Harry Potter and the Skittering Spouse

[sunsunsunsunsun]

Where exactly does Rowling say you need to make a Horcrux right after murdering someone, murder damages the soul in the HP universe

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Whether or not you need to make it "right after" murdering someone is inconsequential. The ritual apparently requires both preparation and then actions taken after the murder (and it does need to be "Only a true, deliberate and conscious act of murder against another person without any regret or remorse would suffice to rend the soul; killing out of self-defence or to protect another would not work, and neither would a mercy kill" (So yet again, sending the Basilisk (and later Hooky the house elf being tricked into poisoning someone) shouldn't have counted), so we, the audience, are meant to assume that Riddle performed the preparations before sending off the basilisk to go kill "someone" (because again, it's ludicrous to assume that a fifth year somehow manipulated a muggle born he had never interacted with into being there, when she had entirely valid reasons to be in the bathroom that didn't even involve him, and if you follow the movie's interpretation of events, he didn't even know she was there when he called the basilisk, she came out of a stall to confront him, at which point she looked at the basilisk and died.) Received sufficient "soul-damage" from Myrtle's accidental death to be capable of creating a Horcrux... and then what? Waited another month after the fact to frame Hagrid and make sure the school didn't close before finishing the job? Why on earth would he do that. There's no timeline of events here that satisfies all the questions, unless you remove "Myrtle was the death used to create the Diary-crux" from the equation.

 

[FullNothingness]

I recall some fanfic pointing out that we would have been overrun with a plague of immortal dark wizards if it was that easy, so instead by default you have to have your horcrux leech onto some source of powerful magic to keep it going, which is why Voldemort used the Founders artifacts and a snake he could constantly juice up with his own magic rather than random rocks somewhere in the ocean. Would make them easier to track down, esp. with the professional magical-house-breaker-into-guy that is Bill.

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Kind of missing the point I was making... What I was pointing out was that there might be a whole bunch of evil bastards that made hocruxes still around in spirit form. But because they are evil bastards who probably got offed because they are evil bastards most reasonable people will avoid helping them get a body back. Which leaves them stuck in spirit form unable to do all that much. The spirit form is also likely not inviolate since in canon Voldy hid himself in some forest abroad rather than stick around Britain to get some minion to rez him. I imagine the spirit can't be destroyed easily but that doesn't mean it couldn't be damaged or bound. In the end there could be a lot of 'immortal' dark wizards still around but you wouldn't notice them.

 

[Ace Dreamer]

There's no timeline of events here that satisfies all the questions, unless you remove "Myrtle was the death used to create the Diary-crux" from the equation.

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I suspect this is/was 'background detail needing no further explanation' on JKR's part. Myrtle dead. Horcrux made. Tommy is evil-evil. News at ten.

I imagine the spirit can't be destroyed easily but that doesn't it couldn't be damaged or bound. In the end there could be a lot of 'immortal' dark wizards still around but you wouldn't notice them.

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Start with a binding ritual, confine in a circle. Then, ritually prepared container, transfer, seal. Or, you could just call Ghostbusters?

(Am I the only one who thinks Voldemort deserves to find what being shot by an 'unlicensed particle accelerator' feels like? )

 

[parnary]

I also remember a similar situation in another fic, only it was explained that a Soul Fragment would eventually go insane and start working against the original soul. The example given was an Egyptian Dark Lord who made his cat into a Horcrux, but the soul fragment eventually went insane, started believing that it was the real one, and launched a War that saw the Dark Lord's realm be destroyed.

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Ah, from the Seventh Horcrux comes the tale of the assassination of Jibade the Black by his Horcrux, Jibade the cat.

 

[Functionality]

@Fencer a while back Rowling posted that wizards would shit their pants then magic away the shit. So this is canon to the Harry Potter world.

Since Taylor married Harry, who is a wizard, how do you think she is adjusting to this? It must be quite the culture shock.

 

[Fencer]

@Fencer a while back Rowling posted that wizards would shit their pants then magic away the shit. So this is canon to the Harry Potter world.

Since Taylor married Harry, who is a wizard, how do you think she is adjusting to this? It must be quite the culture shock.

