You could probably make an argument that as it protected him from Voldemort it made him less likely to turn dark. But there is no way that it made him a better person, or anything like that, that was all him.

 

I did a quick search, but I honestly wasn't looking to hard to see if this question has already been answered, but... Fucking Horcruxes, how do they work?

Basically, Do they split they soul in half each time, or do they just take a random sized piece?

My logic is that each Horcrux seems to get progressively weaker in what it can and cannot do to defend itself.

The Diary possessed Ginny and almost completely made itself a new body.

Then, the Ring was able to incurably poison Dumbledore, but nothing else.

The Locket manipulated it's wearer's emotions, and as far as I remember all the Diadem did was scream in pain. The Cup we never really got to see, but all Nagini could seemingly do was share a mind link with Voldemort. Same with Harry.

It would explain why sane people only make one horcrux.

 

The Ring was cursed separately from it being a horcrux as part of its defense.

 

You say that the diary was the strongest one, and yet it is the worst at doing what it is meant to do, namely staying safe. It was able to be destroyed by a twelve year old boy, whereas the supposedly weaker ring required the greatest wizard in the world, and took him down with it.

One horcrux isn't stronger than the other, the difference is in the protections defending them.

As for how much of the soul is in each, it never states explicitly but I'd assume that it's equal.

 

I assumed the 'amount' of soul was equal, but variable in each horcrux. Before he creates one, his body has a whole soul. When he has a single horcrux created, the container and his body both have one half of the soul in each. When he has six containers, each contains one seventh.

Each horcrux was anchoring his soul to life by spreading it out. The death of his body would not cause his soul to leave, as it was partially contained within the horcruxes.

I don't know if it fits with canon, but it might be close enough.





If Tonks took polyjuice, could she morph around for the next hour, or would she be 'locked in' to that single body?
If someone took Tonks-flavoured-polyjuice, would they be able to morph around for an hour, and if so, what would happen at the end of that hour if they weren't in Tonks' form?

 

You know, I always thought that concept to be made up by fanon. Lord Voldemort didn't become mad because he made one Horcrux or more. He was already mad and a sociopath. The Horcrux only made him more detached from mortals because he believed that he couldn't die. That gave him power, and when you have power, you want more. That's the only reason. The line of reasoning from when he was 11 through all his life was the same, he wanted to rule above all.

 

I don't know where y'all got this idea that the soul is this quantifiable thing that you can split in 2, 3, 4 etc. even parts. When you read that the piece of Voldemort's soul that resides in his body is one seventh of the whole soul, there's no need to interpret it literally as an equal "quantity of soul" (???) to that found in each of the Horcruxes. The question is nonsensical. What matters is the act of splitting, the fact that part of the person's vital energy is not stored within their body but within some other object. The way I view it, that one-seventh means that each Horcrux (and the wizard's body) participates in the act of anchoring the wizard to the world of the living through 1/7th of the total existing connections. It is absurd to ask "how much soul" resides within each vessel.

No. A Horcrux, by default, doesn't defend itself. It is hard to destroy, yes, in the same manner in which a magical person (i.e. much more resilient than a Muggle) is hard to kill. But it doesn't have any special properties other than anything directly related to containing a soul fragment.

What you're talking about is the protection that Voldemort chose to use on each Horcrux. The diary was meant as a weapon and the fact that a piece of Voldemort's soul conveniently existed within it, allowing the object some sort of independence, made this form of usage the most recommended. Actually even Dumbledore remarked that Riddle handled the diary rather negligently. The ring likely wasn't meant to do much else than slowly kill a person (really, isn't that enough?). The locket had all sorts of complex defenses around it, the ones imbued directly within it acting as a last resort protection. And the Horcruxes which Voldemort considered easier to safeguard, he didn't bother to curse.

Sane people don't make Horcruxes.

 

Yeah, I agree, but mostly I'm with Scribble

This is something I found a while ago, and it made an impression which might be worth thinking about

 

Depends on your definition of sane, I suppose, does thinking your life is more important than somebody else's count as insanity? Because that's all it takes.

