[the_old_crowd] How to Reassemble using Horuscruxes

[Troels Forchhammer]

At 22:42 15-08-05 -0400, elfundeb wrote:
>Back from vacation, not quite finished reading the hundreds of posts
>on this list, and hoping this rambling speculation about Horsecrunches
>wasn't already used to wrap last week's fish . . . .
>
>Troels wrote:
> > 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.
>
>Dumbledore seems quite certain of himself when he tells Harry that the
>seventh part of Voldemort's soul still resides in his body.  OTOH, we
>know that a person can exist without his soul - Lupin tells Harry that
>in PoA.  But he also says that a soul-sucked person has no sense of
>self, no memory, only an empty existence.   Well, I'd argue that
>Voldemort definitely has an empty existence, but he does have a sense
>of self, however distorted it may be.

I quite agree. I tried to point out the differences between how the 
'externalising-the-soul-gives-immortality' motif is used in traditional 
folk-tales (with variants) and how it is used in the Harry Potter books. I 
don't know if it gives any particular added insight into the Potter story, 
although I would claim that one aspect is likely to follow the tradition: 
namely that destroying all the containers will kill the person.

>Nevertheless, I don't think canon expressly precludes theorising that
>Voldemort could have completely separated soul from body.

Well, I am completely satisfied with accepting Dumbledore's guesses as 
incontrovertible fact -- as long, of course, as it isn't within the areas 
where he is prone to make 'emotional mistakes >:->

Since Dumbledore is so specific about this, I  see no basis for theorising 
otherwise.

>We do have Slughorn's how-to memory on Horsecrutches, but we already
>know that Riddle pushed that envelope far beyond what was previously
>considered its limit.  I could see him pushing it further in an effort
>to excise every bit of soul from his body as a self-defense mechanism.

I bet he would have liked to try, but it does seem that this is one aspect 
where the Horcruxes of Potterverse differs from the tradition. In 
Potterverse the soul needs to stay in the body to provide that sense of 
self and the memories that give direction to our actions. When Dumbledore 
says that our choices show who we truly are, we should probably consider 
that this only applies in the presence of a soul: without the soul, the 
body is no-one.

>As Troels points out, keeping even a small part of soul seems to leave
>the body vulnerable to attack.

It was, frankly, a somewhat unwarranted comment implying a causal 
connection between two of the observed differences between the external 
soul in folk-tales and in Horcruxes.  I had no intention of implying that 
it was actually possible in Potterverse to completely externalise the soul.

>Of all Dumbledore's speculation about the remaining Horsecrutches,
>Nagini was the one that didn't seem to fit with Riddle's modus
>operandi.

I agree that it didn't sound quite as convincing as it might have been, but 
I am strongly unwilling to disregard any statement of fact by Dumbledore. 
So far I can recall only one statement of fact made by Dumbledore that has 
turned out to be false (it is in PoA when he called Harry and Hermione two 
thirteen-year-old wizards -- Hermione was actually fourteen at the time, 
but since this relates to math, I am sure we can agree to disregard that as 
'someone' putting wrong words in his mouth <GG>), and consequently I will 
need something far stronger than a bit of weak reasoning to disregard 
Dumbledore's guess. As far as I am concerned Nagini is a Horcrux until 
Rowling directly states otherwise (in book or elsewhere).

>It's not a Founder's relic, and it's not associated with Hogwarts
>or his family except for a general connection to Slytherin House
>and Parseltongue.  But he already had a Slytherin relic (the
>ring) and a testament to his Parseltongue ability (the diary).

It was also with the help of Nagini that he was able to get that 
rudimentary body, and it was possibly symbolic of his re-embodiment. If we 
want to challenge the Nagini theory, I would rather say that Frank Bryce is 
the weakest part -- the first murder he committed after beginning to gain 
strength again was of Bertha Jorkins, and I would agree that her death 
would have been significant for him (again as a sign of Voldemort rising 
back to power), but Frank Bryce's death seemed far more incidental.

I know Jo admits to making continuity errors, and this might indeed be one 
of those, although I guess it is one that could be easily explained away: 
Voldemort was desparate to complete his seven-part soul (he didn't know at 
the time that one of his Horcruxes had been destroyed while he was biding 
his time in Albania as a partial soul), and he didn't have the strength to 
create a Horcrux when Bertha was killed (that might require that he didn't 
use the Avada Kedavra to kill Bertha, which isn't consistent with her 
emerging from his wand in GoF in a manner indistinguishable from known AK 
victims) -- or something of that sort.