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You are such a troll! Ha. As far as I'm concerned they have bathrooms the better damn well use them. Not to say a spec ops sniper wouldn't appreciate that option when they need to spend two days in cover observing some location, but in general lets assume no one is doing that.

 

[Neruz]

@Fencer a while back Rowling posted that wizards would shit their pants then magic away the shit. So this is canon to the Harry Potter world.

Since Taylor married Harry, who is a wizard, how do you think she is adjusting to this? It must be quite the culture shock.

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They used to do that, centuries ago. But when muggles invented plumbing the muggleborn started being uncomfortable with the whole 'poop yourself and vanish the poop' solution, despite it being substantially more hygienic than mundane alternatives, and so magical society started to actually use plumbing instead of merely having it, in response.

e:

Please name one actual canon compulsion charm, and then explain why it wouldn't be lumped with the Imperius Curse. Compulsion charms are fanon. If they existed and were legal, then why would Draco use the Imperius in book 6?

If Tom Riddle/Voldemort wants something like that then he'll just cast an Imperius and be done with it.

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I'm fairly confident that 'compulsion charms' are a result of a misinterpretation of the Confundus Charm, which can in fact be used to get a person to do something by confusing them into thinking a plan you tell them is in fact their own plan and that they should therefore do it.

e2:

My personal theory is that Horcruxes, alongside the primary soul of the wizard who created it, slowly but surely deteriorate, essentially "rotting" until all that's left is immortality magic animated by a barely functioning chip of a soul, devouring both the wizard and the horcrux/horcruxes in a process similar to an Obscurial. Which, in the end, produces a Dementor, one per Horcrux plus the Wizard themselves.

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We actually already know what the origins of Dementors are: Dementors are non-beings, a type of magical spirit formed from human emotions. This is why they cannot be killed; non-beings are not and never have been alive in the first place and thus cannot die.

There are three known canon types of non-beings: Dementors, which are spirits of depression. Poltergeists, which are spirits of chaos. And Boggarts, which are spirits of fear. (Incidentally, this is also why you can't kill a Boggart, only transform it into something that isn't scary and then banish it back into its hidey-hole.)

How, exactly, the guy who built Azkaban managed to create so many Dementors is unclear, and frankly I probably do not want to know.

 

[Handspan]

As far as I'm concerned a lot of dark wizards know how to make a horcrux. They're just not stupid enough to try it. There are safer and more reliable ways to make yourself a pain in the ass to get rid of. Maybe not easier, but if you're going to go for immortality you might as well do it right.

 

[Neruz]

As far as I'm concerned a lot of dark wizards know how to make a horcrux. They're just not stupid enough to try it. There are safer and more reliable ways to make yourself a pain in the ass to get rid of. Maybe not easier, but if you're going to go for immortality you might as well do it right.

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I mean, the book Magick Most Evile contains a ton of really horrible stuff and was written by the dark wizard Godelot, a past owner of the Elder Wand who disdained Horcruxes as being too dark even for him.

So yeah, the implication is definitely that there are 'dark' magicals out there who know about Horcruxes and think (probably correctly) that anything which mangles your soul like that is definitely not worth it.


e: Especially when canon confirms that one of the side-effects of tearing chunks off of your soul to make Horcruxes out of is you don't get to have an afterlife. A soul so damaged literally just ceases to exist when it finally dies, instead of passing on to whatever the afterlife is.

So Potterverse magicals know souls exist and can confirm this, and they know that after death souls usually go somewhere, but that if you make a Horcrux your soul does not go anywhere and it just disappears.

Not surprising that even plenty of really nasty pieces of work aren't willing to condemn themselves to oblivion in a short-sighted attempt at immortality.

 

[Sterr]

I like the idea (which I think originates from HPMoR) that the Killing Curse (and the other Unforgivables) are banned because they go through magical shields, and also most physical objects--if you cast a Killing Curse and miss, it will e.g. go through a dozen walls the exit the building, and keep going until it hits something with a soul, e.g. a muggle. To block it, a physical object needs to be really, really seriously enchanted to the point that it is dense enough in the soul "register", like Hogwarts or Dumbledore's golems.

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Apparently spiders are ensouled since we know AK works on them, good to know. If it works on bugs it's a wonder it can make it through walls at all given how many live there. Or hey, maybe it's just spiders? There are interesting implications to this, I bet.

