The true horror of Horcruxes?

[sunnyskywalker]

We've had discussions here at DTCL about the strangeness of Horcruxes being considered so much more evil than regular premeditated murder which splits your soul, and the discomfort at the idea that it seems to be considered so heinous because of what it does to the caster rather than the victim, like that actually matters more.

But we are, after all, basing that mainly on Dumbledore, who has a habit selecting bits of truth to tell that can give a... shall we say... misleading impression, on bits of old and arcane books whose authors might have had a less-than-clear writing style (never mind any potential biases or agendas), and on Slughorn's basically off-the-cuff remarks to young Tom.

None of them are lying, as such, but they might well be a bit careless in their explanations, yes?

Slughorn says that splitting one's soul is "against nature," and putting one of the pieces in some external container apparently even more so. This sounds like the terrible thing is the harm suffered by the unwise Horcrux-maker, who is now suffering from unnatural soul-damage and whose continued existence, if killed but stuck on the mortal plain, would be even more terrible. Poor Horcrux maker!

But people use "against nature" to mean "super inconceivably bad," not necessarily literally unnatural. You hear that it's "unnatural" to kill one's own children, for instance, and yet I quite clearly remember seeing hamsters and rabbits eat their babies as a child - as natural as can be. It's more a kind of shorthand for "no really, it's just that awful, you can't even imagine." And Slughorn is specifically talking about the side effects which might deter anyone thinking of trying it, not necessarily all off the effects. No, really, you wouldn't like it, it's so bad for you that you'd wish you'd died instead. Just say no to Horcruxes!

Which doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of truth in the idea that the soul damage is a terrible thing. But I doubt it's only terrible for the person whose soul-bit is now residing in a cup or a rock. So what is the terrible effect that isn't named?

Well, we know that the way to heal your torn soul after a murder is to feel remorse.

Ah. Now we're getting somewhere. After all, you can't heal it if you've fully split that piece off and put it in a rock, can you?

Making a Horcrux, in this light, is a magical declaration that you know you've done an awful thing and you're not sorry - nothing will ever make you sorry. At least, not enough to heal yourself. Just as premeditated murder is considered worse than murder in the heat of the moment, deliberately making it impossible for remorse to fully take effect is probably worse than not feeling sorry at the moment but allowing for the possibility that you might later realize have done something wrong. That's not quite enough, though. However...

When you tear your soul but keep the torn bit inside you, presumably you still have access to that bit of your soul, even if it isn't working together with the main chunk as well as it usually does. It's still part of you, in active daily use. If you remove it, does it work long-distance? It doesn't seem so, does it? We've all noted how Voldemort's abilities to plan, estimate others' emotions in order to manipulate them, self-control, etc. all seem to deteriorate after he's made a few Horcruxes, and that the accidental Harrycrux (and/or spending eleven years possessing snakes) seems to have finally cracked him a bit too much to be a truly effective Dark Lord. We also saw that even the Horcruxes that weren't explicitly designed to hold memories seem to have bits of Tom's personality and the ability to understand outside events and react to them, like the Locket. And imprints of departed souls - ghosts - also seem to have memory, personality, emotions, etc. (or imprints of them, whatever that actually means). So it does seem likely that these things are all carried in the soul, at least for wizards.

Doesn't it follow, then, that cutting off your access to a piece of your soul would destroy part of your ability to feel remorse? For anything, ever, not just for that particular murder? And would diminish your ability to feel empathy as well? And your ability to control your impulses?

I'm sure someone here has said as much before, but tying it all together in one post: the true horror of Horcruxes is that, by damaging your soul in this particular way, you become much more likely to commit horrible acts in the future. And you almost certainly know this: in accepting the soul damage, you didn't just plan this one single murder, but signed on for the possibility that you're going to hurt more people, too. You can't "just" decide to make one single Horcrux, with regret and solemn intentions never to murder again, because you've decided that the greater good requires your continued existence during some crisis - becoming more dangerous yourself is an unavoidable part of the package. You can't even hope that your sense of self-preservation will restrain you all the time, because some of your self-restraint has been split off as well. You've got less of a filter between your temper and blasting someone with whatever nasty spell you want to see them suffer from.

