[...] on the night Lord Voldemort tried to kill him, when Lily cast her own life between them as a shield, the Killing Curse rebounded upon Lord Voldemort, and a fragment of Voldemort’s soul was blasted apart from the whole, and latched itself onto the only living soul left in that collapsed building.
If the only accidental Horcruxes made this way are similar to Harry, there wouldn’t have been noticeable effects (assuming most people who aren’t expecting it would cope significantly less well than Voldemort), and the shade left over would have passed on when the living Horcrux died. (The actual requisite for destroying Horcruxes is “damaged beyond magical repair”.)
Or possibly there wouldn’t have been a shade at all- maybe a mass murderer who didn’t have a Horcrux to begin with would just die the same way everything else does when hit by an AK.
Or maybe nobody else in history had flayed his soul into ~3.125% of its original glory.
Yes, it’s murder that rips the soul—but it’s the process of creating a horcrux that takes half of what’s left and seals it somewhere else. If you aren’t making horcruxes, then you get a soul that’s heavily damaged, but it isn’t lacking pieces, it’s just torn up. With Voldemort, you get a soul that barely has anything left and is constantly being torn up.
Even if you don’t buy the death-mid-horcrux-ritual theory, does it make sense how damage that would normally be taken without notice could rip off whole sections of a soul with ~3% of the...size?...of the souls of even the worst non-horcrux-using mass murderer?
Maybe they did. Again, the quote is
If the only accidental Horcruxes made this way are similar to Harry, there wouldn’t have been noticeable effects (assuming most people who aren’t expecting it would cope significantly less well than Voldemort), and the shade left over would have passed on when the living Horcrux died. (The actual requisite for destroying Horcruxes is “damaged beyond magical repair”.)
Or possibly there wouldn’t have been a shade at all- maybe a mass murderer who didn’t have a Horcrux to begin with would just die the same way everything else does when hit by an AK.
Or maybe nobody else in history had flayed his soul into ~3.125% of its original glory.
Yes, it’s murder that rips the soul—but it’s the process of creating a horcrux that takes half of what’s left and seals it somewhere else. If you aren’t making horcruxes, then you get a soul that’s heavily damaged, but it isn’t lacking pieces, it’s just torn up. With Voldemort, you get a soul that barely has anything left and is constantly being torn up.
Even if you don’t buy the death-mid-horcrux-ritual theory, does it make sense how damage that would normally be taken without notice could rip off whole sections of a soul with ~3% of the...size?...of the souls of even the worst non-horcrux-using mass murderer?