Feeble child-thing in train station (From Deathly Hallows)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 174001

aquilalorelei wrote:
<snip>
> > Just wondering what we think the flayed piteous child-thing is in
the limbo!King's Cross station.
> > I really have no idea, especially with why Dumbledore so
specifically forbids Harry to aid it (him? her?)

Maeg replied: 
> I read the previous thread about what the thing is, and agree with  
> the assessment that it is Voldemort (not the part of his soul that  
> was in Harry, but what's left of him).
> 
> But I still don't understand Dumbledore's insistence that Harry not  
> help him. To me, it was more than just "you can't help him";  
> Dumbledore seemed to order Harry not to help. That seemed cruel --  
> but perhaps that is the point? From what we now know of Dumbledore,  
> he's awfully cruel at times, even if JKR wants us to think he's on  
> the "good" side.

Carol responds:

JKR herself says that Voldie will spend eternity in the form he
witnessed in the station, but that still doesn't indicate whether it's
part of Harry's vision or whether LV himself is having an out-of-body
experience. (I think the latter because his followers are gathered
around him, apparently fearing for his life.)

If, like Harry, he has crossed over into the afterlife without being
dead, he has not had a pleasant, edifying experience. His brief
exposure to his future as a mangled fetus beyond help or hope or
redemption, condemned to suffer eternally, would merely confirm his
view that death is to be feared and avoided at all costs. He does not
understand that remorse is his only chance to avoid such a fate.

Touching or trying to comfort the horrible maimed travesty of a soul
will not help it, whether it's Harry's vision or an experience he
shares with Voldemort. It is, as Dead!DD says, beyond help.

But whether it's a vision of Voldemort's future or whether LV's
mangled soul has actually passed with Harry's into what Harry
perceives as King's Cross Station, the thing is not a soul bit. 

The soul bit within a Horcrux cannot survive outside its container,
even if that container is Harry (DH Am. ed. 103). The soul bits don't
go beyond the Veil or into the afterlife. They are utterly obliterated.

And Harry tells Voldemort that he has seen Voldie's future if he
doesn't repent:

"Think, and try for some remorse, Riddle," he says. "It's your last
chance. It's all you've got. I've seen what you'll be otherwise" (741).

Carol, who also posted on this topic in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/173668
if anyone's interested