Making a Horcrux isn't just premeditated murder, but a premeditated decision to quite possibly make yourself incapable of not hurting people forever after.* Not quite premeditated serial or mass murder, or even premeditated petty verbal cruelty... or manipulativeness... but being perfectly fine with the possibilities, enough to actively encourage it. (Even if you somehow didn't know about that particular side effect, your ignorance won't matter to your victims - they'll get hurt just the same.) You're committing to kill not just one person, but potentially lots of them, forever, to preserve your own life.

Ultimately, the concern is for your potential victims, not necessarily your mangled soul itself. Or at least not primarily so. After all, just diminishing your capacity for remorse isn't even the end of it, is it? You kill one person, you don't feel sorry at all - well, there's one less thing restraining you from trying it again, isn't there? It wasn't so bad, really, and look what you got in exchange! And so your remaining empathy and remorse is dampened even further... In essence, you'll start conditioning yourself to murder.

You might not start out as incapable of remorse and empathy as Tom Riddle... but you sure might end up that way, the longer you live after having diminished your capacity to feel those things.

That's pretty awful.



*Well. Maybe if you limit yourself to just one... and have lots of self-control to begin with, because you're just so wise and awesome at everything... And it's for the Greater Good^TM

Comments

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

Very interesting analysis! It totally makes sense, too, in light of what we see. I guess one question that follows is, if making a horcrux makes you more likely to commit murder in general, then why haven't we seen more people cut their losses and make more horcruces as insurance (if their soul was damaged by making just one anyway)? Why was Voldemort the first to attempt something like that? Did the other people who made horcruces just not have enough presence of mind afterwards to make more?

"You're committing to kill not just one person, but potentially lots of them, forever, to preserve your own life."

That's interesting because that reminds me of a vampire anime I've been watching in honor of Halloween. In it, the vampires used to be ordinary people, but once they rose from the dead they took to killing because if they didn't drink human blood they'd eventually die of starvation, and they're mostly all terrified of dying. One sympathetic vampire even points out that "when you're starving, murder doesn't seem quite so immoral." I wonder if some similar train of thought might happen to a wizard who made a horcrux? At least on some level?

[sunnyskywalker]

I wonder if it's just hard enough to do, or maybe painful enough (you'd think yanking a bit of your soul out of it's usual place would hurt, anyway), that it's increasingly harder the more you've made, so most people can't or don't like the idea of making more?

That kind of fear makes sense. It does seem like Tom is truly terrified of death. Well, the only thing he really cares about is himself - how could he bear to lose that to something so final and inevitable? But even for a wizard who did have more capacity to care about others, I could see the fear of death driving being a powerful motivator.

[sunnyskywalker]

Yes, have to agree there. "See, I don't have to make myself appear so foolish by succumbing to base fleshly desires and making myself vulnerable to another person by revealing any of my preferences and contorting into ridiculous poses! I am above all that!"

[sunnyskywalker]

Well, that and lovers tend to do annoying things like wanting to know what you're thinking and sharing major decisions between the two of you. That just won't work, obviously...

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Also, of course, most practitioners of chosen-celibacy tend to think that their choice, doesn't just show, but makes them morally and spiritually superior to the rest of us.

If you read my newest fic "training," though, you'll see I agree, marianros, with the sentiment that Albus couldn't be trusted with love. What was it Aberforth said? "Funny thing, how many of the people my brother cared about very much ended up in a worse state thatn if he'd left 'em well alone."

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

You make some good points.

Your fundamental argument is a bit canon-shafted by Dh 6, where Hermione describes what she learned from the books she stole from Dumbledore's study. She suggests that you can put your soul together again (after ripping it to make a Horcrux) by feeling remorse--and allwoing yourself to feel that is so painful it might destroy you.


However, Hermione's implication that even a soul split by making Horcruxes might conceivably be reunited, still allows for most of your theory.

We need only posit that separating off (and encasing under impremeable enchantments) a soul-fragment makes it much HARDER to the murderer to feel enough remorse to heal....

And that the effect worsens, the more often s/he does it....

[sunnyskywalker]

I think the bit about Horcruxes "flitting" to people nearby can also help. You can reunite the pieces - if you kept them near your main soul chunk. We saw the range of this "flitting" in the eternal camping scene, too (works best if it's right next to you, not so bad if it stays several feet away, etc.). So it would make sense that sufficient remorse could make your Horcrux soul-bit "flit" a couple of feet to knit back in.

