Dumbledore's plan

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 177442

Carol earlier:
> <snip>
> > Soul bits don't go to some equivalent of King's Cross when they
are released from the Horcrux that holds them. According to Hermione,
> our resident expert on the subject, "a Horcrux is the complete 
opposite of a human being. . . . [W]hatever happens to your body, 
your soul will survive, untouched. But it's the other way around with
a Horcrux. The fragment inside it depends on its container, its
enchanted body. It can't exist without it" (104).
> <snip>
> 
> Dana:
> Your explanation is very well constructed but I do not agree with 
your interpretation. 
> 
> If you die then your soul goes to the afterlife in JKR's world,
while your body remains behind (well at least in most cases unless
you're killed by drapery) and thus every independent piece of LV's
soul goes to this in between stage just as every other soul. They
can't exist in the living world without their casings but that is not
to say that these soul pieces stop existing in themselves in essence
because otherwise LV's conscious soul would have stopped to exit when
the spell backfired in GH but it didn't because his other soul pieces
 kept him from moving on. 
> 
> They go to the abyss like any other soul but they are so maimed that 
> they are no longer able to go beyond this shadowy stage, they no 
> longer have any choice like "normal" souls do. So in a sense they 
> will remain between the world of the living and the death. LV's soul 
> piece that we saw can't stand up and take the train so to speak and 
> it can't return to the land of the living as a ghost either. So they 
> will just exist in this abyss for eternity. 
> 
> What we saw WAS the piece of soul attached to Harry and in essence DD 
> was right as this soul piece was destroyed because it no longer has a 
> choice to do anything from that moment on. LV's conscious soul can no 
> longer depend on it for his survival and on its own it can't move on 
> to the next stage of death or return to the world of the living. 
> 
> Only true remorse could have connected LV's conscious soul piece to 
> the lost pieces making it whole enough for him to move beyond that 
> shadowy stage and take the train to the beyond and thus have a chance 
> to live whole again in the afterlife. Because he was incapable of 
> doing so, every single soul piece he split off, will independently 
> live within this abyss forever with no chance to either move back 
> (ghost) or move forward (afterlife). 
> 
> So in short, to me, the piece of soul we saw in Harry's vision *was* 
> the soul piece that had resided in Harry for all those years but it 
> could not longer perform its duty as horcrux and thus essentially it 
> was destroyed but not non-existent in the deeper meaning of death (or 
> destruction). 
> 
> 
> JMHO
> 
> Dana
>
Carol responds:

I used to think something similar, that the soul bits from the
Horcruxes would go to the afterlife when the Horcrux container was
destroyed, but that's not the implication I get from Dumbledore's or
Hermione's words. Clearly, the thing under the bench is not the
destroyed soul bit (see upthread). And if your interpretation were
correct, there would be eight flayed babies (one for each piece of
Voldie's soul, including the one within himself) lying around waiting
to be reunited in whatever Voldie's equivalent of King's Cross is. In
my view, there's only one baby, the soul that was in Voldie himself,
which became Vapor!mort, then was inside Fetal!mort and then, "however
maimed, reside[d] in his regenerate body" (DD to Harry, HBP Am. ed.
503), and, after his death, will lie forever untouched and beyond
comfort or restoration unless he feels remorse, and even then cannot
be whole because the Horcrux soul bits have been destroyed because it
has been mutilated beyond the realms of what we might call 'usual
evil'" (502). 

DD says (and this quote supports your point that destroying the
Horcruxes would not in itself kill Voldemort), "Without his Horcruxes,
Voldemort will be a mortal man with a maimed and diminished soul.
Never forget, though, that while his soul may be damaged beyond
repair, his brain and magical powers remain intact. It will take
uncommon skill and power to kill a wizard like Voldemort even without
his Horcruxes" (HBP 508-09). So, destroying the Horcruxes makes Voldie
mortal but does not kill him. (We agree on that point.) But making the
Horcruxes has mutilated Voldie's soul to the extent that it may be
damaged beyond repair, and, IMO, cannot be fully restored even by
remorse after the soul bits have been destroyed.

What makes me think they were utterly destroyed and not just waiting
beyond the Veil or at the Voldie equivalent of King's Cross to rejoin
him? First, we saw only the one baby, with no sign of any stray soul
bits from the five destroyed Horcruxes (diary, ring, locket, cup,
diadem). DD specifically said that the thing under the bench was not
the soul bit from the scar, which had been "destroyed" (DH Am. ed.
708). Harry says later that he has seen what Voldie will become if he
doesn't show remorse (741), which can only refer to the maimed child
under the bench. Also, Hermione had said earlier that while the soul
within a human being is immortal, a soul bit in a Horcrux "can't
exist" outside its enchanted container (104). It depends on its
container for survival. Without the container, it dies. Harry uses the
word "died" to describe what happened to the diary (104), and we see
Memory!Tom die in CoS. Nagini literally dies; the diary and tiara
bleed; the locket screams. But the soul bit in these destroyed
containers is not the soul within a human being, which "will survive,
untouched" no matter what happens to the body (Hermione, 104). "A
Horcrux is the complete opposite of a human being," and once its
container is destroyed, it ceases to exist. 

The scar, of course, is not a deliberately created container, but
"killing" Harry with an AK destroys the soul bit in it just as
effectively as stabbing the diary with a Basilisk fang destroys that
soul bit. In fact, if it weren't for the drop of blood that Voldie
shares with Harry, preventing Harry from dying while Voldie lives,
Harry, the seventh Horcrux's container, *would* have died. Instead,
only the soul bit is killed.

Remorse would perhaps have enabled the fragments that had not been
made into Horcruxes to come together (the ones from murders not used
to create Horcruxes), reducing Voldie's eternal suffering (otherwise,
remorse is rather pointless once the Horcruxes have been destroyed),
but the destroyed soul bits are apparently no longer immortal. Based
on Hermione's words, they cease to be immortal once they're placed
inside an enchanted object (or enter a living person, becoming an
accidental Horcrux, but Hermione doesn't know that). They make the
Horcrux creator "as close to immortal as any man can be" (HBP 502)
while they anchor his soul to earth, but they themselves can be
destroyed, which is why Voldie hid his Horcruxes so carefully and
placed curses and other protections on them.

Anyway, the words "destroyed," "can't exist," "can't survive" all
suggest that soul bits do not "go to the abyss like any other living
soul." Both Hermione and DD testify that once a soul bit has no
container to return to because that container has been magically
destroyed (poisoned/burned/AK'd), the soul bit itself ceases to exist.

Through his own actions, combined with the destruction of the
Horcruxes, Voldemort is left with only 1/8 of a soul (JKR's math) for
all eternity. To me, the infantile state of his remaining soul as seen
or envisioned by Harry suggests its incompleteness. It can never grow
to maturity; it will always remain stunted and undeveloped, just as it
will always remain maimed because he maimed it himself and nothing but
his own remorse can help him. Compassion serves no purpose and might
even do more harm than good given the pain that Voldemort feels when
he's touched by Harry's loving soul in the MoM.

But to return to the point, DD has made it clear that the creature
under the bench is not the soul bit, which has been destroyed, and
Harry interprets the creature as Voldie's future state if he doesn't
repent. As we're offered no alternative interpretation (and Harry is
becoming wiser and more perceptive as the book nears its end), I see
no reason not to accept his interpretation, especially as the other
evidence I've cited also supports that interpretation.

Carol, for whom the whole point of the flayed baby is its
representation of the Voldie soul's future state, a point that could
not be made if the baby were the destroyed soul bit