the body." 497
> 
> The part of Voldemort's soul that was split when he murdered Lily
did hide itself outside of Voldemort's body. Again I would have to say
that Voldemort did secure step two when he blew himself up attempting
to AK Harry. (You have a split soul inside a body that was just blown
up. The split portion is separated from the core soul so it can no
longer remain with the core soul, that little bugger had to go somewhere)

Carol:

Did it? Where is your evidence that it didn't say with the core soul?
Certainly he didn't deliberately detach the torn soul and encase it in
an object, which requires both an object (not a person) and a spell.
and what about all the other murders he committed that weren't used
for Horcruxes? We have, at the very least, Myrtle, three Riddles,
Hepzibah Smith, an Order member he killed personally, James if he
counts, and Lily. That's eight, more than enough for the five
Horcruxes he would have had before Godric's Hollow if DD's
calculations are correct. There are certainly many others considering
the number of Inferi in the cave. 

But my point is, how do you know that the Lily fragment hid itself
outside Voldemort's body? What was left of his soul was expelled from
his body, but how do you know that the Lily fragment didn't remain
with the core soul? Can you cite canon that it didn't, or that it "hid
itself"? What would prevent that unencased fragment from going behind
the Veil or simply ceasing to exist if it were somehow detached from
the main soul with no container to encase it? Suppose that it is
merely detachable but not detached?

Snow:
>      (3) "Encase? But how - ?"
>          "There is a spell, do not ask me, I don't know!" 498
> 
> So it takes a spell to purposely encase an object in something 
> according to the Slughorn-suggestions-on-how-to-make-a-Horcrux. I 
> think he is right when you are speaking of the conventional Horcrux 
> that has no soul of its own, which I believe he was since attempting 
> to use a living soul is inadvisable. 
> 
Carol:
I'm not sure what you mean here since the spell would be required
regardless of whether the object had a soul or not. And DD doesn't
mention souls, only living beings that can think and move on their
own, meaning Nagini. (There are, IMO, other reasons not to use a
living being, such as mortality, but DD for some reason didn't mention
that.) At any rate, I'm quite sure that the same spell that was used
on the diary, the ring, the cup, the locket, and the unknown Ravenclaw
object was also used on Nagini, if she's a Horcrux. And it
emphatically was *not* used on Harry. As you say, it's a spell to
*purposely* encase an object, and LV would have to be crazier than he
is already to make a Horcrux of the child he intended to kill, using
the soul fragment from the murder of that child before he'd killed the
child (oops, not possible) or using the child's very biodegradable
body--I doubt that he would have wanted a baby's skull as his
"something from Gryffindor." And there's no chance that he would have
let the Chosen One live as a living Horcrux. We know the spell he cast
was the Killing Curse.

Snow:
> What we are left with as a conclusion to this third part of the 
> Horcrux endeavor as it might apply to Harry is that Voldemort did
not purposely say a spell to encase a piece of himself inside of Harry 
> otherwise he would be aware that Harry had a piece of his soul. 

Carol:
Agreed.
> 
Snow:
> In final conclusion of this enactment of events at GH as compared 
> with the making of a Horcrux, I would have to say that Voldemort 
> willing or not created the conditions for 2/3rds of the process. 
> Since the final 1/3 of the process was mute we must conclude that 
> Harry is not an official Horcrux as per Slughorn's how-to process. 

Carol:
I'd say that the only condition that was indisputably met is the
first, and LV has committed other murders that weren't made into
Horcruxes. We have not been told that a soul bit or bits were released
when Voldemort's soul was ripped from his body. Surely Dumbledore
would have raised the possibility when he was talking about Horcruxes
and Harry would say, "So that's how I got some of his powers!" if that
were the case. So not only is Harry not an official Horcrux, IMO he's
not even an unofficial one. Even if there's a soul bit in him, there's
no spell to encase it. He doesn't act like the only known living
Horcrux, Nagini (assuming that she is one). All we know is that he has
some of Voldemort's powers, which could as easily have entered the cut
that would later become a scar through a drop of LV's magical blood as
through a detached soul fragment. IMO, if Harry had been possessed by
a soul bit, he'd have behaved a lot more like possessed!Ginny,
Quirrel!mort, or possessed!Nagini. Not a sign of it, and we know that
Lily's sacrifice has made him unpossessable, at least by Voldemort.

Snow: 
> Whether Harry is a Horcrux or not the fact still remains that Harry 
> has a bit of Voldemort

> 
> ["Voldemort put a bit of himself in me? [ 
]
> "It certainly seems so." COS pg. 333]

Carol:
Granted. He has some of Voldemort's *powers*, including Parseltongue,
a unique form of mutual Legilimency, and possibly possession, which I
expect to see in Book 7. But we're told that magic resides in the
blood (not a drop of magical blood in the Dursleys' veins, the whole
pureblood, half-blood, "Mudblood" concept, Harry's blood used to
restore Voldemort--note that Wormtail used the *bone* of Voldemort's
Muggle father but the *blood* of a powerful fellow wizard). I see no
evidence anywhere that powers reside in the soul. "A bit of himself"
is not necessarily a soul fragment.
> 
Snow:
> 
that was marked with a scar

> 
> ["
and in marking you with that scar, he did not kill you, as he 
> intended, but gave you powers, and a future
OOP pg. 842]
> 
> 
and Dumbledore realized the moment he laid eyes on little Harry
what that scar was. 

Carol:
This is your interpretation. IMO, the scar resulted from the AK
bursting out of Harry's head. Granted, it serves both as a symbol that
Voldemort has "marked him as his equal" and as a conduit of
communication between them, but I think it's a stretch to imply that
Voldemort deliberately or otherwise put a bit of himself in Harry and
marked the bit with the scar. IMO, the scar, which was originally a
cut on Harry's forehead, came before the "bit" entered Harry *by means
of* the cut. Certainly, Voldemort didn't deliberately put it there. I
think DD is condensing events a bit. Yes, the scar contains the
powers, but that doesn't mean that it contains a soul bit. All DD is
saying is that instead of being killed, Harry now has a scar, some of
Voldemort's powers, and a future as the Chosen One. Not a word about
being an accidental Horcrux or unofficial Horcrux. Powers, yes; soul
bit, unmentioned.
> 
Carol:
> ["when I saw the scar upon your forehead, what it might mean. I 
> guessed that it might be the sign of a connection forged between you 
> and Voldemort." OOP pg. 827]

Carol:
Granted. But no soul bit is required for the scar to serve as a
connection, as we know it does. All that's required is one of
Voldemort's peculiar powers, in this case, Legilimency.
> 
Snow:
> Voldemort made Harry equal to himself when he attacked baby Harry
a 
> connection
by putting a bit of himself in Harry
1/7th of a bit I 
> would say. 

Carol:
So in your view, he might as well be a Horcrux. Wouldn't he have to
die for the soul bit to be destroyed, just as he would if he were an
official Horcrux? And in that case, how can he kill or destroy the
Horcruxless Voldemort?

Carol, whose scenario doesn't require any such complications