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elharo comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 26, chapter 97 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Actually in canon (or at least word of Rowling) there were two human Horcruxes: HP and Quirrell. That Quirrell was a Horcrux isn't explicit, and isn't relevant by the time Harry learns about Horcruxes, but Rowling has confirmed that he was.
Er, really? every thing i've read in the books indicates that quirrel was NOT a horcrux, but was posessed by the central voldemort who had previously been possessing snakes...or any other animal he could get ahold of.
So it was probably a blunder on her part when she said that quirrel was a horcrux, IF she said that.
How does that tie into the numerology? It's stated that Voldemort wanted to have seven total shards of his soul - Riddle himself, diary, cup, diadem, snake, ring, and locket. Seems like she's contradicting herself.
He DID want 7 total fragments. Then he accidentally turned harry into one and didn't realize he'd done so. I can't quit recall if he made nagini before or after the diary got zapped.
Quirrel is not a horcrux. he is possessed by voldemort himself.
Cannon Harry is an Accidental horcrux. Canon voldemort never realized harry was a horcrux BECAUSE he'd never used the incantation to seal the soul fragment within harry.
This is my point.
????
Last paragraph of this Pottermore screenshot describes him as an 'effective horcrux' I presume because he's possessed by the remaining part of Voldemort's soul.
"Effective" is not the same as "actual." Quirrel wasn't a horcrux in the sense that Harry or Nagini were horcruxes, even with what she's saying there. She just meant to say that Quirrel was like a horcrux. No ritual was done to make him into a horcrux.
Not the same; agreed. However, there was no ritual done to Harry!Horcrux in JKR-canon either.
I think the idea was that with Harry the requirements of the ritual were fulfilled, though accidentally. One of those requirements is the death of an innocent.
But the HP wiki says that there's some kind of incantation that goes along with it, so that's either optional or... whatever. It seems to be like the Goblet of Fire portkey. The rule is the rule except when it isn't.
The biggest difference between Harry-as-horcrux and Quirrel-as-horcrux is that Voldemort doesn't seem to have killed anyone (as far as we know) to possess Quirrel. So even if Harry might have accidentally become a horcrux, Quirrel didn't, although he might have served the same purpose a horcrux does in "keeping the soul anchored to the mortal world."
I'm definitely not trying to argue that these things are consistent here, though. The point is that when people say something is "effectively" something else, they mean "practically" or "almost" rather than "actually." Unless someone finds some corpus data that suggests that Rowling's dialect (or, hell, her ideolect might be workable since she HAS written several rather large books) has a different usage...
In HPMOR, maybe (I think so, anyway). Rowling has stated that her version of the ritual is lengthy, and involves hings that made her ... publisher, I think? ... throw up.
Having looked into this, it appears that Harry was "technically" not a Horcrux, due to being an accident rather than prepared with the correct rituals; while Quirrel simply contained the soul fragment that was "original" Voldemort, temporarily.