Dumbledore's plan

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 177456

Dana wrote:
> I totally understand your interpretation but what I do not get is 
why? Why would it represent LV's conscious soul, while the only part
of LV dying in connection to these events is the piece residing in 
Harry himself. A "living" soul would not have been able to be there 
and LV would not been able to get there because the soul bit in 
Nagini would still have prevented his living soul from moving on. 
LV's soul would not have been able to entire this limbo just as he 
couldn't leave after the events in GH. It makes no sense that the 
baby-like creature to represent LV's conscious "living" soul. DD's
entire plan was to keep LV alive so Harry could return and in your
scenarion this would have failed because like Harry, LV would truly
have been death in that moment (which he couldn't because of Nagini).
 <snip>

> Technically there indeed would at the time of Harry's near-death 
experience be 6 maimed soul pieces existing in limbo. We do not see 
them because this one is Harry's personal experience within his own 
personal limbo but I have no doubt that JKR meant for us to expect 
that LV would indeed witness the implications of the damage he 
brought onto each individual soul piece. 
> Ask yourself this question, why would the conscious soul piece be
part of Harry's personal near-death experience? It wouldn't but the 
> soul piece residing in Harry would because it died at the same time 
> Harry did and was very much part of Harry's life from the age of 15 
> months. 

> LV's conscious soul (although this is speculation on my part) will 
> probably indeed meet his 7 soul pieces in limbo and he will 
> consciously experience their pain and will probably unlike Harry be 
> able to disregard any of their murmurings and grovels. This will 
> probably be LV's personal hell and he could have completely avoided 
> this if he had respected the one holy part of human existence -> his 
> own soul. It would not be a punishment for the ultimate crime against 
> universal pureness if LV could not consciously experience the pain
he caused. <snip>

> Also (and I know logic is not JKR's strong suit) if LV had truly died 
> in that event as we are to presume Harry did then Harry would no 
> longer have the ability to go back because LV's body (as the blood 
> was the binding factor anchoring Harry's soul to the world of the 
> living) would have been death. So while LV's soul would still have 
> his soul piece residing in Nagini enabling him to come back, Harry 
> would have lost that opportunity if LV would have been death in that 
> specific moment.  <snip>

> Well I think our difference in interpretation comes from our 
differences in our understanding of the concept "beyond the veil" as
it is presented in the Potter verse in relation to what we witness in
 Harry's vision. 
> 
> I do not perceive Harry's experience as passing beyond the veil. To
me, Harry would only have gone beyond the veil if he had, so to 
speak, taken the train and moved on. Harry was actually in limbo. 
><snip>

Carol responds:

Actually, this can't be the source of our disagreement since I agree
that Harry hasn't gone beyond the Veil. King's Cross is, as someone
onlist put it, a kind of way station. Harry could have "gone on" to
"the next great adventure" but chose not to do so. Dumbledore, who
meets him there, is dead, but Harry is, to use your term, "a living
soul." The scene resembles the Greek myths in which the hero meets a
dead mentor in the Underworld and then returns to the living world
except that we don't actually see what the afterlife (beyond the Veil)
is like, nor does Harry, because he doesn't "take a train."

I think that the flayed baby (Voldie's soul) is not dead, either, but
is temporarily in the state it would be in if it were dead, just as
Harry is (no scar, no glasses), but it can return because Harry can
(and does). 

You say that a living soul could not have been there, and yet Harry is
a living soul. He asks DD if he's dead and DD says, "On the whole, I
think not," which turns out to be true. So if Harry's "living soul"
can be there, I don't see why Voldie's can't. Both Harry and Voldie
are unconscious; the DEs are gathered anxiously around the fallen
Voldemort and he wakes just as Harry does.

Granted, we can't know what he experienced. You keep using the term
"conscious soul" as if it were part of my argument, but I haven't used
that term for what is (for Harry and possibly for Voldie) essentially
an out-of-body experience of the mind/soul (indistinguishable in
Harry, as DD tells Snape), experienced while he's *un*conscious. Since
we're not in Voldie's mind here (the mind link having been severed
when the soul bit was destroyed), I don't think we can determine
whether Voldie (un)consciously experienced a trip to King's Cross
station in flayed-baby form (if so, he would have experienced only
pain and helplessness and would not have understood his vision as a
preview of his future state) or whether his future state is only part
of Harry's vision.

My point is only that the creature is not the soul bit, which has been
destroyed, but either Voldie's maimed soul or a vision of that soul's
future state. I don't see how the text can be read any other way, but
I've already presented my canon and you understand the arguments, so
I'm not sure what else to say.

