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I've been thinking about Horcruxes and the nature of the soul.
The act of murder creates a small fracture in the murderer's soul. Magic can extend that fracture (which would presumably scar over in an unrepentant murderer, or heal more-or-less completely in a repentant murderer), and actually split off a soul fragment, which can then be manipulated.
A Horcrux is a container that preserves and protects a soul fragment, which remains at least partially connected to the originating soul. So long as the Horcrux exists, the person whose soul it contains cannot fully die; Horcruxes don't prevent physical death, but they do prevent the person from either becoming a ghost or 'crossing over' to whatever afterlife exists in the HP world.
A Horcrux can only be destroyed by a few highly specific and dangerous things, such as Fiendfyre or basilisk venom. When a Horcrux is destroyed, its immortality effect is also destroyed, which means its originator can now be killed in a normal fashion.
We know all this from canon, and that's all we really need to know for the plot of DH to work.
But I'm left with some rather important questions.
1. When a Horcrux is destroyed, is the soul fragment destroyed or simply released?
---1a. If the soul fragment is destroyed, what effect does that have on the afterlife of its originator?
---1b. If the soul fragment is simply released, does it rejoin the originating soul, dissipate, become a ghost, or 'cross over' on its own? Are there other possibilities I'm forgetting?
------1b'. If the fragment 'crosses over' to the afterlife, does it rejoin the rest of the originator's soul upon true death, or is the originator's soul fragmented for all eternity?
2. Are Horcruxes difficult to destroy because the soul is difficult to destroy? Or is the durability of the artifacts simply part of the spell that creates them?
---2a. If destroying a Horcrux requires destroying part of a soul, does that destruction, in a sideways fashion, count as murder? (That is, would it be possible to create a Horcrux after destroying someone else's Horcrux?)
3. Do soul fragments naturally maintain a connection to their originating soul, or is that connection maintained by the Horcrux?
---3a. If the connection is natural, the Horcrux presumably enforces the separation of the fragment from the originating soul. If not, is that because the fragment would normally dissipate, or because the fragment would normally 'cross over,' no longer being tied to a physical body?
4. What is the soul, anyway, and how can it be tied to anything? What makes a knick-knack like a ring or a small book into the equivalent of a human body?
---4a. What if the murder is necessary for more than splitting the originator's soul? What if the victim's 'life energy' (for lack of a better word) is transfered to the Horcrux, to somehow mimic a human body and anchor the soul fragment?
---4b. Do other horrible actions split the soul? Does rape? Torture? They seem to carry the same sort of moral stress... but they don't involve death. Would it be possible to make a Horcrux after raping someone? Or would you still have to kill the victim? Would the rape split your soul further and make the Horcrux spell easier?
5. What is the difference between murder and killing? Presumably any death that results in a Horcrux will be premeditated, but not all premeditated deaths are technically murder. Some are executions; do they split your soul?
---5a. On a semi-related tangent, is it possible to make a Horcrux for someone else, or do you have to cast all the magic yourself?
---5b. If you can make a Horcrux for someone else, suppose you get the spell ready, Imperius a minion into attacking your target in such a way that the target kills the minion in self defense. Would that killing count as a murder? Would it split the target's soul and allow you to draw off a fragment?
------5b'. What effect would that have on your target? Voldemort grew more inhuman and less sane as he split his soul. How much did his pre-existing evil contribute to that, and how much is simply the effect of soul-loss?
------5b''. And on that note, what use is a soul in the first place? Plenty of people have done things just as evil as Voldemort while presumably in possession of complete and functional souls.
6. Is it possible to separate the concepts of 'soul as source of life' and 'soul as source of morality'? They're not the same, though people often use the two concepts somewhat interchangeably.
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You know, I feel like I'm wandering over into BtVS territory. Let me change directions and talk about one specific Horcrux -- the diary -- which shows up over and over in my fanfiction.
Diary!Tom fascinates me because he's not just a Horcrux, like the locket. The locket was only able to whisper insidiously to people. Tom is a genuine, three-dimensional personality. I suspect this is because the original Tom Riddle used the diary for two separate magical experiments. First, it's a Horcrux. Second, it's an experiment at creating a copied personality (like magical portraits). The trouble is that the soul fragment joined the personality copy, which means Diary!Tom doesn't want to stay in the diary. He wants to be a real boy.
In "An Ounce of Prevention," this is the reason the diary was floating in the void between worlds. Voldemort realized that Diary!Tom might cause trouble, and wanted to get the book out of the way. He also wanted to guarantee that one of his Horcruxes would always be safe, so he put it where nobody could retrieve it -- there are no landmarks between worlds, so there's no reference point to lock onto.
I also tend to assume that the diary has a spell on it that makes people want to trust Diary!Tom. On the other hand, one of my pieces of evidence for that was the sense of familiarity Harry got from the diary, and that could just as easily be explained away as a trace memory from the soul fragment he's carting around -- remember, Harry is a Horcrux too. But I like the 'trust me' spell enough that I keep using it; it's just so fun and insidious, and very much the sort of thing Tom liked to do before he went batshit insane.
---------------
Clearly, I spend way too much time thinking about ethics and moral philosophy. It's an occupation hazard of being Unitarian Universalist, I suppose.
