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I have very little experience with this series, I have only fully seen Fantastic Beasts and bits and pieces of the main films and never read the books, so forgive me if this is a rookie or obvious answer.

So you might be asking, why is he asking this?

Well, I was doing research for items in a game that I will probably never make in trillion years and ran into a Wikipedia page that listed the magical items in the Potterverse. Horcruxes caught my eye as it was stated that whatever was made into one was pretty much invincible barring like a few methods of destruction. It said living things could be made into them.

Let us say you made a mayfly into one, would it not die in a day or so? Could you still smash them with a rolled up newspaper and kill it? If you made it into one before it turned into an adult, would it stay a nymph?

Just curious, as it sounds like an interesting concept.

FreeMan
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Conan Highwoods
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    I suspect Rowling didn't put much thought into it - her storytelling and characters are great but her worldbuilding has lots of gaps. – Steve Ives Mar 30 '23 at 08:07
  • Possible dupe of https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/8549/is-a-living-being-a-poor-choice-for-a-horcrux – Valorum Mar 30 '23 at 08:18
  • Judging from the attempts in the books/films to destroy Voldemort's various horcruxes, they'd fight back against a simple newspaper (they contained a portion of the Dark Lord's power). Transformation? No idea, JK's not written about that yet AFAIK. – Jiminy Cricket. Mar 30 '23 at 08:49
  • I see, I mean I am not the best storyteller but this seems like it is a VERY obvious thing to explain show the readers.. @SteveIves – Conan Highwoods Mar 30 '23 at 11:58
  • I don't think there's enough canonical information to answer this, although I'm willing to be wrong. – FuzzyBoots Mar 30 '23 at 16:53
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    "We don't know" is a perfectly acceptable answer, not sure why this was closed as opinion based – fez Mar 30 '23 at 18:55
  • It seems that SEs, at least the Worldbuilding one that I use 90% of that time has Closing fever, like a question I asked on there about how a species capable of decent/good flight naturally would effect the history/use of aircraft was closed for not being clear enough(I think), but for some reason not my question about if sapient cockroaches taking fall damage is reasonable. The later is a valid question, but still the first is a golden worldbuilding question. It seems the fever has spread to here as well. I mean, most/many of the answers here opinion based? I hope this fever breaks soon. @fez – Conan Highwoods Mar 30 '23 at 19:09
  • (Disclaimer: I'm just a random user with no authority in any way) From my perspective, Sci-Fi Stack Exchange is quite reasonable when it comes to closing questions. Still, when I read your question, my first impression was: "hmm... that's almost on the edge of the hypothetical and 'what if' stuffs". In the end, I decided not to vote to close, because it's not so far off either. If you knew the universe better, you might have asked whether or not the known living horcrux could get old and pass away like anyone else. It might have been less hypothetical. – Clockwork Mar 30 '23 at 19:34
  • As a bonus: if I wanted to nitpick (like, badly), the title and some wordings of the post might not help either. Stuffs like "Let us say you made a mayfly into one" and "Just curious, as it sounds like an interesting concept" may make it look like you are looking for opinion rather than anything that is backed up by source. Then again, I'm not an authoritative figure, so you should take what I say with a grain of salt (or a spoonful, actually). – Clockwork Mar 30 '23 at 19:36
  • The mayfly one was just an example for people to use to explain the workings of living horcruxses. Plus, I mean a bit of opinion is needed in this type of SE anyway, imo, same for Worldbuilding SE. @Clockwork – Conan Highwoods Mar 30 '23 at 20:02
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    In trying to think of an edit to make this question appear less opinion based I found this question, which looks to me almost exactly what you're asking, just in a more succinct way – fez Mar 30 '23 at 20:17
  • So, the answer is it is unknown if they are nigh-immortals, for now at least, I guess. Still a weird reason to close it, but at least I got my answer. @fez – Conan Highwoods Mar 30 '23 at 20:32
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    Also, thanks for the link. @fez – Conan Highwoods Mar 30 '23 at 20:33
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    The question is a little bit vague, but honestly, why do we need to shut down every question that needs a little bit of clarification? Close votes seem to be the go-to method for removing questions that don't perfectly fit this site's standards. – Sovereign Inquiry Mar 31 '23 at 00:17
  • https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/256279/how-was-the-horcrux-in-nagini-destroyed-when-only-a-few-specific-things-can-des/256291#256291 – Alex Apr 03 '23 at 11:23

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