Voldemort's Horcruxes

Coming to Voldemort's usage of Horcruxes. He was a fool to try to make a Horcrux without complete knowledge or research on the topic. The Horcrux creation was already bad for an individual but his incomplete knowledge and the rush in creating one led to many more disastrous side effects.

His first Horcrux was hastily made after the death of Myrtle during his fifth year and this led to many additional problems for his mind and magic. The main problem was that for the anchor, he used a ordinary diary which was not a magical artifact. This condition was an important requirement for a soul anchor. Due to his chosen item not meeting the required condition, the Horcrux creation ritual forcefully fractured his magic core into two parts and used one part to enchant the ordinary diary. Tom Riddle was left with only half of his core. This happened mainly due to the fact that his core was not mature and could not resist the forceful fracture during the ritual. Had he performed the ritual after attaining magical maturity, his core would have resisted the fracture successful and only some magic to partially enchant the diary would have been lost.

I know from his memories that he found this mistake a day after the creation of the horcrux but could not do anything to heal his magic core. There was no way for him to ask for a diagnosis and solution from a healer since he could not tell the healer what he had done that led to the fracturing of his core. Had he asked for help, he could have managed to somewhat rectify the problem. But he was unable find any solution on his own due to the fact that it was a unique case since no one was foolish enough to try something like the Horcrux ritual while possessing an immature magic core. Only old wizards afraid of death chased after such methods.

After attaining magical maturity, the fracturing was permanent. Nothing he did after attaining maturity was able to fix this fracturing.

Due to the fracturing, he had only half his original core with half the potential. He needed double the required effort to increase his strength and the max possible size of the core was halved. At his peak Tom Riddle had a core with the strength of only 449.5. Any other after the same effort in increasing strength would have had the strength of 999.

Riddle did not know this at first. He thought he only needed double effort and he would eventually become the strongest wizard. That is why he stayed in Britian after his graduation and spent his time making more Horcruxes instead of researching ways to solve his problem. He spent more than 10 years in Britain finding magical artifacts and making horcruxes. One day the rise in strength of his core stopped. He had peaked out at 449.5. Nothing he did helped in solving the problem and resume the increase in strength. Riddle was devastated.

Any other wizard would have given up on their dream to become a strong wizard after finding this out but not Tom Riddle. Since he did not find any solution in Britain, he decided to travel around the world looking for one.

He was successful after many years of searching all around the world. The places he was allowed to enter was limited due to the wizards finding the darkness in him and thus he had to search in the shady places in the magical world. He found the solution for his problems during one of his travels in magical Egypt after graduating from Hogwarts.

The solution was the Dark mark that he used to brand his death eaters. The Dark mark was not just a method of summoning the death eaters. If it was so, then the dark mark would not lighten or darken depending on the state of health of Voldemort. The Dark mark brand was using a vile magic which forcefully connected the servant's core to the master core. The Dark mark used the connection to forcefully solve the issue with magic core and increase the core to the max size. There was a continuous drawing of magic from the servant cores to maintain the size of Voldemort's core. The connection also gave Voldemort another advantage. Every time Voldemort's core was depleted after casting a spell, the connection recharged the core back to full. This gave him unlimited stamina and it was for this reason that Voldemort was feared during the wizarding war. He fought continuously during raids without any sign of tiring.

This theory also explained why Tom Riddle lost to Harry potter just after he was reborn in 1995. At the time of his rebirth he had only gained his physical body which had only 50% magic strength which was close to the strength of Harry Potter. There was no time for him to wait for the connection with the Dark mark to double his strength. This and the fact that Harry had more willpower due to his upbringing allowed him to best Voldemort in the duel at the graveyard.

At 100% strength Harry would have lost easily. This was why Harry couldn't do anything to Voldemort at the end of his fifth year. Voldemort had regained his complete strength and easily fought Dumbledore who used the Elder wand to a standstill. All this time Harry could only watch from the sidelines.

Coming back to the Dark Mark. The Dark Mark linked the death eaters core to Voldemort's core. For the linking to be successful, the core of a follower must meet some criteria. This was why there was a initiation ritual that a new Death eater had to follow before he could take up the mark. From Voldemort's memories I found that one condition was that the magic core of the follower must be at least 50% dark black. To accelerate this process a Death eater during his initiation had to do many vile things which included murder of a whole family using the darkest spells. And also the core could not be linked without the person's willingness so all the acts that were done by the Death eater were done on his own free will. I had only seen one memory of the initiation process but that was enough to give me nightmares and judge that Death eaters should not be given a second chance and killed mercilessly.

The connection with the core of his followers gave me a perfect way to kill of all the Death eaters in one shot. I found out that if Voldemort was given an instant death like with a killing curse, nothing will happen to the death eaters via backlash but if I killed Voldemort slowly and forced him to continuously draw on the magic of his servants to survive until the servants had no magic left, I could theoretically turn all the Death Eaters permanently into squibs. This was a perfect way to enact judgement on the death eaters.

Coming back to the mistakes Tom Riddle made while making the Horcrux. He just did not read up more on the subject and foolishly made the worst mistake of his life. When he split his soul several times, the part of soul present inside his body got smaller and smaller, making him mad and a psychopath. This also reduced his intelligence by a lot and hence he could not get past a first year Hogwarts level obstacle course last Hogwarts term. Also his foolish action of acting on a prophecy while his side was winning the war was a result of this.

Making more than one Horcrux also had another disadvantage. The different parts of the soul while separately stored in remote locations still had a connection due to being part of the same soul and using this connection after finding one Horcrux, all others could be found easily. So making more than one Horcrux was a big mistake. It made them easier to find and destroy.

Coming to how to destroy the Horcruxes. First of all there was no way to kill only a part of the soul and send it to afterlife. On destruction of a soul anchor, the part of the soul goes back and rejoins the main soul but the soul still remains fractured. The good thing for the owner of the Horcrux due to this happening is that he will regain some part of his sanity and intelligence.

This is the reason why there was great difference between Voldemort in Harry's first year and Voldemort in Harry's fourth year in the canon. After gaining back the diary soul which was 50% of original soul, Riddle gained back some parts of his sanity and intelligence. This is the reason why Riddle did not use the ritual that he used in Harry's fourth year to get back his body in Harry's first year itself. He was dumb and did not remember the methods of gaining back his physical body while he was possessing Quirrell.