Also, I really need to go reread HBP and DH!
The act of murder creates a small fracture in the murderer's soul. Magic can extend that fracture (which would presumably scar over in an unrepentant murderer, or heal more-or-less completely in a repentant murderer), and actually split off a soul fragment, which can then be manipulated.
A Horcrux is a container that preserves and protects a soul fragment, which remains at least partially connected to the originating soul. So long as the Horcrux exists, the person whose soul it contains cannot fully die; Horcruxes don't prevent physical death, but they do prevent the person from either becoming a ghost or 'crossing over' to whatever afterlife exists in the HP world.
A Horcrux can only be destroyed by a few highly specific and dangerous things, such as Fiendfyre or basilisk venom. When a Horcrux is destroyed, its immortality effect is also destroyed, which means its originator can now be killed in a normal fashion.
We know all this from canon, and that's all we really need to know for the plot of DH to work.
But I'm left with some rather important questions.
1. When a Horcrux is destroyed, is the soul fragment destroyed or simply released?
---1a. If the soul fragment is destroyed, what effect does that have on the afterlife of its originator?
---1b. If the soul fragment is simply released, does it rejoin the originating soul, dissipate, become a ghost, or 'cross over' on its own? Are there other possibilities I'm forgetting?
------1b'. If the fragment 'crosses over' to the afterlife, does it rejoin the rest of the originator's soul upon true death, or is the originator's soul fragmented for all eternity?
2. Are Horcruxes difficult to destroy because the soul is difficult to destroy? Or is the durability of the artifacts simply part of the spell that creates them?
---2a. If destroying a Horcrux requires destroying part of a soul, does that destruction, in a sideways fashion, count as murder? (That is, would it be possible to create a Horcrux after destroying someone else's Horcrux?)
3. Do soul fragments naturally maintain a connection to their originating soul, or is that connection maintained by the Horcrux?
---3a. If the connection is natural, the Horcrux presumably enforces the separation of the fragment from the originating soul. If not, is that because the fragment would normally dissipate, or because the fragment would normally 'cross over,' no longer being tied to a physical body?
4. What is the soul, anyway, and how can it be tied to anything? What makes a knick-knack like a ring or a small book into the equivalent of a human body?
---4a. What if the murder is necessary for more than splitting the originator's soul? What if the victim's 'life energy' (for lack of a better word) is transfered to the Horcrux, to somehow mimic a human body and anchor the soul fragment?
---4b. Do other horrible actions split the soul? Does rape? Torture? They seem to carry the same sort of moral stress... but they don't involve death. Would it be possible to make a Horcrux after raping someone? Or would you still have to kill the victim? Would the rape split your soul further and make the Horcrux spell easier?
5. What is the difference between murder and killing? Presumably any death that results in a Horcrux will be premeditated, but not all premeditated deaths are technically murder. Some are executions; do they split your soul?
---5a. On a semi-related tangent, is it possible to make a Horcrux for someone else, or do you have to cast all the magic yourself?
---5b. If you can make a Horcrux for someone else, suppose you get the spell ready, Imperius a minion into attacking your target in such a way that the target kills the minion in self defense. Would that killing count as a murder? Would it split the target's soul and allow you to draw off a fragment?
------5b'. What effect would that have on your target? Voldemort grew more inhuman and less sane as he split his soul. How much did his pre-existing evil contribute to that, and how much is simply the effect of soul-loss?
------5b''. And on that note, what use is a soul in the first place? Plenty of people have done things just as evil as Voldemort while presumably in possession of complete and functional souls.
6. Is it possible to separate the concepts of 'soul as source of life' and 'soul as source of morality'? They're not the same, though people often use the two concepts somewhat interchangeably.
---------------
You know, I feel like I'm wandering over into BtVS territory. Let me change directions and talk about one specific Horcrux -- the diary -- which shows up over and over in my fanfiction.
Diary!Tom fascinates me because he's not just a Horcrux, like the locket. The locket was only able to whisper insidiously to people. Tom is a genuine, three-dimensional personality. I suspect this is because the original Tom Riddle used the diary for two separate magical experiments. First, it's a Horcrux. Second, it's an experiment at creating a copied personality (like magical portraits). The trouble is that the soul fragment joined the personality copy, which means Diary!Tom doesn't want to stay in the diary. He wants to be a real boy.
In "An Ounce of Prevention," this is the reason the diary was floating in the void between worlds. Voldemort realized that Diary!Tom might cause trouble, and wanted to get the book out of the way. He also wanted to guarantee that one of his Horcruxes would always be safe, so he put it where nobody could retrieve it -- there are no landmarks between worlds, so there's no reference point to lock onto.
I also tend to assume that the diary has a spell on it that makes people want to trust Diary!Tom. On the other hand, one of my pieces of evidence for that was the sense of familiarity Harry got from the diary, and that could just as easily be explained away as a trace memory from the soul fragment he's carting around -- remember, Harry is a Horcrux too. But I like the 'trust me' spell enough that I keep using it; it's just so fun and insidious, and very much the sort of thing Tom liked to do before he went batshit insane.
---------------
Clearly, I spend way too much time thinking about ethics and moral philosophy. It's an occupation hazard of being Unitarian Universalist, I suppose.
Also, I really need to go reread HBP and DH!