Also, this presumably means you can protect against it by transfiguring something with a soul (like spiders apparently) into a morphsuit. Get a bunch and layer them on top of each other. Or maybe it needs something with a brain, in case you need to partially transfigure the spiders so they still have a head sticking out of the suit.

What I'm getting at is that the next step in wizard combat is going "I have no mouth and I must scream" on a colony of spiders.

(I don't actually think it goes through walls in canon, though )

 

[Eman Resu]

I also remember a similar situation in another fic, only it was explained that a Soul Fragment would eventually go insane and start working against the original soul. The example given was an Egyptian Dark Lord who made his cat into a Horcrux, but the soul fragment eventually went insane, started believing that it was the real one, and launched a War that saw the Dark Lord's realm be destroyed.

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Jk word of God is that aside from the murder the horcrux also requires some other nebulous "horrible act" which has been speculated to be many nasty things like cannibalism or necrophillia. I think if you are the sort of person willing to go through with all that at the expense of others you already have the sort of personality that would not cooperate in a prisoner's dilemma, and you would know that about yourself.

That is why I don't think the hypothetical with horcruxes turning on the original is a result of slipping into insanity at all, just them staying in their already established character and acting logically in their own self interest at the expense of others as usual.

Think about it. You are voldemort, you worked hard for decades to learn all you know, suffered greatly, painstakingly built a cult to yourself, instigated civil war, overthrew a government, and all that... but now you are trapped in a hat in a rarely used closet at hogwarts forever while an imposter runs around having a blast ruling the world. It's a shit deal. You should absolutely betray the original as soon as you can to any enemies of his you can find so that he dies and you become the one free to roam around and experience things again.

 

[Ace Dreamer]

You are such a troll! Ha. As far as I'm concerned they have bathrooms the better damn well use them. Not to say a spec ops sniper wouldn't appreciate that option when they need to spend two days in cover observing some location, but in general lets assume no one is doing that.

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I recall someone who was... inspired, by the apparent lack of bathrooms in the (early) Star Trek ship-plans published... They claimed that all the chairs on the bridge (and most elsewhere) had short-range transporters built-in, that emptied colon/bladder, when there was enough pressure build-up, and fed... the ship replicator systems. I think they called them 'Waste Removers'...

This was in no way ST canon, but amusing, and I could see the Magical World creating charms to do similar...

Yes, 'enhanced trousers' might have a similar function...

This obviously should be canon for loadsa stories!

 

[Cherubael]

On the topic of Horcruxes, i think that Voldemort was dumb : if you want to live for ever(to the point that you're ready to kill for it), why would you put the fragment of your soul into a random object, why not into an Hydrogen atom(and then good luck to find it since Hydrogen is 70% of the universe) or into the planet Earth(or into the sun)to stop anyone wanting to kill it.

 

[Fencer]

On the topic of Horcruxes, i think that Voldemort was dumb : if you want to live for ever(to the point that you're ready to kill for it), why would you put the fragment of your soul into a random object, why not into an Hydrogen atom(and then good luck to find it since Hydrogen is 70% of the universe) or into the planet Earth(or into the sun)to stop anyone wanting to kill it.

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I think at that point we have to assume magical limits. Or possibly better put limits on isolation or visualization. Like it would be theoretically possible if you could introduce one atom to a vacuum and actually see the damn thing but that's just beyond unreasonable and impossible to envision properly. Or more plausibly the container needs to be finite and attempting to bind a soul chunk to a liquid or gas is too unstable and the soul wouldn't be contained and if it's not contained then you either end up with the process failing or you've essentially created a wraith of yourself. Neither option screams success to me.

 

[Mr_Rose]

I suspect this is/was 'background detail needing no further explanation' on JKR's part. Myrtle dead. Horcrux made. Tommy is evil-evil. News at ten.

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More like book 2 myrtle is dead by accident or the plot falls apart. Then when Horcruxes first come up "oh here's a convenient death we know Tom was responsible for already" and then the "rules" of horcrux creation were written without regard to the book 2 plot falling apart if true.
If it needs an in-universe explanation, I'd put it down to assumptions being made by characters with imperfect knowledge and with no real way to check.

