Horcruxes, hosting a soul piece

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 189472

Mike wrote:
> <snip> Why it went to live in Harry was never really explained, maybe souls naturally seek a living thing to habitate? Maybe a piece of soul is so corrupted that it doesn't know to return to the soul bank to await redeployment? 

Carol responds:
Voldemort says something about being separated from his body and, in another place, "less than spirit," so it's clear, I think, that the soul piece couldn't return to his mutilated soul (or to his apparently dead body--it's unclear what happened to it, only that he couldn't return to it). I think that the soul piece would simply have disintegrated like the soul bit in a destroyed Horcrux if Harry hadn't been near. But those soul bits don't enter the nearest person or Harry, Ron, Hermione, DD, and everyone else who destroyed a Horcrux (except Crabbe) would be host to the soul bit, which Hermione says can't survive outside its container. The soul bit inhabiting Harry was clearly a fluke--no spell involved, etc. I've always assumed that it entered him through the open cut on his forehead as part of the backfiring Avada Kedavra. We know that the soul bit was *in Harry's scar* (which was his means of knowing Voldemort's emotions and, eventually, his thoughts). We also know that the cut was still unhealed when baby Harry was placed on the Dursleys' doorstep. Altogether coincidental, but so is the whole situation, from Snape's love for Lily to Voldemort's broken promise to let her live.

Carol, now wondering whether the soul bit inhabiting Harry's scar-to-be was somehow part of the Love magic