AKs and Horcrux!Harry and soul-ripping (was: Re: Stupid question about...)

[eloise_herisson]

I enjoyed setting this one off and then watching wiser minds than mine 
wrestle with the answer. Reading the responses, I'm still left with 
questions and Debbie takes us right to the crux of the matter. 

Debbie:
> In addition to Neri's point that Voldemort seems to have transferred
> some of his powers to Harry that night, the scar itself is odd.  Avada
> Kedavra usually doesn't leave a mark, so why would a ricochet leave a
> scar?  

1)Voldemort cast some spell at Harry that night. Belief in the WW is 
that that spell was an AK and that Harry is the only person to have 
survived it.

We Muggles have problems with this AK. *Why the heck* does anybody in 
the WW think Harry was subject to one? 

There *must* have been a witness (I think JKR's all but confirmed that 
by refusing to anwer the question). Even that is problematic, for how 
did the news disseminate? Did that witness tell the truth, did s/he lie 
or was s/he mistaken?

What does Diary!Tom *know*? The fact that he knew about Harry's early 
history is intriguing. It could have come from Ginny, OTOH, the diary 
being a Horcrux, it should (perhaps?) also contain Voldemort's own 
knowledge and experience up to the time it was made (as implied by 
the "I am LV's past, present and future" speech). Diary!Tom seems to 
believe that LV tried to *kill* Harry. In fact, Diary!Tom *still* wants 
to kill Harry, so presumably doesn't think that the spell cast at him 
was a Horcruxfacient, (or at the very least that it failed). 

If Dumbledore knows it wasn't an AK, but an attempt at making a 
Horcrux, then we're back to the question of why he's kept it quiet. I 
know it's something Harry hasn't been capable of absorbing until very 
recently, but given Dumbledore's recent urgency and probable awareness 
of impending mortality, he left it a bit late.

2) Dumbledore tells us that using [any] living being as a Horcrux is 
risky. Why would Voldemort want to make a Horcrux out of Harry, 
believing he was the one powerful enough to vanquish him?

Was this simple vanity? A belief that by making him a Horcrux, he could 
control him? Surely the easiest way was to finish the brat off and use 
that particularly significant death to enable the creation of a new 
Horcrux.


3)Dumbledore suggests (as above) that Voldemort uses significant deaths 
to facilitate the making of Horcruxes and that he intended Harry's to 
be the final death in the process.

If Dumbledore is wrong, and he intended Harry to be the Horcrux, whose 
was the significant death he intended to use (James' would seem to pale 
into insignificance next to Harry's)? Is this why Lily didn't need to 
die? Because he had already killed James? Did he want Lily to live to 
care for his living Horcrux? 

So we have a spell that doesn't act like an AK and yet it not being one 
just doesn't make sense from where I'm sitting.

I can only believe with Neri that if Harry *is* a Horcrux, then he is 
an unintentional one and even then...

Well, all this soul-ripping stuff. Souls must get ripped all the time 
without the ripped parts actually dissociating. Granted it's more 
likely if you happen to get disembodied at the time.

But Voldemort's soul apparently got ripped *two* more times at GH, so 
there were potentially three bits of soul floating around (counting the 
one that is now in his body). And throughout his life it must have been 
ripped many more than seven times. I do have problems envisaging how 
then Voldemort gathers up the right quantity of soul to place in a 
Horcrux (but then, like JKR, maths isn't my strong suit). 

And just out of curiosity (and almost certainly irrelevantly) if you 
were not quite as murderous as LV and just wanted to divide your soul 
seven times, how would you control it so the rips came in the right 
places? One would assume that when the soul rips, it divides fairly 
evenly, so that as time went by you would be dividing smaller and 
smaller fractions and that which remained in the body would be a very 
small proportion of the original (no, I'm not going to attempt it and 
show myself up).

Or perhaps it doesn't matter as you can't quantify a soul (though the 
creation of Horcruces suggests you can). 

Do/can the rips heal? Does *any* killing rip the soul? Are those who 
kill in the course of war similarly damaged? And what damage exactly 
does the ripping do? 

~Eloise