the deep moans round with many voices

This is part 16 of An Ounce of Prevention, a Naruto/Harry Potter crossover that I started as a giftfic for askerian.

Technically, it's an insertion of one HP character/plot device into the Naruto world, but that does count as a crossover of sorts. "An Ounce of Prevention" will not affect canon in either series; that is, it takes place during the Naruto timeskip, and significantly before CoS in HP. (Which gives away at least part of the ending, but whatever. *grin*)

( An Ounce of Prevention, chapter 16 )

Chapter 17 ("A Miss Is as Good") is already written, but I'm not going to post it until I'm at least halfway done with chapter 18 (tentatively titled "He Who Laughs Last" -- though I may change it back to "Satisfaction Brought" between now and posting). This is mostly so I can make sure the pacing flows right from chapter to chapter, and so I can tweak 17 if the plot requirements of 18 need setting-up.

After that, I think I can wrap up the story in two more chapters and an epilogue. And though I'm notoriously bad at judging scene lengths before I write them, I'm quite sure "An Ounce of Prevention" won't go past 23 parts at most.

Then I move on to "Secrets." :-)

(Except I'll probably be working on some original stories first, because I have a strict deadline for at least one of them. I swear by all the gods that anyone ever held holy, Cat, I will have your year-and-a-half delayed birthday present ready by your wedding!)

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.

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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!

This is part 15 of An Ounce of Prevention, a Naruto/Harry Potter crossover that I started as a giftfic for askerian.

Technically, it's an insertion of one HP character/plot device into the Naruto world, but that does count as a crossover of sorts. "An Ounce of Prevention" will not affect canon in either series; that is, it takes place during the Naruto timeskip, and significantly before CoS in HP. (Which gives away at least part of the ending, but whatever. *grin*)

( An Ounce of Prevention, chapter 15 )

As you can see, I've thus far managed to elide around the issue of Myrtle's name. :-)

In real life news, my landlords (Mr. and Mrs. B) have a third son! He was born yesterday morning, weighs about 10 pounds, and is 21 inches long. His name is Vaughn. We expect him and Mrs. B home sometime today, barring complications.

For the next two chapters of "An Ounce of Prevention," I need to know the word 'myrtle' in Japanese. (And yes, I just gave away a major plot point, but I doubt anyone's too surprised.) I found two potential translations online, but they're in kanji and I don't know anything about kanji. I don't even know which of the two translations refers to the correct kind of myrtle.

If someone could give me phonetic/romanji renderings of the two words/phrases below, I would be extrememly grateful!


百日紅 【さるすべり】 (n) crape myrtle


山桃 【やまもも; ヤマモモ】 (n) asian bog myrtle; wax myrtle; myrica rubra


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ETA: I just did some quick searches on Wikipedia, and it seems that the plant I've always mentally referred to as myrtle is actually 'creeping myrtle,' or a type of periwinkle. Go figure. So what I now wonder is if JKR was referring to the shrub-type myrtle (ie, the second myrtle above) or to the lavender-flowered ground cover plant that I always think of. That plant, by the way, would seem to be this:


細螺 【きさご; きしゃご】 (n) periwinkle


(The only other 'periwinkle' I was able to find is the Madagascar version of the plant, which is white and foreign and clearly not any type of myrtle.)

My new question is whether this third Japanese word is referring to a plant or to a color. And, of course, how to pronounce it!

Return of ETA: Scratch that, this periwinkle seems to be the shellfish, not the plant. *sigh*

This is part 14 of An Ounce of Prevention, a Naruto/Harry Potter crossover that I started as a giftfic for askerian.

Technically, it's an insertion of one HP character/plot device into the Naruto world, but that does count as a crossover of sorts. "An Ounce of Prevention" will not affect canon in either series; that is, it takes place during the Naruto timeskip, and significantly before CoS in HP. (Which gives away at least part of the ending, but whatever. *grin*)

( An Ounce of Prevention, chapter 14 )

The pacing is still kind of off, mostly because I wrote the second half of this chapter in a hurry last night and have not had time to edit it properly. Also, I keep forgetting to go check the chapters where Ino gets into Sakura's mind, to make sure that I'm showing her subconscious accurately.

Sorry about that.