We also saw that at a distance of however many miles means that Voldemort can't tell whether one of his Horcruxes is even still intact. Not feeling an outright "death" suggests that any remorse he might feel would have a hard time communicating across that same distance as well. (I wonder if this is why the process might kill you? Some sort of whiplash from a soul-bit suddenly getting yanked into you from a long distance? Or just such an overwhelming amount of remorse that you're going to be hanging yourself anyway to make the pain stop?)

While it might be theoretically possible for it to work at greater distances, the amount of remorse you would need might increase exponentially to a point where it's just not going to happen. Especially if your ability to feel remorse is already impaired.

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Ugh. Not only that; a soul-piece allegedly "can flit in and out of someone if they get too close to the object..I don't mean holding it for too long,... I mean close emotionally. ... You're in trouble if you get too fond of or dependent on the Horcrus."

Who's closer, emotionally, to a soul-piece than the rest of the soul?

And Hermione was obviously partly wrong, because physical proximity did play a role....

Oh, no, wait. We're forgetting--the locket's effect was unique to it. The diary didn't do anything to people who were just around it. Only when Ginny wrote in it and formed an attachment to her pocket friend was it able to do anything--and then the soul-fragment DID flit out and possess her.

The locket never POSSESSED any of the three of them--it just influenced them, negatively.

So it's probably more that the locket had originally been crafted (by Salazar or whomever) to be an emotion-amplifying artefact, and being made into a Horcrux turned the effect evil.

So we weren't really seeing "flitting" in the camping scenes--just the pervesion of an emotion-amplifying object.

But your other argument holds--in fact it holds better than you thought. Tom was near Hogwarts, in the Shrieking Shack or nearly, and concentrating on his Horcruxes, worried about them. But he didn't notice the cup being stabbed nor the iara burned, and the latter happens while Death Eaters have made it into the castle.

[sunnyskywalker]

Hm. So, even a fairly short distance is enough to prevent one from sensing even something as major as a soul-bit dying. And the only known example of possession occurred when Ginny was within a couple of feet of a Horcrux and had also already linked herself to the object. I think that would suggest that it's difficult for remorse to reach from the main soul to a bit over distance, though of course we can't be absolutely certain since we never get the chance to test it. But the odds are good.

So how much of this did Tom know? Was the ring already a Horcrux when we saw him wearing it, and he only stopped because he realized it was better to keep it separate? (He'd killed three people already, and so could have made the diary, the ring, and some third object into Horcruxes already, though quite possibly had only made one or none.) Or did he only Horcruxify it later? Just how much does each Horcrux creation change his appearance - was the "melted wax" look only after five, and the "pale but interesting" look three? Two? One? Does the change in appearance accelerate with each one, so that after three you still look okay, but four makes you melty and five gives you snake eyes and no nose?

[hwyla.livejournal.com]

I tend to think the 'snakey and no nose' comes more from living off of nagini milk as fetusVoldy.

The only thing we have to go on is Sluggy's memory of Tom's appearance while he's wearing the ring. By that time he has killed at 4 least people (Myrtle, his father and grandparents). It does kind of depend on whether one must make the horcrux at the same time as the murder or whether one can take out the ripped soul piece to make the horcrux at a later time.

IF one must have the object to be horcruxed on one at the time of the soul splitting (murder), did youngTom make the diary before Myrtle was killed? She is apparently the murder for that horcrux. And the ring is supposed to be for his father's. IF the horcrux must be made at the time of the murder then Tom has already made two of them by the time of Sluggy's memory. Which makes no sense of his asking whether it might be okay to make more than one (if he already has done so).

We know by the time Tom visits Hepzibah that his looks have degenerated a bit, but not much. He's still very attractive, altho' his eyes can already turn red. However, it isn't until after this time that he has possession of the Cup or the Locket. Therefore, his appearance at that time is the result of only 2 horcruxes.

How different does he look in that memory from his appearance in Sluggy's? Because that is what tells us whether or not the ring in Sluggy's memory is already a horcrux or not. IF it is, then he should look the same in both of those memories. Does the Tom from Sluggy's memory actually look different from the Tom in the Diary (presumably before ALL horcruxes IF it was the first object)?

