@Taure:
They would never have been able to justify killing a little kid. Taking the magic from someone who will become a sociopath is one thing - pulling his teeth, so to speak (which is just stupid. The dangerous part is in his skull) but the population is just too small to prevent him from breeding. The plan is probably to keep the made-Sqibs downtrodden, and try to inculcate the next generation in Right Think.


Horror isn't necessarily gore. The realization that the Good Guys are mutilating small children still makes me flinch.

 

If they can justify taking his magic, they can justify killing him.

I find it ironic that the "Light" consider the taking away of magic to be punishment, considering that they're the ones who are supposed to think that Muggles are equal to wizards in worth.

 

Execution was my original idea too, but in the end, it just seemed way too overblown. As it is now, IMO this story demands an average effort at suspension of disbelief from its readers. Adding Malfoy's decapitated head rolling from the guillotine to under the first years' feet would have only turned it into a grotesque parody - something I didn't want to do at any cost.

 

Great job.

It's a bit unrealistic but it was short so it wasn't hard to suspend disbelief.

4.5/5

 

There is one thing I almost missed.

The Sorting Hat seems to be 'out of the loop'. It has absolutely no understanding at all of what is happening to those it sorts into Slytherin.

 

Sorting hat does indeed seem to be completely out of loop with reality. However, considering it is at least as old as Hogwarts, it probably considers modern events and tidings as mere passing fancies and continues to do as it sees fit.

 

I think IP82 changed the hat a bit from canon, and made it less sentient: just an enchanted hat that sorts students.

 

Naw, if it wasn't sentient it would just have sorted them without any regard for their own prejudice. Whether or not it does that now just depends on how fed up it is. I would get fed up if everytime I tried to do my job people forced me to do it in a way they think it best. In this regard I think IP82 characterized the hat better.

 

What law of magic have we seen that says an enchanted item must be sentient to read your desires, but it doesn't need to be sentient to read your character?

None.

 

The ability to compose songs, hold a conversation, and remember past sortings is pretty good evidence of sentience. OTOH, it's kind of surprising no kid has managed to tell the hat that they're mutilating Slytherins.

 

In PS, Quirrell/Voldemort cast a Charm on a harp to play itself. I don't think any of us would say that the harp was sentient.

You can have a conversation with a portrait, but they aren't sentient either: they are an echo, a memory. They are but the appearance of sentience.

A portrait also has a "memory", but not sentience, as above.

 

Or we can use the most simple solution for that hat.
If it was smart enough to notice what everyone was doing, it would not sort people into a house that would get the students punished by the general student body.
Smart hat = Bad for the plot

However all of what we say is junk until IP82 tells us his reason.

 

Occam's razor about the Hat issue: the Ministry messed with it. By the way Crouch had confounded another sentient object designed to sort out children by some characteristic, we can speculate that it's not all that hard to do.

And yes, as Taure said, this Hat obviously can't read memories; it determines the house by some other characteristic, or puts the kid's subconsciousness through an obstacle course or something like that.

 

Damn, that story was unnerving... Is that the word?

He is the biggest shit in existence!

 

That was a very, very entertaining oneshot, depicting how the "Light" side could actually wind up being just as oppressive as rule under Voldemort. I got a kick out of Ron's noble ancestry. Is it just me, or did he take on a vaguely Draco-esque personality under the new circumstances, what with all of his bragging about his heritage and handing out facts?

 

We all always knew that he would be. Even in canon. he's a poor mans Draco, without the money or the prestige to be cocky about well.....anything.

 

People have been cocky about much less. After all, that's the entire basis of racism and any other -ism out there that exists. "I'm better than those people by virtue of possessing non-controlable characteristic X." All it takes is a group of people to agree with your position to reinforce it.

 

I hate the idea for being so brutal to kids...but maybe it is worse because my baby brother is nearly in this age...
The same happened with Pet Cemetery by King when he was so young.
I´ve read it again after some time and didn´t get the same feeling again,
right place, right time-thing.
You feel it more intensive if you can picture your loved ones in the positions of the characters.

 

3.5/5 if I had to give it a rating.

It's well written and interesting, while still raising a lot of questions. I can kind of imagine it happening since people and groups often seem to classify themselves as absolute good and their enemies as absolute evil.