 

I don't see why it wouldn't work. You wouldn't become a metamorphmagus, obviously, it's just a magical talent like parseltongue, and polyjuicing into Harry Potter (or Voldemort) probably doesn't grant you that talent either.

On the other hand, I can see why it would be weird if a polyjuiced Tonks tried to use her talent...

 

I thought you implied "Less human = madness". What did you mean? The phrase's too vague.

 

There's a difference, expressed in degrees of psychopathy, between thinking your life is more important than another one's, killing another person as a result of acting on that thought, and killing them in a particularly gruesome way to further your megalomaniac purposes.

It is alluded throughout the book (and said outright in some interviews) that the actual creation of a Horcrux goes beyond mere murder in terms of evilness. JKR said she told the process to someone (her editor or something) and the person felt like puking afterward.

In any case, when the HP Encyclopedia is published, as it is said to include the Horcrux creation process, we'll find out.

tl;dr No, that's not all it takes.

 

Quick math, if you split the soul in half each time you make a horcrux, and Voldemort made 7, his original body had 1/128 of its original soul, and the diary has half of it. Assuming a soul is finite, and there are some effects of having less than your whole soul, it stands to reason that near the end Voldemort would have had to be doing something to stabilize his possession of his own body.

Which, perhaps, explains why he invoked all kinds of weird magic that was associated with his identity -the dark mark, the taboo- as part of his SOP. It feels very magical that, in part, the terror and fear he inspired served him in more than just a materialistic way. LV may literally been the most feared Dark Wizard of all time because of his intentional efforts to create an aura of fear, which he could then manipulate for his own ends. It feels really evil too.

 

I don't really think the soul can be measured in any sort of comprehensible terms. To me, a horcrux doesn't literally contain 1/7 or 1/2 of a person's soul. It is merely an anchor, 1/7 or 1/2 of what keeps a soul earthbound.

Canon says that murder fractures the soul and that, when making a horcrux, that fractured piece of the soul is what is stored away. The fractured piece is part of the soul, but not necessarily a precisely measured amount of the soul. It is only the bit broken off from the act of committing murder.

While repeatedly making horcruxes would be dangerous, as it would continually disrupt the soul, Voldemort wouldn't necessarily be left with 1/128 of his soul after making 7 horcruxes. In fact, depending on how much of his soul broke away, he might have retain a large majority of his soul.

 

It's one thing to believe it. It's quite another to go through with the act of murder.

And besides, JKR has said that there's more to the process than just killing someone, and that she basically made it the most depraved sequence of actions she could possibly imagine.

As for sanity: there must have been a reason why Voldemort wanted a magically powerful number for the number of horcruxes. Dumbledore said that it would make for a more powerful combination. But more powerful how? the only thing I can think of is that 6 horcruxes mitigates something bad that normally happens if you make more than one.

Note that Voldemort never actually managed to achieve 7 soul pieces. His sixth horcrux was Nagini by the death of Bertha Jorkins - by which time the Diary was already destroyed.

 

No, just no.

 

So, you do not think that expiration of Lily´s sacrificial protection could have been one of reasons (not saying it was the only one or even main one) for somewhat darker Harry and his more successful casting of Unforgivables in DH ?

I am confused about this protection in canon. It burns Quirrellmort but not Horcruxes (not even those alive - Nagini), protects Harry from the Killing Curse but not from weakened portion of Voldemort´s mangled soul latching on him afterwards, allows Voldemort to possess Harry and then probably helps him to expel Voldemort (in OotP) and is possibly effective only against main soul of Voldemort and it probably loses even that after Graveyard.

And then there is another protection around Privet Drive that is apparently somewhat connected but its effects are against more targets (but not Dementors or blood relatives) and possibly more powerful because they were not negated by taking of blood in Graveyard.

 

You're saying that Lily's protection somehow manipulated Harry into being more "light" or whatever? Or that it influenced him against "dark"? Yeah, just no.

As for the protection, I think it's supposed to protect Harry from Voldemort, not make Harry Voldemort's soul destroyer. Sure, it's powerful, but not all-powerful. Voldemort was at least somewhat physically present and it was Voldemort himself, not some mostly inert piece of soul in an object that he's not controlling.