Science Fiction & Fantasy Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for science fiction and fantasy enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Pursuant to this question, if you were to free a soul from the Horcrux or another container (i.e. Harry) without destroying the soul, what would happen to it?
This is what appear to happen to Voldemort when some of his soul binds to Harry, except Voldemort's half was never in a Horcrux. His half floats off with his consciousness.
In Deathly Hallows, Hermione explains that a fragment of soul inside of a Horcrux cannot exist without its container. If the container is destroyed, that piece of soul is as well. However! She also goes on to explain that the piece of soul within a Horcrux can slip out from its receptacle and into the body of a receptive person, who has somehow connected emotionally with the Horcrux, and it can inhabit another's body in that way. That's how the fragment of soul in the diary Horcrux was able to possess Ginny Weasley.
‘While the magical container is still intact, the bit of soul inside it can flit in and out of someone if they get too close to the object. I don’t mean holding it for too long, it’s nothing to do with touching it,’ she added, before Ron could speak. ‘I mean close emotionally. Ginny poured her heart out into that diary, she made herself incredibly vulnerable. You’re in trouble if you get too fond of or dependent on the Horcrux.’
‘I wonder how Dumbledore destroyed the ring?’ said Harry. ‘Why didn’t I ask him? I never really …’
Deathly Hallows - page 91 - UK Hardcover - chapter 6, The Ghoul in Pyjamas
The soul piece cannot live without a receptacle to hold it; if there were no receptive person to latch onto, the piece of soul would presumably die.
It would be annihilated. Without a container, the soul is lost.
The only way that pieces of soul in Horcruxes can be released from the object they’re bound to is if the person who created it feels enough remorse for their actions to repair their soul.
“Isn’t there any way of putting yourself back together?’ Ron asked.
‘Yes,’ said Hermione, with a hollow smile, ‘but it would be excruciatingly painful.’
‘Why? How do you do it?’ asked Harry.
‘Remorse,’ said Hermione. ‘You’ve got to really feel what you’ve done. There’s a footnote. Apparently the pain of it can destroy you.”
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter 6 (The Ghoul in Pyjamas)
As it is possible to rejoin your soul after making Horcruxes by feeling sufficient remorse, in that case the piece of soul would presumably be ‘released’ from the object it had been bound to, and it would then rejoin the main soul it had been split off from, making it whole again.
Except for the possibility of the Horcrux’s owner feeling remorse and repairing their soul through it, the pieces of soul in Horcruxes can’t be ‘released’ to go on and live in something else. Hermione explains this to Ron when he asks her exactly that question - Horcruxes don’t work like that.
“But even if we wreck the thing it lives in,’ said Ron, ‘why can’t the bit of soul in it just go and live in something else?’
‘Because a Horcrux is the complete opposite of a human being.”
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter 6 (The Ghoul in Pyjamas)
As Hermione explains, the piece of soul in a Horcrux can’t survive without the object it’s bound to.
“But my point is that whatever happens to your body, your soul will survive, untouched,’ said Hermione. ‘But it’s the other way round with a Horcrux. The fragment of soul inside it depends on its container, its enchanted body, for survival. It can’t exist without it.”
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter 6 (The Ghoul in Pyjamas)
This means it would be impossible for the piece of soul to be released from the object it’s bound to, as it wouldn’t be able to survive without the object - the only ways that the piece of soul can be removed from their object is either if they’re destroyed by irreparably damaging the object, or if their creator feels sufficient remorse to repair their soul and they rejoin the main soul.
