Sorting Hat as Horcrux?

[mercurybluesmng]

No: HPFGUIDX 143359

Carol:
> Forgive me, but your tone here (and elsewhere) is a bit harsh. 
> There's no need to get your back up when you disagree with someone 
> or when they disagree with you.

MercuryBlue:
My apologies. I don't mean to snap at people. I just find it 
aggravating when people don't step back and think it through, or 
double-check their facts, before drawing their conclusions.


CH3ed wrote:
> > > I really don't think the Sorting Hat is a horcrux. It seems 
> > > very unlikely that LV had learned how to make one before he 
> > > graduated and as far as we know he had had no access to it 
> > > after he did.
 
MercuryBlue responded:
> > The diary Horcrux, may I remind you, was created when he was
> > SIXTEEN. Nobody graduates until they're at least closing on 
> > EIGHTEEN.

Carol:
> It's true that the diary was *written* when Tom was sixteen (the
> memory that it contains is himself near the end of his fifth year 
> and he would have turned sixteen the previous January), but its 
> original purpose was to "continue Salazar Slytherin's noble work" 
> of weeding out "Mudbloods" using the Basilisk. It was not 
> originally a Horcrux, as *he did not know how to make one at that 
> time*.
>
> When he wrote the diary (placed the memory of himself in it), he 
> had not yet killed his father and grandparents, who were apparently 
> AK'd the following summer. He returned to school wearing the ring, 
> which could not have been a Horcrux or he would not have asked 
> Slughorn how to create one.

MercuryBlue:
Would you please explain what makes you think that Memory!Tom is 
separate from SoulFragment!Tom? That seems to be the main point of 
your argument, that Tom put the memory of his sixteen-year-old self 
into the diary, then went off and killed his dad and figured out how 
to make Horcruxes and attached a soul fragment to the diary too. I 
don't see how the memory is separate from the soul fragment, which 
does imply that Tom had both killed his family and figured out how 
to make Horcruxes before he hit seventeen. (Which, in point of fact, 
was in December.)


Carol:
> He *may* have discovered it the following summer (between his sixth 
> and seventh years), possibly by visiting Grindelvald (whose
> single Horcrux it appears that Dumbledore later destroyed)

MercuryBlue:
Dumb question: Why do you think Grindelwald made a Horcrux? My 
thought was he's famous only for being defeated by Dumbledore, and 
is utterly irrelevant now.


Carol:
> I've stated before that I think the creation of a Horcrux, being 
> Dark magic of the worst order, requires an elaborate ritual along 
> the lines of the restoration incantation or the Unbreakable Vow 
> <snip> I doubt very much if he could just point his wand at the 
> sorting Hat and cast a two-word spell like my invented "Creo 
> Horcruxum!" 

MercuryBlue:
Can we agree to disagree? It isn't likely that we'll find out which 
of us is right, after all.


Carol:
> Moreover, we've seen that the Sorting Hat has a mind of its own 
> over and above the "brains" of the four Founders poured into it 
> when the school was divided into four Houses. It's clearly not 
> influenced by Tom Riddle's thinking. (JKR says it has never been 
> wrong.) 

MercuryBlue:
JKR didn't actually say it's never been wrong, just that it is 
certainly sincere. So it honestly believes it has sent everyone into 
the best House for them, whether it's actually the best House for 
them or not.