Skip to main content

Why didn't the piece of Voldemort’s soul in Harry come back to life with Harry?


I recently reread the books and found it curious that when Harry goes into the Forbidden Forest, and is killed by Voldemort but comes back to life, that the piece of soul in him doesn't come back with Harry. Because Harry never fully reached a state of death, he was just in King’s Cross which served sort of like a purgatory and the part of Voldemort's soul was also there under the bench, so why didn't it stay connected to Harry and come back to life?




Answer




Harry was kept alive by his blood (and therefore his mother’s sacrifice) being in the Dark Lord’s body, which tied the both of them to life.



“He took your blood believing it would strengthen him. He took into his body a tiny part of the enchantment your mother laid upon you when she died for you. His body keeps her sacrifice alive, and while that enchantment survives, so do you and so does Voldemort’s one last hope for himself.”
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter 35 (King’s Cross)



The piece of the Dark Lord’s soul in Harry didn’t have this blood tie, so when it was hit by the Killing Curse, it simply died and didn’t come back.


The thing in King’s Cross wasn’t the soul in Harry - it was the main soul.


The piece of the Dark Lord’s soul that Harry sees in King’s Cross wasn’t the piece that had been in Harry - it was the main piece that returned to his body when he regained consciousness. J.K. Rowling said this clearly in the F.A.Q. of her website, and it was implied in the book as well.




What exactly was the mutilated baby-like creature Harry saw at King's Cross in chapter 35 of 'Hallows'?


I’ve been asked this a LOT. It is the last piece of soul Voldemort possesses. When Voldemort attacks Harry, they both fall temporarily unconscious, and both their souls - Harry's undamaged and healthy, Voldemort’s stunted and maimed - appear in the limbo where Harry meets Dumbledore.
- F.A.Q. on J.K. Rowling’s website



This is why Dumbledore says Harry has less to fear from returning to King’s Cross - Harry will return whole, but the Dark Lord will return in that mutilated form.



“But I know this, Harry, that you have less to fear from returning here than he does.’


Harry glanced again at the raw-looking thing that trembled and choked in the shadow beneath the distant chair.”




It’s also why Harry told the Dark Lord he’s seen what he’ll become without remorse.



“It’s your one last chance,’ said Harry, ‘it’s all you’ve got left … I’ve seen what you’ll be otherwise … be a man … try … try for some remorse …”
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter 36 (The Flaw in the Plan)



That specific piece of soul in King’s Cross did return to life - just in the Dark Lord, not in Harry.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

languages - Do we ever see written English in the Star Wars films?

In Empire Strikes Back , we see a transcription of what R2's beeps and bloops mean, but it's not English (sorry for the low quality, it's from the 2004 DVDs): I'd assume it's what Basic looks like when written, but is there some point in the the Star Wars films we see written English instead? (This sort of spun off from a discussion in How do people understand astromech droids? .) Answer At one point there was English but it has been phased out in subsequent versions of the films. Chris Gould at DVD Active did a comparison of all versions of each of the Star Wars films, and in his comparison of Episode 4 , there are a couple of screenshots showing how the power gauge for the Death Star tractor beam was changed. I imagine there are probably more to be found in his other comparisons but I haven't got around to reading those yet.

Was the "pure soul" of Harry's what had really hurt Voldemort?

In the Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort possesses Harry, and it hurts. Greatly. I think that Dumbledore explained that it was because Voldemort's rotten soul was incapable of assimilating Harry's pure soul, that Voldemort didn't understand the love and friendship etc that Harry has in his heart. But, I think it was a lie. Remember that in Deathly Hallows, while looking for information regarding Horcruxes, it is discovered that it is in fact possible to merge a soul fragment back, but that the process was extremely painful. Now then, if Voldemort tried to possess Harry, and Harry had a fragment of Voldemort's soul, I think that it could have been the true cause of Voldemort's pain: the fact of having his soul so close of another fragment. I think that Dumbledore knew that fact, but had to lie to Harry because it was inappropriate to let him know that he had one of Voldemort's soul fragments at the moment. Is that right? Or was it truly the pure soul of Harry's...

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...

star trek - Warning regarding forward saucer section in Nemesis?

In Star Trek: Nemesis , just before the Enterprise rams into the Scimitar, Picard sends a text message from his captain's chair arm pad to Troi — who is manning the helm in lieu of the crewman who was just blown out through what was once the view screen — indicating that she should put full impulse on standby. (Literally, if you watch the scene closely, Troi's console prefaces the order with "TXT MSG" !) My question is: Did Picard also somehow warn crew members in the forward saucer section about what was about to happen? The ramming of the Scimitar was a heat of the moment decision. Considering that he also resorted to calling the auto-destruct sequence shortly after (which ended up being offline), he probably was of the mindset that any losses would be acceptable in order to hault Shinzon's march to Earth. Still, I'm curious. Answer The original script indicates that he called for the crew to " brace for impact ". Whether that call (or the comma...