Ok, this recently occured to me while reading Turn Me Loose, I'm not sure if this has been debated before but I had a quick look and couldn't see anything. If it has, could I maybe get a link?

Anyway, I was wondering about the maths of horcruxs. A horcrux splits you soul in two right? So it's probably safe to assume that it tears it in half, to equalise it. Does that mean that the next time you create a horcrux, it only recieves a quarter of your soul and leaving only a quarter in your body while there is still one half in the original?

This continues on so that in the end, the body of the person (assuming it's Voldemort with his 7) has only an incredibly tiny portion of his soul. Whereas the original horcrux still maintains half the souls worth.

Thoughts (if you understand what I'm trying to say...it's pretty badly explained)?

 

The way I've always looked at it is that a normal Horcrux splits your soul in half. But Voldemort didn't make a normal Horcrux, he twisted it somehow to make seven, something unique to himself. It could be either;

1) Each soul fragment contains 1/7 of his whole soul, leaving him with a mesley 1/7 in his body.

2) Each soul fragment contains 1/7 of the HALF of his soul that he sacrificed for the horcuxes, (so 1/14), leaving him with half of his soul in his body

 

By your logic this would mean that the diary contained 1/2 of Riddles soul.
If you go on with this, Voldemort has only a 1/64 of his original soul.
This could be possible. I don't think it's stated anywhere, that his soul was split into equivalent pieces.

However, Riddle knew that was going to split his soul into 7 pieces. So he could have modified the spell or ritual.

 

Hmm, I always thught he made seven seperate horcruxes so that each one tore a little off his soul seperately, rather than making one and shifting it around

 

Personally, I always thought that the soul was unquantifiable, so that each 'piece' of the soul that was put into horcruxes was still 'part' of the original, just not in the host body. It's not like they were entirely separate entities, otherwise how would they keep him on the mortal plane when he died?

Hmm, think of it like a meeting of 7 people (the horcruxes) in an organisation (the soul) at one specific meeting place (the body). Now think of those people going home, does the organisation stop existing while they are not there? No, the organisation still exists, the members don't stop being part of it just because they are not at the meeting place. That's how I believe horcruxes to work, kinda (crappy analogy, I know. I couldn't think of anything better).

It's not a quantifiable entity, so it can't be 'cut' into arithmetic pieces, just like the soul.

Aekiel

 

To my knowledge they never said anything about half.

They say it fractures and damages the soul.

So it could very well be that a Horcrux has anything from 1/1000 of a soul to 9/10's of one.

Different Horcruxes could even have a different sized chunk making "stronger" ones.

You kill a homeless guy to make one it chips of a small peace of soul. KIll Dumbledore and it knocks off a big bit.

 

I agree.

I personally think he used seven soul fragments and put them into his horcruxes.

On a side note, because he killed so many people, his soul must have been fractured way too many times. So why on earth didn't Voldemort make more horcruxes in DH when he realized Harry was after them. True, he probably never expected Harry to find them all, but I would think the paranoid Dark Lord would be cautious enough to create more, just in case.

-shrug-

 

I think killing (in general) allows the soul to be fractured, and the horcrux spell determines how much of the soul the spellcaster wants broken off.
I'm guessing the original spell called for only half the soul to be broken; Voldemort then modified it to break into sevenths (he's had the idea since before making his first horcrux, and we know he's gifted/talented enough to pull it off)

 

I think he relied to much on the pseudo-power of 7. He spilt his soul into 7 not to have more Horcruxs and thus be harder to stop. He assumed no one would know about them. He split it into 7 so he could harness the power of the number 7.

 

Yes.

Also, I imagine that there would be negative consequences to splitting his soul even more. Didn't DD say something about this? Something like splitting his soul even more would make it fragile or unstable? I think 7 is the limit for splitting the soul. If we go by this theory then Voldemort couldn't just make more horcruxes after he realized that most of his were destroyed.

 

I'm fairly certain that DD said that he could not make anymore Horcruxes period.

 

Don't have much to say besides the fact that I agree with this theory. The soul is unquantifiable so you can't split it up into distinct, measured pieces. I infer this because of the fact that, in your body, their is no area where the soul is specifically contained. Yet it is still in you, as you have the ability to separate it in some sense, so where is it located? I believe it is part of your entire essence, just like your magic.

 

True question is, does it matter?
What difference would having 1/1000th of your soul left in you rather than 1/2 have?

 

I thought it would have, if Voldemort can't make any more than seve, it must have something to do with it. If you can split your soul into 1000ths then you could make as many horcruxes as is possible.

 

This has been discussed before... I swear it...

 

At least twice somewhere

 

I personally think that Horcruxes would work more like binary logic. There is no amounts. Instead of 1's and 0's, there is a soul, or there is not a soul.

Seeing as how each Horcrux did the same exact job to keep Voldemort immortal, the idea of quantity of soul doesn't seem to hold much water.

 

We know from the pensieve trips that there is a visable effect on Voldemort as he created the Horcruxes (red eyes during the interview with Dumbledore). I would think that the damage done to the soul would have some side effects. I like the theory of stretching the soul and anchoring it more than the severing pieces off; unfortunately canon again says that horcruxes contain pieces of the soul. The idea that the earlier horcruxes contain larger pieces fits also: the Diary was more powerful than the other pieces and seemed to contain an independent spirit of the young Tom Riddle. The other horcruxes weren't as powerful as the Diary. The Locket was very passive: I was actually hoping for a battle in which the Locket possessed one of the Trio. Can you imagine how much more dramatic and suspenseful DH would have been if Harry and Hermione were forced to kill a possessed Ron? Or even have the Trio battle a possessed Umbridge in the Ministry.

But I digress. We know that Riddle was already a power-hungry little psychopath when he arrived at Hogwarts. I'm sure that carving out chunks of his soul couldn't have improved his mental balance at all, just the opposite in fact. The real question is did the horcruxes make him more powerful magically or was he already a powerful Wizard? Did he achieve his goal of making seven horcruxes? The Diary, the Ring, the Locket, the Cup, and the Diadem were all made before Halloween '81. When was Nagini made a horcrux? When did Voldemort figure out that Harry was one? We know that he was an accident, but according to some JKR interview (from the Leakey Cauldron interviews, so take what you will) there are other preparations that need to be made before you create a horcrux - normally you don't go around making them whenever you kill someone. Harry the Horcrux was possible because Voldemort was planning to make one, he just did not intend to make Harry the vessel. Was the whole number seven thing a bit of magical superstition that Voldemort fell for or was there an actual benefit from using that number?

 

Wouldn't it have been more magically significant if he had made 49 Horcrux's?

7 x 7

I always did wonder why Riddle wasn't more intelligent with Harry at Halloween.

He's trying to kill the child that was prophesised to kill him.

Why not just stab him through the eye?

 

Because he's a Wizard. He despises all things Muggle. Voldemort would never do anything the Muggle way if he could do it with magic. Or perhaps the horcrux ritual requires magic or even the AK to be used on the victim.