Dark and sacrificial magic tends to kill you in the end, and neither the original Voldemort, nor Quirrelmort had a fix for this.
I’d say that it tends to kill your host meat sack. Not a problem if you can hop to a new one.
The horcrux spell forks your identity
The problem being the lack of continuity,
No continuity of … sself, you would go on thinking after making the horcrux, then sself with new memoriess diess and iss not resstored -
Which would be avoided if your current host body dies in the transfer.
First he attempted to bypass the loss of knowledge by targeting a strong wizard as the possession target
I don’t think that is necessary:
Alsso Merlin’ss Interdict preventss powerful sspells from passing through ssuch a device, ssince it iss not truly alive.
If the burst is channeled into a living person instead of a device, then Merlin’s Interdict is avoided.
He transfers to a powerful wizard because that’s the good place to be. Better than a rat.
And so he ended up fighting both sides of that war, because he took Monroe’s body while still remaining Voldemort full time.
I think that’s true. The war was not about taking over as the Dark Lord, it was about taking over as the Savior from the Dark Lord, as it is planned to be again with Harry.
See my top level post for a more fleshed out version of how I think Quirrell is preparing to upload to Harry.
The problem being the lack of continuity,
Which would be avoided if your current host body dies in the transfer.
I don’t think that’s how continuity of self works. Suppose I, Velorien A, cast the horcrux spell. I continue to exist, and now I have created a Velorien B, an imperfect copy in a younger, healthier body. When Velorien A dies, whether instantly or in a number of years, I die. Velorien B will continue to exist. From an external perspective, yes, there was one old/ill Velorien, and now there is one young/healthy Velorien. From the perspective of Velorien B, he is Velorien A but in a younger, healthier body. But from my perspective… well, I don’t have a perspective, because I’m dead.
I think you’ve got it the wrong way round. The first part is the problem. The second part is how the problem manifests itself.
Let’s take the full quote.
“No continuity of—” there wasn’t a snake word for consciousness “—sself, you would go on thinking after making the horcrux, then sself with new memoriess diess and iss not resstored—”
The problem is continuity of consciousness. What Quirrell is saying is that because there is no continuity of consciousness, when you die, you die, no matter that you made a horcrux first.
I certainly don’t believe that Quirrell, who has probably spent much of his life considering the problem, would be so naive as to think that destroying the original somehow gives the copy continuity of consciousness with the original.
I’d say that it tends to kill your host meat sack. Not a problem if you can hop to a new one.
The problem being the lack of continuity,
Which would be avoided if your current host body dies in the transfer.
I don’t think that is necessary:
If the burst is channeled into a living person instead of a device, then Merlin’s Interdict is avoided.
He transfers to a powerful wizard because that’s the good place to be. Better than a rat.
I think that’s true. The war was not about taking over as the Dark Lord, it was about taking over as the Savior from the Dark Lord, as it is planned to be again with Harry.
See my top level post for a more fleshed out version of how I think Quirrell is preparing to upload to Harry.
I don’t think that’s how continuity of self works. Suppose I, Velorien A, cast the horcrux spell. I continue to exist, and now I have created a Velorien B, an imperfect copy in a younger, healthier body. When Velorien A dies, whether instantly or in a number of years, I die. Velorien B will continue to exist. From an external perspective, yes, there was one old/ill Velorien, and now there is one young/healthy Velorien. From the perspective of Velorien B, he is Velorien A but in a younger, healthier body. But from my perspective… well, I don’t have a perspective, because I’m dead.
You can see it that way, and I largely do too, but that was not how Harry and Quirrell identified the problem.
The issue, the reasons for the issue.
If we avoid those reasons, which dying in the transfer does, then the issue is resolved.
I think you’ve got it the wrong way round. The first part is the problem. The second part is how the problem manifests itself.
Let’s take the full quote.
The problem is continuity of consciousness. What Quirrell is saying is that because there is no continuity of consciousness, when you die, you die, no matter that you made a horcrux first.
I certainly don’t believe that Quirrell, who has probably spent much of his life considering the problem, would be so naive as to think that destroying the original somehow gives the copy continuity of consciousness with the original.