I don't tend to think that the horcrux must be made at the time of the murder. The soul is ripped inside one, Why must it be removed at the time of the ripping? Why not later? IF it must be made at the time of the killing then Tom of Sluggy's memory had made 2 horcruxes already and should look almost exactly like Tom of the visit to Hepzibah.

[sunnyskywalker]

Myrtle's death also raises the question of exactly how murderous you need to be to tear your soul. Using a snake rather than a knife or a wand shouldn't be a problem in itself; it's just an unconventional weapon. But was he specifically trying to kill Myrtle, or was he taking the snake out for a walk to see if he could control it and just didn't care if anyone happened to be in the way (and as it turned out, there was someone in the bathroom, oh well)? How does reckless endangerment or manslaughter affect your soul? Only tear a piece half off, like a soul hangnail?

Your "Nagini milk > snakey look" ideas makes me wonder... Are we even sure that it was making the Horcruxes that changed his appearance in the first place? We also have that ambiguous statement about the "measures" he'd taken to keep himself deathless, which he claimed to have told his followers a little about. What were those, and when did he do them, and did they affect his appearance? Maybe casting some sort of Dermum Adamantium charm on himself (or drinking a special longevity potion, or bathing in the blood of virgins who were bitten by snakes, or whatever) is actually responsible for the melted wax thing, and he only started looking gaunt and pale after leaving school because he no longer got the fabulous spreads the elves put together at Hogwarts and was living off whatever they serve at the Leaky Cauldron or the wizarding equivalent of ramen cups. Even the red eyes might not be a result of making Horcruxes, but of some other nefarious magical practice. Correlation isn't causation and all - he was making Horcruxes during the same years he was also supposedly learning other nasty and dangerous magic, so that makes it harder to sort out what caused what.

It might actually have gone like this: he makes a Horcrux every few years, and at the same time also gradually experiments and then modifies his body in various ways to make it sturdier (not immune to harm, but more difficult to harm - and/or maybe decay-resistant, if he's planning centuries ahead? - and which he could convincingly pass off to his followers as making him unkillable) and learns and practices various kinds of (unspecified) dangerous magic which have unknown effects on the caster. The Horcrux-making causes no change in appearance, but the other two things do. Because they happen along the same timeline, we (and Dumbledore?) just assumed that it was the Horcruxes.

Which would make figuring out when he actually made the things even harder (never mind what he knew when about leaving Horcruxes far from you). What's left as evidence besides Dumbledore's suppositions and knowing when he actually acquired the objects themselves? Not a whole lot! It probably is easier and simpler to go with Horcrux creation affecting his appearance...

[hwyla.livejournal.com]

okay off topic and probably a bit of a hijack - but I agree that Myrtle's death wasn't exactly planned - that's partly why I question the idea that the horcrux must be made at the time of the soul splitting. The way she describes her death, it really sounds like almost an accident on Tom's part.

Anyways - IF it was 'reckless endangerment' on Tom's part that his soul was split by this, then it is ONLY because James came in and rescued Snape that kept Sirius' soul intact. Don't you think that OUGHT to be more likely to cause a Life Debt?

Note also that it's doubtful that either Remus or Sirius ever knew anything about how your soul can rip if you kill someone, since only Harry is able to convince them not to kill Peter. One shouldn't actually need to know about horcruxes to realize ripping your soul by murdering someone isn't the smartest bit of revenge.

So much for Remus' vaunted DADA knowledge. It would seem he never came across that bit of info. Tho' to be fair, I'm not POSITIVE that Snape knew before Albus spoke about Draco's soul. Tho' I suspect he did, since he didn't question the information, only that Albus didn't apparently value HIS (Snape's) soul as much.

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

"IF one must have the object to be horcruxed on one at the time of the soul splitting (murder), did youngTom make the diary before Myrtle was killed? She is apparently the murder for that horcrux. And the ring is supposed to be for his father's. IF the horcrux must be made at the time of the murder then Tom has already made two of them by the time of Sluggy's memory. Which makes no sense of his asking whether it might be okay to make more than one (if he already has done so)."