If Harry's soul could enter this Limbo, to use your term, I don't see
why Voldie's couldn't. Part of him (a soul bit) has just been
destroyed, along with his link to Harry. Why that should knock Voldie
unconscious and send his soul, along with Harry's, to King's Cross is
admittedly unclear, but that does seem to be what happened. Maybe he
feels the loss of this accidental Horcrux more than the others because
it's the next-to-last one and he's becoming vulnerable? And yet if
that were the case, he'd feel the death of Nagini, too.

Speaking of Nagini, I don't think the results of Harry's
self-sacrifice would have been any different if Nagini had been killed
at Godric's Hollow instead of Hogwarts. It's the shared drop of blood
that keeps Harry alive (he can't die while Voldemort lives), so only
the soul bit is destroyed. Even if Voldie had already lost his last
true Horcrux, Nagini, his main soul would have been in no danger from
 the AK that killed the soul bit because the AK didn't rebound. As DD
told Harry, Voldie would still have to be killed by a wizard with
skill and power after the Horcruxes were destroyed. It would still
have required a second confrontation (after the soul bit was killed)
to kill Voldie, IMO.

The soul bits would not be "existing in limbo" because, as Hermione
explains in "The Ghoul in Pajamas," they've all been destroyed (except
the one in Nagini). Voldie himself, however, is about three/quarters
dead (down to 2/8 or 1/4 of a soul, shared between himself and
Nagini), which is perhaps why he can enter King's Cross with Harry
(assuming that he does so and the flayed baby is not just a vision of
LV's future).

Why would "the conscious soul piece" (or Voldie's main soul, as I call
it) be part of Harry's vision? Probably for the same reason that
Dumbledore is. Harry needs answers. He doesn't need glasses so they
don't exist there (nor does his scar because his soul is pure and
whole), but he does need, or at least want, clothes, so he receives
them. Then he wants answers, so Dumbledore, the only one who knows the
answers, appears. Voldemort and his fate are tied up with Harry's, so
he appears, too, as part of the truth Harry has been seeking
throughout DH. The flayed baby shows Harry what Voldie's future will
be if he dies unrepentant. The destroyed soul bit, OTOH, can serve no
purpose. It is, AFAICT, annihilated, along with the other soul bits.
All that's left is the self-maimed remnant of the main soul.

I suppose it's possible that remorse could unite the "destroyed"
fragments with the main soul, but, if so, why have we been repeatedly
told that the soul bits have been "destroyed" or that they can't exist
outside their enchanted containers? I agree that logic isn't JKR's
strong point; neither is consistency. Maybe she's being inconsistent
again here, but I don't think so. It's clear that the thing under the
chair isn't the scar soul bit, which has been destroyed, and Harry
says that it's the state of Voldie's soul if he doesn't show remorse.
Whether it's logical for his "conscious soul" or "main soul" to be
there or not, I don't think any other explanation fits the canon that
we're presented in HBP and, especially, DH.

You mention that the soul bit in Nagini would prevent Voldemort from
"moving on" if Harry had "gone on" himself, but Harry had asked
Neville to "kill the snake," and Hermione and Ron were also planning
to kill Nagini if Harry failed. Suppose that Harry had chosen to die,
to "go on," leaving his own unconscious body, which would become his
dead body since his soul had left it. Suppose that Voldemort had
remained unconscious, with his maimed soul in limbo (a whimpering,
helpless, flayed, abandoned bundle of rags, perhaps not in King's
Cross at all but just lying on a floor with nothing around it like
Harry when he first arrived--nothing but pain and darkness all around
him). Suppose that Neville or Ron or Hermione had then killed Nagini,
and Voldemort's body died, giving his mangled soul no way to return to
its body. Who would come to help him? Who would Voldemort, who fears
death and the dead and hates everyone, summon, and what could they do
if they came since, as DD says, "no help is possible"?

I think that LV returned to that state when the second AK was
deflected onto him and killed him, and he'll remain there for all
eternity (unless there's a Judgment Day, which JKR might or might not
imagine, but which is not implied in DH).

I do realize that I haven't answeed the question of how Voldie got
there if he was really there, but that's because we see the scene from
Harry's pov and don't know what Voldie experienced while he was
unconscious. But that the flayed child is not the soul bit seems clear
from the context. The only question, for me, is whether Voldie was
really there in his own limbo or whether the flayed child was only a
vision of the future that awaited him if he showed no remorse.

Carol, hoping this post isn't too repetitive and asking anyone who
wants canon support for her arguments to please look upthread