Soul Breakup Chart

Horcrux............Fraction in Horcrux

1....................One-Half

2....................One-Fourth

3....................One-Eighth

4....................One-Sixteenth

5....................One-Thirty-Second

6....................One-Sixty-Fourth

Note that I assume that every time one makes a Horcrux, the soul residing within one's body is split in two, with one half entering the Horcrux. I feel this is a safe assumption because the alternative would be that the magic in the spell would utilize Divination (very imprecise) to determine how many Horcruxes the wizard would make, and customize itself to take the appropriate fraction of soul. A simple application of Occam's Razor shows how it is much more probable that the spell simply 'splits' the soul.

Interesting Tidbit: If Voldemort made the Diary a Horcrux first, then Harry has already destroyed half of Voldemort's soul.

 

Hmm.... I'm going to say "No", in response to this. I don't think the soul is quite the quantifiable mutable object you're assuming it is. I would say that it's not "splitting your soul in two", it's "splitting your soul", and it doesn't matter how many Horcruxes you create.

And as for destroying them... we don't actually know that destroying a Horcrux destroys that part of Riddle's soul - it might just cause it to merge back into his original body.

-J

 

Well, as far as I'm concerned, J.K. is gonna keep it nice and simple. Logic says: His soul is in seven parts, so it's still technically one-seventh. At least that's my logic. And as long as we're on the topic, Voldemort didn't use up a Horcrux when he rezzed in GoF. I've seen it in Fanfiction and it pisses me off. The Horcruxes are anchors, not spare tires.

 

You've made quite a few leaps in your reasoning here. And you have very little to truly support that theory really.

We know from canon that Voldemort was the first one to split his soul into more than two pieces. Or at least the first one we know of. Given how rare that kind of knowledge is it's safe to assume that no one did any throughout research on the subject. Given that it's necessary to commit murder in order to split your soul it's also safe to assume that no one, or at best very few, knows HOW does the soul split.

We simply don't know what do you need to do to create even one Horcrux. And we have absolutely no idea what do you need to do to create multiple ones or whether it's actually any different than creating a single Horcrux.

What we know is that in HPVerse cold blooded murder splits soul into pieces. We don't know how many pieces there are. It could be two as you say, or it could be seven or it could be any other number that is somehow arithmetically important in the HP world. We don't even know whether you attach one soul piece to a Horcrux - it could be multiple parts(although logic and reason would seem to imply that, remember that we're talking about magic; they don't necessarily have to apply).

For all we know, each of Riddle's Horcruxes have 1/1000 of his soul within it and he's living with 99.3% of his soul intact. It might also be as you suggest, that each Horcrux contains a smaller piece of the soul. Or each might have exactly 1/7 of it. Or perhaps cold blooded murder soul-splitting effect isn't very precise and the diary had 2/23 of his soul while the ring had 1/3 and the locket(assuming that it is actually a Horcrux) will have 1/1000000.

To sum it up or for guys who like to say tl;dr - We have simply too little information on both the nature of souls in HPverse, how are Horcruxes created, whether single vs. multiple Horcrux creation is any different etc. to reach ANY kind of conclusion like that one.

 

I second afrojack's statement. I doubt JKR will go into that detail, because it doesn't matter.

There is a statement that "his soul may be damaged beyond repair" (HBP p. 475 UK), indicating that creating Horcruxes might have some side-effects. So there might be some last-minute twist enabling Harry to find the other objects and/or killing Voldemort. But I'm sure that's all we'll learn about the subject.

 

I wasn't saying they don't have a mind of their own. We know that. They are anchors in the way that they keep him on earth without changing their state, rather than being used to replace his lost piece of soul with their own like spare tires. If Voldie came back in CoS instead of GoF, the diary would still have been fucking with everyone at Hogwarts with no side-effects from his resurrection. It wouldn't have just disappeared because he used it by coming back.

 

I seriously doubt JKR would ever touch on this aspect because it's extraneous details that gunk up the works.

The problem with the OP's rationale is that you've got horcruxes of varying strength which I doubt we'll see. That and you're viewing the idea of soul a real concrete divisible object. Something that when split separates into two equal-sized parts. Or perhaps something with its own divination skills and knew to split off only a seventh of the whole.

I just don't think souls work that way. This is the same ideology that insists there is a core of magic in a person that you can see, work with, exercise, expand, and/or steal. A possible explanation but not the only one. You're also basing this off the idea that if all of the horcruxes were like the diary and could make new folks, then each split piece is the potential for another Voldemort to exist.

Personally, I think the diary one was "making a new Voldemort" in appearance. It needed the user of the diary and was leeching "life force" or the soul out of Ginny. Deformed-baby-Voldemort may never have even been aware it was happening.

 

Unless it was somehow relevant to the plot.

The varying strength of Horcruxes theory does sound like something a writer might include in their works simply because it creates an element of suspense and a somewhat grading difficulty(or simply a randomizer of how powerful they are) of each "quest" to get the Horcrux. You simply have no idea whether the Horcrux will tear you apart or burn your hand or die a barely noticeable death.

There needs to be something greatly different about each Horcrux or else the hunt for them will quickly become repetetive and boring. And their varying strength does counter the repetiveness by a bit.

But that's support for this theory from a literature viewpoint, not necessarily a logical one.

And why not really? We might look at magic and souls as not measurable, very very mysterious etcera. But that's mainly because of the associations with religion and the supernatural - where the existence of either is yet to be proven. But if you knew that both souls and magic existed then I bet that some research would be done and mysterious souls and magic might suddenly become very tangible, divisible and measurable.

The only thing stopping that kind of research would be the fact that it might not exactly be the most moral thing to do(the magic involved might be dark, might cause pain on the test subjects etcera) but that hasn't stopped some of the real life research either.

 

You are neglecting to mention that USUALLY, and I do stress that word, In RL the test subjects are willing or have at least decided it was the lesser of two evils (I'm still pissed that they banned using death row inmates for this.)