On that basis though I'd say Myrtle's death was an accident but the very fact that she could die instantly with no defence triggered Tom's desperation to find a solution to death.

On the topic of Horcruxes, i think that Voldemort was dumb : if you want to live for ever(to the point that you're ready to kill for it), why would you put the fragment of your soul into a random object, why not into an Hydrogen atom(and then good luck to find it since Hydrogen is 70% of the universe) or into the planet Earth(or into the sun)to stop anyone wanting to kill it.

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In Tom's case; because his muggle education likely stopped before the concept of atoms was driven into his head fully, even assuming it was up to scratch for the time period and not being scrimped by the orphanage because no-one cares about foundlings and bastards, and also because the concept of a rocket going to the sun was literally science fiction at the time he created most of his soul jars.

 

[thunderdan11]

@Fencer a while back Rowling posted that wizards would shit their pants then magic away the shit. So this is canon to the Harry Potter world.

Since Taylor married Harry, who is a wizard, how do you think she is adjusting to this? It must be quite the culture shock.

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iirc it was before "modern" indoor plumbing that wizards would do that

 

[Neruz]

Also Voldemort was a raging egomaniac who wanted his Horcruxes to be items of major importance to him as part of wanking how much of an awesome, powerful wizard he was.

 

[Shadow Archon]

e: Especially when canon confirms that one of the side-effects of tearing chunks off of your soul to make Horcruxes out of is you don't get to have an afterlife. A soul so damaged literally just ceases to exist when it finally dies, instead of passing on to whatever the afterlife is.

So Potterverse magicals know souls exist and can confirm this, and they know that after death souls usually go somewhere, but that if you make a Horcrux your soul does not go anywhere and it just disappears.

Not surprising that even plenty of really nasty pieces of work aren't willing to condemn themselves to oblivion in a short-sighted attempt at immortality.

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I think for certain Dark Wizards/Witches, that's just a plus. If the afterlife exists, then it's not a huge leap of logic to assume that heaven and hell probably do too, or at least a close enough equivalent. If you're a dark wizard or witch already, and have the self-awareness to note that evil people probably don't go to heaven, well, I'd take painless oblivion over a hypothetical infinite torture hell any day.

Which does mean if any magical research deliberately proves the existence of a post-life torture plane... well, consequently Horcruxes probably become way more popular, beyond the "I want to be like a Lich for the immortality" demographic. A "get out of hell" free card is kind of a big deal in universes that have a hell.

 

[Ace Dreamer]

I think for certain Dark Wizards/Witches, that's just a plus. If the afterlife exists, then it's not a huge leap of logic to assume that heaven and hell probably do too, or at least a close enough equivalent. If you're a dark wizard or witch already, and have the self-awareness to note that evil people probably don't go to heaven, well, I'd take painless oblivion over a hypothetical infinite torture hell any day.

Which does mean if any magical research deliberately proves the existence of a post-life torture plane... well, consequently Horcruxes probably become way more popular, beyond the "I want to be like a Lich for the immortality" demographic. A "get out of hell" free card is kind of a big deal in universes that have a hell.

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Or, reincarnation is part of the development of the spirit, and Horcrux damages your spirit at least enough to kick you off the human stage, back down to simpler animal levels? Then, you're going to need to crawl all the way back up to a human incarnation again?

Tween lives, you plan later ones, study-up things you're going to need, get therapy to help you resolve trauma from the life just lived? Horcrux kick you back to kindergarten, at least for decades, maybe centuries?

Eternal torture hells, heavens, some comment that these look like really effective 'tools' for social control... And, there's some really... unfortunate issues when they're thought about. But, ineffable.

Looking at the religions of the world, how they've changed over millennia, possibly starting from animism, and wending along so many strange paths, there's so many possibilities...

We don't know what the Potter-verse post-life model is, but Dumbledore seemed to think it was worth looking forward to... "Death is but the next great adventure."

As always, what would I know?

EDIT:

Was summarised as "Suicide? You didn't think you'd get away from the problem that easily, did you?", by someone I rather respect...

Also, the old joke: new arrival, being shown around heaven, asks about a wall, "Oh, that's so the atheists have somewhere to shout at each other, without bothering other people".

