Quote Originally Posted by pokethedevil
DH Spoilers

On the night that Voldermort first attacked Harry, when he fired the curse at him and it rebounded, why did the part of his soul inside his body not vanquish? Why did it have to attach itself to the only other living creature around? Why didn't that part just die,wasn't the killing curse supposed to finish it?
Quote Originally Posted by Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
“You were the seventh Horcrux, Harry, the Horcrux he never meant to make. He had rendered his soul so unstable that it broke apart when he committed those acts of unspeakable evil, the murder of your parents, the attempted killing of a child. But what escaped from that room was even less than he knew. He left more than his body behind. He left part of himself latched to you, the would-be victim who had survived.
So the part of his soul that was in his body that went to Godric's Hollow; part of it went into Harry, and the rest of it escaped because he had the other Horcruxes tying him to earth.

http://pics.livejournal.com/cmwinters/pic/0001yh8r

That's a pie-chart I made for my Dark Arts class, showing 8 bits of evenly divided soul (we'll not get into whether they were completely even or not just now).

When the Dark Lord first went to Godric's Hollow, he had his soul in a total of SIX pieces. The diary, the locket, the ring, the tiara, the diary and himself. When he tried to kill Harry, another piece split off and went into Harry's head, leaving a total of seven pieces. The piece in the original body was still tethered to earth by the remaining Horcuxes.

It wasn't until later that he created the piece in Nagini.

But I think your question is, with the six bits, once the murders of the Potters were committed and the attempt on Harry, one piece of soul should have shaved off into Harry's head and the other *should* have just dissipated, right?

That would make sense and that's a very good question.

On the other hand, another question is, if you have a Horcrux, and you "die", then the half (let's just assume) of your soul that was originally in your body is still held earthbound by the bit in the Horcrux. But in the Dark Lord's case, Wormtail went after him and found that ethereal bit of soul, and got it into a body. What if someone uses a Horcrux to ressurrect you?

(I really should stop before I give you people all nightmares!)