My take on the Forest scene (also posted on Movie)

[zanooda2]

No: HPFGUIDX 191162






--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Geoff" <geoffbannister123 at ...> wrote:

> There is obviously the section in the chapter where Dumbledore 
> tells Harry he has the option to go on. This seems to suggest that 
> he has gone to some sort of limbo but – and this is a big but – 
> can go back which is not granted when people die.

zanooda:

I thought it was something like clinical death: for all practical purposes a person is dead, but he/she still *can* be revived. Harry could have "gone on", but he was able to come back to life thanks to the blood he shared with LV.

> Geoff wrote:

> When Voldemort cast the spell in the forest, I believe that 
> Lily's power of love was still latent in Harry and forced 
> the spell onto the Horcrux fragment in him.


zanooda:

But it's impossible to destroy a piece of soul without destroying the object in which it is concealed (the Horcrux). By definition, a Horcrux is an object that contains a piece of soul, and it's this object that must be destroyed, not the bit of soul itself. As long as the object/vessel is functional, the piece of soul in it lives. 

In our case the object (the Horcrux) is Harry, and it's him who needed to be destroyed (killed) in order to end with the piece of LV's soul inside him. I've always thought it was exactly what happened in the Forest: Harry died (kind of :-), it was clinical death), and, as the object (Harry) was destroyed (died), the piece of LV's soul ceased to exist. 

Harry's own soul also left his lifeless body and went to the limbo, which is, according to the author, some place between life and death. The soul had two options, either to return to the body, or to "go on". If Harry chose not to return, his death would have become irreversible.

That's how I see it, although I have no idea if it's right or wrong :-). I know there are different theories, and they all have their merits.