Does a lot for me of it's *my* bra he's in.

I'll be in my bunk.

Then why should this one have killed him?

Because all the Horcruxes were destroyed. His soul was no longer split; it was all right there in Voldemort.

Honestly, I'm still hung up on the whole "Lily's death protecting Harry" thing. Really? In all the wizarding world, no mother's ever died trying to save her child before? Ever?

Heh. That is a thing, it is.

I think the existence of the Horcruxes is what caused him not to die at Godric's Hollow to begin with, but they're more safekeeping for his soul; I don't think he could actually use one to regain life.

But then why would you bother having 7? He split his soul that many times purely for the purposes of misdirection? I thought it was so he could come back that many times. Which, granted, doesn't make a lot of sense either. He was just batshit crazy, wasn't he?

Sure, in the book Nagini's actually the ultimate Horcrux, but, well, Harry/Voldemort is so the ultimate Horcrux in another way...

He didn't use a Horcrux. He used flesh and blood. I think the existence of the Horcruxes is what caused him not to die at Godric's Hollow to begin with, but they're more safekeeping for his soul; I don't think he could actually use one to regain life.

I agree with P-C here, but he did unintentionally use a part of a Horcrux to bring himself back.

Hmm. I'd been assuming that the reason the Kedavra rebound didn't outright kill him was because of the Horcruxes. No? Then why should this one have killed him?

Yes, I think that's correct. The Horcruxes are a tether to this world. The reason that the last rebounded killing curse actually killed him is because he had no horcruxes left.

What I do find unlikely is that the Death Eaters apparently left the wand behind? How strange.

Well, it spun off the top of the tower, so I'm guessing it landed somewhere near Dumbledore, well out of reach of the Death Eaters who were sprinting their way out of Hogwarts.

I guess I'd been assuming that the Horcruxes were sort of one-use deals -- survive a fatal curse, use up a Horcrux.

But then why would you bother having 7? He split his soul that many times purely for the purposes of misdirection? I thought it was so he could come back that many times. Which, granted, doesn't make a lot of sense either. He was just batshit crazy, wasn't he?

Well, seven is a magic number. He thought that would make him TOTALLY immortal. Yes, he was pretty crazy.

Sure, in the book Nagini's actually the ultimate Horcrux, but, well, Harry/Voldemort is so the ultimate Horcrux in another way...

Heh. Indeed. I think people put Harry Horcrux at the end of the list because he was unintentional and not part of The Six that Voldie made on purpose, but it was Neville Longbottom who destroyed the last thing that was keeping Voldemort from being vulnerable to death.

In fact, I'd been thinking that if they couldn't find all the Horcruxes they'd just have to kill him, find him, kill him again, repeat until he'd used them all up. Guess I wasn't very clear on it.

Emily, I think he made that many because he wanted to make it next to impossible for people to kill him.

There's also the possibility that after a few horcruxes, he lost enough humanity that ripping his soul into more fragments didn't really concern him. I don't think he had much use for his soul anyway, and as Dumbledore said "What Voldemort doesn't think important, he ignores completely" - I suspect that's a paraphrase.

He was so out of it, soul-wise, that he didn't even notice that he had stored some of his soul in Harry back in 1981. Talk about oblivious!