How to Reassemble using Horuscruxes

[dungrollin]

Several replies here@

Dungrollin wrote:
>Oooh. As soon as I read about Golpalott's third law, I wondered
>whether it could apply to Horcruxes as well as poisons... Could this
>be an underlying principle in magic in general? That the sum of a
>series of magics is greater than its parts, thus to undo them it is
>not enough to simply counteract each in turn, there is an additional
>*something* that must be found to complete the undoing.

Troels replied:
<snip snip snip>
One very interesting difference between the normal folk-tales and 
Rowling's use of the Horcruxes is that Rowling has one fragment 
remain in the body. Traditionally the body is vacated, but still 
controlled, by the soul that has been hidden away in a (supposedly) 
safe place, and the body becomes invulnerable and immortal. It is 
almost as if leaving the last fragment of the soul in the body makes 
the body vulnerable while the Horcruxes make the /soul/ immortal.

Dungrollin:
As a kind of aside, I find the differences between the elixir of 
life and Horlicks rather interesting. The former (it seems to me, 
anyway) renders your body invulnerable, and thus your soul is not in 
danger of passing on. The latter does not protect the body at all, 
but ensures that whatever happens to it, your soul is still stuck in 
this world. Immortality via preservation of the body versus 
immortality via preservation of the soul. 

I suspect there are more contrasts too. That the stone can only be 
made by somebody with good intentions, pure of heart, if you like 
(admission: my only knowledge of alchemy comes from a novel called 
The Chymical Wedding, by Lindsay Clarke – in which two of the main 
characters are poets, to give you some idea). And that Horlicks can 
only be made by somebody with evil intentions (hence the necessary 
killings). So I think that Tom would never have been able to make a 
PS, and probably never even seriously considered it, whereas someone 
good like Flamel would never have been able to make Horlicks, 
because he would never have been able to kill anybody (and was far 
too nice to inflict any kind of despicable instant malted beverage 
upon the world).


Troels:
There is a strong sense in Rowling's books that the sum of a union is
stronger than the sum of the consituents, but with respect to the
Horcruxes, I think that we are seeing the reverse. The sum of the 
split-up soul is less than the sum of the whole (united) soul -- 
divided he falls!

Dungrollin:
DD says "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 his magical power 
remain intact.  It will take uncommon skill and power to kill a 
wizard like Voldemort, even without his horcruxes."

So I'm not sure that making Hatboxes has weakened him significantly. 
It's certainly put him beyond redemption (see Anne's excellent 
thoughts here)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/2358
- perhaps JKR is of the opinion that with the right attitude, Tom 
could have learned to love (if he'd taken DD's assertion that it's 
the strongest magic there is seriously) before he deliberately put 
himself beyond redemption by creating a hotcake. 

Hmm. Debbie has posted something similar:

Debbie:
While we know Riddle has never loved, we are not told he never had 
the capacity to love; the prophecy states that Voldemort "knows not" 
the power and not that he "has not" got it. Perhaps it was lost 
through the repeated splitting of the soul and having never 
experienced love, Voldemort didn't know what power he was giving up.

<snip>
Would the destruction of the Horcrunchies, with an added dose of 
genuine remorse, make Riddle's soul whole again? Could Voldemort 
repent? And if so, would it be a satisfying ending or would we be 
choking on the treacle?

Dungrollin:
I don't think destroying the hors-taxes would make his soul whole 
again. I think the bits of scattered soul will be very definitely 
destroyed, one by one, until the scrap of soul left in Voldy is the 
last one. He won't notice them being destroyed, and their 
destruction won't materially affect him (until, as DD says, at the 
end, at the point of death we should get a good long rant, and 
possibly some interesting info) his power and intellect are just as 
strong as they always were, according to DD.

Could Voldy repent? Purely hypothetically: of course, anyone can. 
Could he really *mean* it? Hmm... I doubt it.  He's not remotely 
sorry about any of it – I'm not even sure that he even realises he's 
done anything wrong: "There is no good and evil, only power and 
those too weak to seek it."

Could he ever reverse the damage he's done to his soul? Well, even 
if Horcruxes could be rejoined with the original piece of soul, two 
have already been destroyed, thus his soul is *permanently* 
erm... 'cattle trucked' (to use some technical rhyming slang).  

Ginger wrote:
>The thought hit me, though, in the Potterverse why not get the
>Horcruces, toss them to a dementor and let *it* suck the soul out of
>them?
>
>I know, too easy.

Troels:
A bit more seriously, though, the Dementors would probably find 
it 'stale food' -- they appear to prefer happiness as the best 
flavour for them, and I suspect that the Hurcrux soul-fragment is 
too mutilated, tormented and tarnished for their delicate 
palates . . .

And of course it would be too easy ;-)

Dungrollin:
I'm still not convinced that the difficulty is in destroying them, I 
think the difficulty is in working out where they are, and getting 
through the protections. Chuck them through the veil, feed them to a 
dementor (lots of which are handily hanging around the country at 
the moment), why not? Why should destroying them be difficult? 
Nobody has said that it will be or should be AFAIR. I still reckon 
that DD's hand was nuked by the protections on the ring at the Gaunt 
House, rather than by destroying the hors-d'oeuvres itself; after 
all, Harry didn't lose any appendages when he destroyed the diary.

Dungrollin