Of course the weak argumentation might be read as a sign that Dumbledore is 
wrong, but so far his guesses and suspicions have proven spot on (always 
excepting . . . <GG>)

<snip>

>If Voldemort has dispersed every piece of soul, and if Harry is the
>repository of one of those pieces (whether intentionally or
>inadvertently -- I'm leaning toward the theory that Harry is an
>unintentionally created bit of soul, with the possibility that
>Voldemort still does not know about it),

I have several problems with the 'Harry is a Horcrux' proposition.
Foremost is the objection that it requires a spell to encase a soul 
fragment in a Horcrux, and that wasn't performed when Voldemort attacked 
baby Harry.
Secondly it will require that this, that even the possibility of this, has 
been overlooked by both Dumbledore and Voldemort -- not something I find 
terribly convincing.

And yes, I am completely aware that odd things can occur in unprecedented 
freak magical accidents ;-)

>then there is a possibility that the last remaining bit of soul keeping
>Voldemort alive will repose inside Harry.  Voldemort would be unable to
>kill Harry without killing himself.  The irony is that the life of
>Voldemort, whose greatest fear is death, will depend on the mercy of
>Harry, who does not fear death.  Either must die at the hand of the
>other, indeed.

I hate it when people do this . . .

Post some idea that I have already considered and rejected, and then use a 
turn of phrase that catches on ;-)

In this case I was reminded of Dumbledore saying, 'It is my mercy, and not 
yours, that matters now.'

>Probably a swiss cheese theory, but it was fun, anyway.

That's important anyway :)

>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:
> > 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!
>
>So, are you saying that something is lost in the ripping of the soul
>caused by the act of murder, or alternatively in the creation of the
>Horcrux?

Possibly both, but in under all circumstances the second.

The sense in the books is, as both Dungrollin and I noted, that the union 
is stronger than the sum of the individual constituents, but this requires 
that the constituents are united. It would follow, I believe, that the sum 
of the individual constituents, when divided, is /weaker/ than for the union.

>I submit that that something is the power which Harry has but which
>Riddle has not.  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.

I think Rowling addressed this when she said that she didn't believe that 
anyone were born evil when asked if Voldemort were that. Clearly Riddle 
lost his capacity for love, but I would think that he had long lost any 
capacity for love -- any ability to utilise the power of love -- long 
before he became the Dark Lord.

Oh, and by the way apart from knowing (from the Edinburgh Book Festival 
session) that Tom Riddle has never loved, we also now know that he has 
never been loved (from the TLC/MN interview).

    MA: Oh, here's one [from our forums] that I've really got to
       ask you. Has Snape ever been loved by anyone?
    JKR: Yes, he has, which in some ways makes him more culpable
       even than Voldemort, who never has. Okay, one more each!
<http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/extras/aa-jointerview3.html>

So we know that Tom Riddle has never experienced love in any of its aspects 
-- neither giving or receiving.

>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.

Well, the process would definitely be gradual (no-one are born evil), but I 
suspect that Riddle was pretty much a lost case already when he killed his 
father and paternal grandparents, framing the deaths on his remaining 
Uncle. After that[1], opening the Chamber of Secrets was kiddie stuff ;-)

>Is it possible to put Riddle's soul back together?  In the Catholic
>tradition, sin separates a human being from God's love, and confession
>and repentance restores it.  In the Potterverse, murder and the
>creation of the Hoarcrunchy separates the evildoer from the power to
>love.  Would the destruction of the Horcrunchies, with an added dose
>of genuine remorse, make Riddle's soul whole again?  Could Voldemort
>repent?

That is a /very/ good question, IMO.

Of course there are two aspects of it -- one theoretical and one practical.

I would not like to be the one to deprive Tom of the theoretical, 
hypothetical, possibility of redemption, but I dont' believe he will find it.

>And if so, would it be a satisfying ending or would we be choking on
>the treacle?

I just know that I would not be able to write it in a way that didn't 
become nauseating :-/  -- but then, there is probably more than one very 
good reason why I am writing /about/ these stories and not writing them ;-)

Troels




[1] Speaking mathematically here. 'In the summer of his sixteenth year' 
must be the year between his fifteenth and sixteenth birthday -- think of 
the child's first year. I cannot, however, know if British colloquial usage 
differs from that.