Do we know for sure that Tom made the ring horcrux from his father's death, or is that just a bit of fanon/Dumbledorean speculation? It's possible that at the time of the memory Tom had taken the ring but not yet turned it into a horcrux, and was asking Slughorn to see if this would be feasible.

[oryx_leucoryx]

It is interview pseudocanon - ie it is canon if you want it to be.

According to interview, the other Horcruxes were made with the following deaths:

diary - Myrtle
cup - Hepzibah Smith
locket - Muggle tramp (there goes Dumbly's theory of 'significant deaths')
diadem - Albanian peasant (idem)
snake - Bertha Jorkins (Dumbles was wrong here too)
Harry - Lily.

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

"But people use "against nature" to mean "super inconceivably bad," not necessarily literally unnatural. You hear that it's "unnatural" to kill one's own children, for instance, and yet I quite clearly remember seeing hamsters and rabbits eat their babies as a child - as natural as can be. It's more a kind of shorthand for "no really, it's just that awful, you can't even imagine.""

Unless, I suppose, Slughorn is actually a fan of Aristotle, and subscribes to a natural law theory of morality. ;)

In re: the essay as a whole, I think your theory makes a lot of sense (with the slight modification suggested by terri_testing). It also helps to explain why Voldemort might be the first wizard to make several horcruxes: after all, if making them decreases your self-control, forward-thinking, rationality, and so forth, it makes sense to stop at one so that while you've got a back-up in case of death your powers are also relatively undiminished. And I could just see arrogant, conceited young Tom Riddle thinking that he's the sort of person who could cope with several, not like all those lesser dark wizards...

[sunnyskywalker]

True, wizards might still be major Aristotle fanboys. You never can tell with them :-)

Tom is just that much more arrogant!

Also, it occurs to me that you might also be ripping off a piece of your ability to control your magic, and maybe your magic itself. A small bit, yes... But if you have average control or average ability, that could make enough of a difference that you actually can't make another if you try? We don't really know how difficult it is, since so few try in the first place.

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

I find it hard to envision Tom accepting sacrificing his magic or control.. At least, not knowingly.

And Dumbledore did say (HBP 23) "Never forget, though, that while his [Tom's] soul may be damaged beyond repair, his brain and his magical powers remain intact."

Mmm. But let's also consider the long-term effect of Dementors in this context. (PoA 10) "If it can, the dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself... soulless and evil."

You remember my arguemnet that part of what's wrong with Bellatrix and the other Azkaban-escapee DE's was Dementor Dementia, long-term (and apparently fundamentally irreversible) mental damage, depriving the victims of empathy and love.....

And "Dementors are supposed to darin a wizard of his powers if he is left with them too long..." but that effect, if it happens at all, is clearly temporary. Bellatrix (et alia) retruns to being an extremely powerful witch, but also stays a crazy sadist.



So maybe making a Horcrux essentailly inflicts Dementor-damage on oneself?

Hmm. Short term magical depletion... if you have enemies, weakening yourself directly before going into a fight wouldn't be a good thing. Unless, of course, you were already so superpowered you'd outclass them even after a drop in power....

?

[sunnyskywalker]

"Not knowingly" might be the key. Even if it does reduce your power, do any of the sources Tom read say so, at least in a clear fashion which he couldn't possibly dismiss as scare-mongering propaganda? Or - given that they may not state the effects distance has very clearly - are they waffly about it, because your power isn't actually gone, just locked in an object and possibly hundreds of miles away (but would be perfectly accessible if you kept it on you)? Do the sources even know for sure how each of the possible effects plays out, given that it's supposedly rare that anyone tries it and they may be working off fourth-hand stories? Maybe Tom's problem was that he was so arrogant he thought he knew what he was getting himself into, and didn't.

Dementor-like damage also sounds like a distinct possibility.

As for Dumbledore's claim... well, he might well have meant that Tom's mind and powers were close enough to being intact for all intents and purposes, since Tom started out with so much and any degradation could be from a combination of causes, really, and after all he does want to make sure Harry doesn't underestimate him. I can't really fault him much for shading the truth that way, if he did (though Dumbledore might not truly know either, since he isn't actually all-knowing). The way Harry is by that late in the series, any suggestion that his mortal enemy might have weakened himself a bit might sound like an invitation to slack off.