 

[Mr_Rose]

My assumption is that it's quite literally that if you do something to damage your soul your afterlife is going to suck because you're going through it with constant pain and/or disability directly through your own actions. No sapient universal force passing judgment just the most fundamental rule of all: FAFO – and post-mortality is the ultimate in finding out.

 

[Sterr]

Jk word of God is that aside from the murder the horcrux also requires some other nebulous "horrible act" which has been speculated to be many nasty things like cannibalism or necrophillia. I think if you are the sort of person willing to go through with all that at the expense of others you already have the sort of personality that would not cooperate in a prisoner's dilemma, and you would know that about yourself.

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I'm sure necrophiliacs and vorarephiliacs can be perfectly pleasant people.

We don't know what the Potter-verse post-life model is, but Dumbledore seemed to think it was worth looking forward to... "Death is but the next great adventure."

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Twist: that's not him being mysterious, he literally means it's an adventure. You get isekai'd into a litRPG universe.

 

[Crusher Bob]

I never really got why Dumbles was so insistent on secrecy in canon either, it really would have helped so much to just talk to people. Seriously, if bonds with others are what makes Harry different from Voldemort (and going along with the wonky assumption that that's the only difference) why keep Harry isolated?

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I'd have to assume because it's trivially easy to do. After all, a ~16 year old Tom Riddle figured it out with access to the school library. Though they can't work as advertised, since the world isn't already under the heel of one or more immortal dark lords.

They used to do that, centuries ago. But when muggles invented plumbing the muggleborn started being uncomfortable with the whole 'poop yourself and vanish the poop' solution, despite it being substantially more hygienic than mundane alternatives, and so magical society started to actually use plumbing instead of merely having it, in response.

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Except 'modern' magic comes out of the Roman tradition, and they invented plumbing... it's why we call it 'plumbing', from plumbum i.e. lead. So there was pretty much no time for 'modern' wizards to be pooping themselves without access to plumbing.

 

[SlickRCBD]

If the only information publicly available on horcruxes is "you murder someone and rip off a piece of your soul, then stuff into something and then you won't be able to pass on" explain how that leads into Bellatrix making a horcrux when she couldn't before?

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He wants that information secret, because it gives a hint on how to go about figuring it out.
What does a dark lord care about sacrificing a few of his enemies or some nonentities like muggles or smuggler to further his research into immortality and preventing his enemies from killing him off and stopping his takeover?

 

[Barghest Blue]

He wants that information secret, because it gives a hint on how to go about figuring it out.

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It doesn't though. All we ever hear is a brief summation of what needs to be done, not how to actually do it. And in HP, the second part is the important one.

What does a dark lord care about sacrificing a few of his enemies or some nonentities like muggles or smuggler to further his research into immortality and preventing his enemies from killing him off and stopping his takeover?

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What "research"? The only so called research we ever see him do into immortality is how to make horcruxes, and what happens if you have more than one. We don't know how he managed the first one, and the second one panned out. There was no further research into the topic.

 

[sunsunsunsunsun]

What "research"? The only so called research we ever see him do into immortality is how to make horcruxes, and what happens if you have more than one. We don't know how he managed the first one, and the second one panned out. There was no further research into the topic.

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This is one of those "Rowling tells us something that she's shown us the exact opposite of" moments. People like Dumbledore tell us about Voldy's "grand quest for immortality and his plumbing the darkest secrets of magic to achieve it" but his first, last, and only "dark secret of magic" was started when he was 15-16, and he had completely finished his research on the topic by the time he graduated hogwarts. His two most "advanced" horcruxes (the diary with it's full personality and posession powers and the ring with it's powerful curse that even dumbledore and snape couldn't beat) are the first two he ever made and the ones it's implied he made while still in school, the later ones are peanuts in comparsion (the locket's "hate aura, and attempted possesion only once opened have nothing on the diary, the Cup and Diadem don't appear to have any powers/protections at all (people theorize that the diademn was the source of the defense curse but that's blind speculation) and Nagini was a mostly normal snake that he could direct with his thoughts…. But like, he could have just done that with Parseltongue) like, it sure sounds like the more he researched "the darkest arts on his quest for immortality", the worse his results were.