If a wizard/witch has more than one horcrux, why would the destruction of one destroy the soul fragment in it?

Should it not be free to wander around like the Dark Lord's soul did?

 

The way I see it, the original soul has the quality of 'life' that makes it special. The split soul pieces are not alive, but still exist and are linked to the original soul, thus providing the 'living' soul immortality. If the soul pieces' containers are destroyed, they are also destroyed, since they do not have the life force to hold the spirit together outside a container.

 

That is an interesting point. But What about the Diary horcrux? The fragment in it was quite alive and kicking so to say.

 

I suppose that manifested itself using the life force that it had taken from Ginny.

 

I had always assumed that if the container was destroyed then the soul piece went back to the original. That the only reason there was a piece of Voldemort's soul at the in-between King's Cross with Harry was because Voldemort himself killed it.

I like to think that the only reason Voldemort could turn Nagini into a horcrux was because Harry had already destroyed the diary. If that hadn't happened, maybe Voldemort would have realized that Harry was an accidental horcrux and things would have turned out differently.

 

I always imagined that bits of soul stored in Horcruxes don't actually count as souls, any more. They're made of the same stuff, but if you break their container, they're not free to move around like Voldemort's remaining soul did. They just sort of "evaporate."

I believe that Tom's diary still operates under the same limitations. But then you need conjecture to imagine what would happen if the diary succeeded in turning corporeal at the expense of Ginny. My guess is that it would walk along like a living thing, but it would still be dependent on the diary's existence. Break the diary, and CorporealHorcrux!Tom would vanish, just like the partially formed version did in CoS.

 

I disagree - once it forms a corporeal container, it shouldn't need its old one. But the point is that most of the horcruxes simply can't form new containers like the diary can.

 

I could be completely wrong, but the remaining part of Voldemort's soul that floats around during Book 1... That piece isn't a horcux? I guess I really don't understand what happened after the curse rebounded.

 

Me neither. Some of the details surrounding Horcruxes and soul fragments are pretty sketchy.

 

I'm pretty sure that's just the remainder of his soul. The horcrux is the container, remember - the soul fragments are just soul fragments.

 

Fucking Horcruxes, how do they work?

My take on this is that the "original" piece of soul, so to speak, is the only one bearing the wizard's consciousness, in a sense, and thus the only one that can wander about. If it's destroyed, probably it loses its "soul" part but not the "consciousness" part, which draws life force or something from the soul pieces found in Horcruxes (which, themselves, do not possess consciousness and can be "killed" without leaving anything behind them, so to speak). I don't know, these are very nebulous concepts and I wouldn't be surprised if my idea about them is totally wrong...

As for the diary Horcrux, it's likely charmed so that it is capable of becoming parasitic on another person's consciousness. That's probably why Diary Tom only got a physical manifestation after it drew its consciousness from Ginny. The person that would have emerged, were he to succeed, would have a soul (or half thereof) from the diary Horcrux and a consciousness from the possessed person (Ginny)-- but again, this soul/consciousness dichotomy is just something I thought of on the spot, and it might very well be terribly wrong, but I can't explain it otherwise. Of course, this raises the question, why in seven hells would Voldemort have made a Horcrux only to charm it so that it can drain someone else of their consciousness, and then basically use that soul fragment to create another copy of himself (which was definitely metaphysically separate from himself)? Because, in the light of this theory, the object itself--the diary-- would have lost its Horcrux properties, transferring them to Diary Tom... wouldn't it? And wouldn't that be a bad thing since, well, an object can be preserved way easier than a human being can?

Okay, I'm now confused. Anybody have better ideas?

 

Here's the thing I don't quite get.

Voldemort's curse backfires and a part of his soul latches onto Harry. The remainder of his soul flies away as a spirit. But...Why doesn't the killing curse destroy the last remnant of Voldemort's soul? It does in Deathly Hollows...

 

Maybe it has to do with the fact that Voldemort still had Horcruxes back in '81... as opposed to during the Battle of Hogwarts. Just sayian.

 

That seems to be a bit of an unusual case, brought about by the fact that Voldemort's soul was already unstable. The rebounded Killing Curse "blasted apart" a piece of Voldemort's soul from the main Voldemort wraith-thing, and that soul latched on to the nearby Harry's body/soul.

But (again with conjecture), I don't think it would have kept flying on indefinitely until it found a suitable soul to attach to. I think that the connection only worked because a) Harry was very close by when it happened, and b) somehow the AK scar acted as a sort of conduit through which it could enter Harry.

In the end, it functioned like a Horcrux, but apparently wasn't an official Horcrux (those require a specific spell, according to JKR)

 

@Rymrock: You mean why didn't the reflected AK kill Voldemort (aka destroy his soul)? Because he has horcruxes. The soul shard in Harry has no protections itself, so it can be killed/removed by an AK. If you mean the soul shard in the baby Harry, then that's because it attaches itself after the reflected AK hits Voldemort.

 

Haha, I think I may have misinterpreted the whole horcrux thing then.

I always assumed that each horcrux was in essence another life. So say Voldemort has 6 horcruxes and he dies. One of those horcruxes gets used up. Now he's alive again (or a spirit, whatever) and he only has 5 horcruxes/soul pieces left.

Huh.

 

That would make more sense than the canon horcrux concept though.

 

It would make more sense, but I'm pretty sure they just act as permanent anchors. Voldemort only planned to make 6 for the numerical significance.

 

How do Horcruxes work?

However you want them to work.

/thread

 

I always viewed it that a horcrux acts like an anchor to prevent your soul from leaving the mortal realm. If this is the case, the it would make sense that a horcrux doesn't take a huge amount of the soul, just a small bit to anchor the rest.