Sorting Hat as Horcrux? (Was: Voldemort's chat with Dumbledore)

[mercurybluesmng]

No: HPFGUIDX 143220

> Carol:
> I don't like the idea of the Sorting Hat as a Horcrux, either, in part
> for the reasons that you stated: It can think for itself, and we don't
> know how long the encasing spell takes.

MercuryBlue:
What makes you think I like the idea? I have absolutely no clue as to
how Harry can eliminate that Horcrux without torching the Hat. We do
kinda need the Hat to survive intact. (Presuming Hogwarts reopens...)

Carol:
>The Sorting Hat has been
> calling for unity, not exactly the sort of thing an object
> contaminated by Voldemort would do. It also regrets its own function,
> sorting the students into houses ("quartering them every year"), and
> JKR says that it has never made a mistake (so presumably we'll find
> out why Percy and PP ended up in Gryffindor). It also presented the
> Sword of Gryffindor to Harry, enabling him to defeat the Basilisk and
> ultimately to destroy the Diary!Horcrux and Diary!Tom.

MercuryBlue:
Maybe the Hat doesn't know it's a Horcrux?

Carol:
>And it should
> be noted that Tom Riddle himself, a half-blood with enormous ambition
> (as well as an apparently innate propensity to evil) ended up in
> Slytherin before he could possibly have tampered with the Sorting Hat.

MercuryBlue:
True, BUT. Tom seems to have started out with the desire to beat
everyone else, preferably into the ground. That certainly fits my
definition of 'ambition'. Not well, but... And that's what the Sorting
Hat's definition of 'ambition' seems to have become.

Carol:
> Another reason I don't think that Tom Riddle would have made the
> Sorting Hat a Horcrux is Diary!Tom's attitude toward it. ("This is
> what Dumbledore sends you? A songbird and an old hat?") Now granted,
> sixteen-year-old Memory!Tom would not yet have known that he made any
> Horcruxes, even perhaps the diary, which was originally created for
> another purpose, but his contempt for the hat doesn't indicate that he
> would have chosen it. He likes his Horcruxes to be valuable and not
> subject to decay, objects made of silver or gold, not shabby old hats.

MercuryBlue:
Even money that the Hat was nearly that tattered while Godric was
wearing it. For thousand-year-old cloth, it's remarkably
well-preserved. The contempt he showed towards it in the Chamber is
for Harry, who's dumb enough to think that it might have some use
other than at the Sortings. It IS still a powerful magical artifact
with connections to all four Founders.

Carol:
>Now granted,
> sixteen-year-old Memory!Tom would not yet have known that he made any
> Horcruxes, even perhaps the diary, which was originally created for
> another purpose...

MercuryBlue:
Sixteen-year-old Memory!Tom IS a Horcrux. Or more accurately, he is
the soul fragment attached to the diary. How can he NOT have known
that he'd already made a Horcrux?

Carol:
> I agree with Orna that it's unlikely that the complex spell required
> to create a Horcrux could be cast in thirty seconds. I'm guessing that
> it requires an elaborate ritual incantation spoken aloud, something
> the portraits would have heard and reported to the headmaster had he
> attempted something so overtly evil while he was still at school.

MercuryBlue:
And just how many time-consuming spells have we seen? Complex spells,
yeah, plenty of them, but once they've got the hang of them we've
never seen anyone put more time into a spell than it takes to say the
word, have we? The thirty seconds is a guesstimate on my part, yes,
but I put 'thirty' rather than 'three' because it does seem like it
would take more time than the average spell.

Carol:
> I disagree, though, that the Horcrux has to be created immediately
> after the murder.

MercuryBlue:
Voldemort uses 'significant' murders to create the Horcruxes. How he
or anyone can tell one soul fragment from another (nobody can see the
soul, remember) is utterly beyond me. Ergo, to be sure the Horcrux is
created with the fragment torn loose by a particular murder, it MUST
be created right after the murder.

MercuryBlue