So, we don't actually know.

I mean, sure, you kill someone and it tears your soul. Then you put a piece of your soul in an object.

However, we've been led to believe by out-of-book information (interviews) that the ritual of making a Horcrux is pretty disgusting and terrible.

But what could it possibly be? We know it can't involve some body horror, since the bodies of the Riddles were not damaged in any way.

I also don't buy any 'ancient runes/wards/gods' explanations, since that's only for fanon.

A simple 'soul-transferring' spell also doesn't seem to be likely since it is not all that terrible. Plus it would be cheap.

So, what do people here think? What could the process actually look like? Are there any potions involved?

 

What I have always wondered is if the process for making a Horcrux is supposed to be so unthinkably awful and disgusting how is that Voldemort accidentally made Harry into one? It does not sound like something that should be able to happen on accident.

 

This'll happen in part of a chapter for my story a few chapters from now, so I'm interested in the ideas here.

So far, my thoughts are that potions, spells, and a ritual is involved (besides the murder). The potions put the body into the proper mode for the soul to be split, the ritual binds the murder and the victim together so that a soul will split, then a spell is used to move the broken part of the soul into the chosen vessel, similar to taking a memory and putting it in a pensieve, but a ton more painful.

EDIT: So how does an accidental Horcrux happen? Soul's already unstable, so that a potion and the ritual is unnecessary. Since killing someone can include a vast amount of hate, a person can literally "pour their soul into it." Or, a part of the soul escapes through the sheer vile hatred poured into the curse. If it hits something other than the person being killed, or the person isn't killed, then the soul becomes encapsulated in the object that is hit.

Least, those are my thoughts for now... thoughts I made up about a few minutes ago.

 

I think a single word written in answer to the OP's question, no matter how good/bad, will be one word of explanation more than JKR has to offer.


So basically, you can use whatever, since there is nothing that points in any specific direction.

 

Harry wasn't made into a horcrux. Not really, at least.

This is explained in the books. At that point, Voldemort's soul was already ridiculously tenuous because it had been split so many times. It was so fragile, in fact, that when the killing curse rebounded, what was left of his soul basically just fractured off - attaching to "the only living person in the room."

 

Remember that the preparation of the receptacle is a separate process from the implantation of the soul piece. The latter is pretty simple: kill someone, it splinters the soul and you put a piece of your soul into the pre-prepared receptacle using an incantation. It's the preparation of the receptacle that's meant to be the truly horrifying process.

The fact that Harry did not go through that process is why JKR says he's not a real horcrux.

All this is in JKR's Pottercast interview.

 

But what could it possibly be?

I mean, I can think of a lot of horrifying things, like cannibalism, necrophilia or other things like that. But I doubt that's what we're talking about here.

 

I once had an idea that you had to perform 7 acts corresponding to the 7 deadly sins, but there are a few reasons I never went with the idea -- the big one is that it's hard to see Voldemort doing anything lustful or slothful. Or gluttonous.

 

Well, 7 is the most powerful magical number. I could somewhat see it.

And hey, Voldemort doing something lustful, slothful or gluttonous is not that hard to imagine. He could rape someone, that's lustful taken to the extreme. He could enslave someone, that's extreme of being slothful. And being gluttonous? How about taking food from a starving child and eating it in front of it?

Voldemort seems like the guy to go extreme, pushing the boundaries and all that.

 

How about eating a starving child?

 

That's...

That's something, yeah.

 

Another possibility could be that the creation process requires you to sacrifice elements of your humanity bit by bit:

- The ability to feel hunger or thirst.
- The ability to sleep.
- The ability to cry.
- The ability to reproduce.
- The ability to grow.
- The ability to age.

And then finally, in the act of soul splitting:

- The ability to die.

 

I always had the idea that the preparation of the receptacle would require the bodily mutilation of some innocent victim (woman, infant, etc.), followed by the use of their blood and other parts in some gruesome potion into which perhaps the object might be placed until it reduced leaving only some object coated in the evil of the warlock and acting as some kind of beacon to draw the soul or establish some sort of thaumaturgic connection with the caster as a way of preventing mistakes like Harry.

This, of course, requires multiple murders, but it fits with the idea of Voldemort wanting to use "important murders" for his Horcruxes, which might have been the murders performed after such rituals, wherein some presumably inconsequential victim is sacrificed.

 

I think I like Taures loss of humanity idea the most. I think Voldemort would have gladly give up his ability to reproduce (In Voldemorts arrogance and certainty that his Horcruxes would grant him immortality, why would he feel the need to pass on his genes if he views himself as ever-lasting?), and his ability to cry, sleep and feel hunger would probably be viewed by him as a weakness that he would gladly do without anyway. And his ability to age and grow? What's the point of being immortal if you age?

 

The ritual has a lot of significance, but I would be against trying to pin down what is actually involved. I think it should change from story to story. Having a consensus on it is self-defeating - the process of creating a Horcrux, if those details are really important to your story... they should resonate with the theme of that story.

If the theme of the story is Harry overcoming the evils of man, and you know, you've got other references to the seven deadly sins in your story and how they relate to magic, morality and the overall conflict of the story... then Taure's idea is great. But the ritual could be as simple as spilling a lot of innocent blood or a collection of symbolic reagants from various creatures and places. How this gets defined really should depend on the story, because it's a rather pivotal and rising moment in your story, where Voldemort creates his vessels of immortality. It's sort of what he is, as a villain, it's almost what defines him.

 

I always thought that in the case of Harry being a Horcrux that Tom wanted to use Harry's Death to make Nagini a Horcrux, if thats true then that means that before Tom went to the Potters he performed the Horcrux ritual (meaning that the piece that went into Harry was already ready to go into something/someone.
But when the Killing curse rebounded the already 'loose' piece of his soul split off and attached itself to Harry

 

I don't think he had Nagini at the time, if I remember her interviews correctly.

 

Plus the whole bit about how a living creature as a Horcrux is a really bad idea, since as it is living, it is far more vulnerable to things like wounds and age.

Although if Nagini was a baby basilisk as has been fanoned, this may not have been as big a problem if they have not natural lifespan limit.

 

That's fanon?

Wouldn't a baby basilisk look like, you know, a basilisk?

 

Well if it wasn't ever mentioned that Nagini is a basilisk, then odds are that she isn't.