Here's a short question/bunny:

What if there really was a test for students to be sorted? Obviously nothing as hard as defeating a troll, but perhaps a simple test which determines their skill level and personality traits?

For example, there would be three tasks:

1. Answering a question from one of the textbooks (student chooses which 1st year subject they will be questioned about).
2. Demonstrating proficiency with at least one spell.
3. Judgement by the Sorting Hat.

EDIT: 1,500 posts, nice.

 

The test should be something appropriately cool for a school of magic. Lock the firstie in a room with a sphinx.

Solve the riddle: Ravenclaw
Ask the sphinx to please let me through, pretty please with a cherry on top?: Hufflepuff
Try to con/blackmail the sphinx into letting me pass: Slytherin
Get out of my way or I'll fuck you up: Gryffindor

In fact, I might crank out a crackfic for this bunny :awesome

edit: but remember folks, true Slytherins go to Hufflepuff

 

I wanted to give you thumbs up for your post, but for that statement I won't.

 

You forgot one...

Fuck the sphinx: Get sorted into Fanfic House, a mysterious and long-forgotten fifth house populated only by Harry, girls who like Harry (which now includes the Sorting Sphinx), and maybe Neville.

Goddammit, you fanfic writers... is nothing sacred? :facepalm

 

Someday, I will come up with a Fifth House plot.

Like, say, sometime during Harry's fourth year, someone figures out exactly how Harry became the second Hogwart's champion. The mechanics of tricking the Goblet of Fire into spitting out a champion from a fourth school MUST be similar enough to the possibility of getting the Sorting Hat to create a fake fifth house just long enough to publicly bamboozle the entire school at the Sorting feast... right?

So Joe Schmoe Random student goes and plots out this whole little scheme, and goes a step ahead and designs a stupid looking purple and orange crest for the fake house and 'desirable traits' and puts together a list of names of all of the students who've pissed them off or are just too pathetic for words (Neville and Harry definitely made the cut).

The kid loses steam for awhile until Something Happens that pisses him off beyond all reason and leads to him impulsively breaking into the Headmaster's office to try to hex the Sorting Hat. He halfway does not expect any of it to work, and gives up halfway through trying to Confund the Hat after he chickens out of doing anything more.

But not before the Sorting Hat ate his papers.

Cut to OotP's Sorting Feast, where the Sorting Hat's song is a little stranger than the canon deviation - something about, "Trying out new shoes," or something - until 5 out of 56 new first years are abruptly sorted into "House Bumbleduck," home of the worthless jerks and freaks. (INSERT WITTY ANIMAL MASCOT HERE.)

A table appears for these five unfortunates, who stand there in complete confusion as the Hat forces the ceremony to go on and Dumbledore tries to talk to the Hat who ends up not Sorting half of the first years immediately because the Hat moves on to the List, and several dozen student's names are called as they are resorted into House Bumbleduck, with their uniforms changing to reflect their new house, and a new orange and purple hourglass appearing on the far wall for their house points.

And then there's no point to it because there isn't a plot, it's just a cute way to resort the entire school while Joe Schmoe stares on in delight as everyone around him is thrown into chaos and upset.

 

Honey badger, becasue he doesn't give a fuck Also, would love to read this kind of crack fic.

 

But Hufflepuff is already a badger.

You can't have more than one badger, that's how you get mushrooms.
And snakes...

 

It's probably a pygmy puff.

Dumbledore's Army of Little Psychos, indeed.

...naaaah.

 

No, the mascot is a platypus. :awesome

 

In one of my own little Bunnies (an HP/Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy Crossover), a Fifth House does exist, but it is almost never used and is explicitly reserved for people the Hat deems either especially stupid, especially insane, or especially evil. So, naturally, that's where Billy, Mandy, and Harry end up. It would have served as my attempt to Deconstruct the Fifth House idea.

 

This picture, whatever it actually is in it, is my new Plot Bunny.

Imagine you are seeing the Forbidden Forest and these creatures are unwanted newcomers.

 

Fiendfyre takes care of all infestations.

 

And forests.

 

Yes, I'm sure things like dementors would be so hurt by FiendFyre.

 

A Fiendfyre made of happy thoughts can.

It's a cunning plan, there's no doubt about it.

 

And if that does not work, you can alway concrete this entire thing and build a freaking supermarket.

Capitalism, ho!

 

Jesus fuck I almost had a heart attack, staring at the foreground and then BAM

 

The Forbidden Forest is actually a stabilized placement of Purgatory. Pre-Dark Ages wizardkind accidentally discovered it during early Apparition and Portkey creation, letting out Dementors, Dragons, Nundu, Acromantulas, Lethifolds, and more into the world. Hogwarts was built adjacent to the portal and used to stabilize it and blockade any further monsters from entering without the express permission of the Headmaster(or anyone skilled enough to manipulate the fold between earth and Purgatory).

 

And that's why Voldemort wanted to become a teacher at Hogwarts. While a student, he learned of this dark past. It was his intention to become the Headmaster and then raise up an army of netherworld creatures and become the greatest, and truest Dark Lord.

But Dumbledore suspected his plan. It's also why he never gave the Defending Against Dark Arts position to Snape. It's really a Ministry position to help keep it sealed off. But Malfoy was buying Fudge off and also messing around with the school on the Board of Directors, which is why all the DADA professors were so bad except for Remus, who Dumbledore snuck in. And, that's also the real reason why Snape had to make sure he was outed as a werewolf. The whole "I hate you for our past" was a nice happenstance, thought still true.

 

Yes, I'd say there are many things that hide in the forests.