What’s up with Horcruxes?

I have been thinking about horcruxes.

Imagine, for a moment, that you were in Voldemort’s shoes. Imagine that you ripped your soul apart at sixteen, stuffed it into an inaminate object, and then went about your life.

Now imagine what you were like a sixteen. I imagine that many people feel the way I do: that as years the years have passed, I have changed. A person grows and learns as they get older. When I think of sixteen year old me, I see a totally different person.

Let’s imagine a world where the manifestation of Voldemort’s soul had succeeded in Chamber of Secrets. Would that piece of Voldemort’s soul, the broody, smooth-talking head boy, be the one who comes back? What would happen to the older Voldemort who lived on the back of Quirrel’s head and built himself a new body? Does he simply become dormant? Or does he continue trying to make himself a body? Could there have been two Voldemorts running around?

All of this has been running around in my head like wildfire for the past couple of days. But I feel like the most important things is: How would that manifestation of Voldemort even know who he was? He would only know about his own actions second-hand. Would he try to repeat those actions?

I think that the answer is probably yes.

But all this would explain why horcruxes were a sort of forbidden magic. The dark magic no one wants to touch. We are not meant to leave mementos of ourselves as we were: we are meant to grow.

It is the age-old question; is immortality worth the price?

The immortality question is a biggie. It’s been asked over and over. There is a reason there have been a bajillion vampire books written. And there’s a reason that The Picture of Dorian Gray and Frankenstein are classics. When people seek to achieve that which wasn’t meant for them, they suffer consequences.

The reason that Harry conquers in the final battle is because he does not fear death.  Now, we all fear death a little, but Voldemort’s fear of it was too great. By leaving pieces of himself behind, he ruined himself; he couldn’t learn and grow the way his adversary could. He always feared death, from the time he was a sixteen-year-old to the day his own curse re-bounded (for the second time). His ultimate demise was his own doing.

I’ve been thinking about all of this for a few days now. And that’s one of the reasons I love the series. There are so many intricate little details that make us wonder. Rowling spun a tale that started out as nothing more than a children’s story, and yet today, almost two decades after The Sorcerer’s Stone was released, I’m left pondering the consequences of immortality. Harry Potter is no mere children’s series. It is a classic.