Small choice in rotten apples

[dungrollin]

I spent ages last night looking for a half-written post that it now 
appears I never wrote, or never saved. So I'm going to have to re-
create it in order to tack a new idea on the end. Please be patient. 
I now have the horrors that someone's had this idea before me...

Here goes.

We all know that "it is our choices ... that show what we truly are, 
far more than our abilities," and that "it matters not what someone 
is born, but what they grow to be." These are taken by (I think) all 
careful readers of the books to be fundamental truths of the 
Potterverse. The choices quote particularly, the character who 
delivers the line, its position in the books, the context in which 
it is said, all add up to make it one of those bits that just ... 
stays with you. At the back of your mind. It's almost underlined, 
highlighted, italicised and put in caps as This Is What The Author 
Believes. 

But JKR doesn't do things by halves, oh no. She uses magic to 
reinforce the choices theme - paradoxically, by forcing the 
characters' hands. We have binding magical contracts, which (no 
matter how unwittingly entered into) compel characters to fulfil 
their terms. We have obscure magical bonds which form between two 
wizards when one saves the life of the other, which the wizard whose 
life has been saved has no control over. We have Unbreakable Vows – 
which are perhaps the ultimate in "I want this character to have no 
choice but to xyz" plot devices.

Taking it to its logical extreme, one could argue that the entire 
Potterverse exists only to allow her characters to demonstrate their 
natures by making choices. 

At the end of OotP, Harry is presented with the prophecy.

UK p744: 
"So," said Harry, dredging up the words from what felt like a deep 
well of despair inside him, "so does that mean that ... that one of 
us has got to kill the other one ... in the end?"
"Yes," said Dumbledore.
UK p754:
"...it was still very hard to believe as he sat here that his life 
must include, or end in, murder..."

Kill or be killed; it's a rotten choice, whichever way you look at 
it.

But JKR then goes on in HBP to undermine the prophecy's importance. 
UK p476:
"You are setting too much store by the prophecy!"
"But," spluttered Harry, "but you said the prophecy means –"
"If Voldemort had never heard of the prophecy, would it have been 
fulfilled? Would it have meant anything? Of course not! Do you think 
every prophecy in the Hall of Prophecy has been fulfilled?"

No, we learn, the prophecy is Voldemort's problem, not Harry's, it 
makes no difference to Harry's life, he'd have wanted to be the one 
to finish off Voldy for good anyway. He doesn't need the prophecy to 
tell him that. 

So where does this leave him with his kill or be killed choice? The 
prophecy is the reason that Voldemort will never leave him in peace, 
but it doesn't apply to Harry. Harry is choosing to follow his 
Horlicks quest because it's the Right Thing To Do. Thing is, Harry's 
hardly likely to be any better at outright murder than Draco is, is 
he? He certainly couldn't kill an unarmed Sirius Black even when he 
thought he was responsible for betraying Lily and James to 
Voldemort. "Heat of the moment!" I hear you cry, "– he'll off him in 
battle, no time to worry about the moral issues – it'll be self 
defence!"

Except that I think that would be too easy. I think JKR's got 
something far nastier in store. She did memorably comment that if 
she could be a character for a day she wouldn't want to be Harry, 
because she knew what he had coming.

Let's face it, she's not squeamish about putting her characters in 
difficult situations, is she? Nor is she above constraining their 
choices by magical means so that they can exhibit their 
characterisation by choosing between what is right and what is easy 
(she just cleverly hides which is the right and which is the easy 
choice so we can't yet judge for ourselves). 
This leads me to think that there will be some magically compelling 
reason why Harry has to kill or be killed, and that there's a deeper 
reason for the necessity of the choice.

And I've had an idea as to what it might be.

It goes back to Annemehr's theory about why Horlicks is so bad. She 
had the idea that the ripping of the soul caused by killing can be 
healed (repentance, forgiveness etc), and the reason that splitting 
the soul up is against nature is that it is deliberately putting 
oneself beyond redemption, deliberately not allowing the soul to be 
healed. It's so elegant it *has* to be right - and if it's not, it 
should be.

I won't repeat all the evidence for Horcrux!Harry, except to say 
that I don't know what else could have happened at Godric's Hollow 
to tie up so many loose ends. Basically, this theory relies on 
Horcrux!Harry, as well as Anne's theory, ok?

So this is it:
I reckon the bit of Voldy's soul that ended up in Harry, has been 
knitting with Harry's soul in the kind of healing process that 
Anne's theory would predict. Harry's soul has incorporated the Voldy 
fragment. Harry doesn't have to *die* to get rid of the last 
Horcrux, he has to *kill*. 

And I'll bet Snape refuses to teach him how. 

I have another, wilder speculation (which might explain a whole lot 
more) to put on top of this, but I'm not quite sure whether it's 
workable yet.

Dung
Begging all to note that kill or be killed was, coincidentally, the 
very choice presented to Snape in HBP.