Hat reading memories is fanon. In canon it seems more of a kind of "character detector".

 

According to pottermore the Sorting Hat uses Legilimency.

 

I thought of a twist to Don E. Delivery's Astoria plotline. Public support for the Ministry rebounded only slightly after the war ended and has eroded since then. The majority of the normally apathetic public wants to see the Wizengamot replaced by a small elected council. Even worse, they are becoming angry enough that a popular revolution is a real possibility.

Former supporters of Voldemort and their family members would be the first targets in a revolt. Astoria has decided that being a Malfoy is no longer a safe bet.

Exposing their crimes should sufficiently distance herself. It's a pity that recent circumstances have forced the family to become the model citizens that they always pretended to be. She'll have to frame them for something.

 

Your own link:

It's using legilimency to examine a person's nature, not their memories.

 

This is what I had meant.^^

Agreed that it examines a person's nature. However how do you think the hat views there nature / capabilities. Through there memories and experiences.

 

I think that unlikely, given that we know what it feels like to be the victim of a legilimens looking for a memory: the memory replays itself in the victim's mind. We saw this in both Snape's lessons in OotP and when Snape used legilimency on Harry in HBP to discover where he had learnt Sectumsempra.

There is no such feeling when the Sorting Hat is using legilimency. We know that legilimency has a variety of uses beyond looking at memories: it can tell you what a person's imminent actions are (Snape blocking Harry's spells) and also if someone is telling the truth (Voldemort). Reading a person's character does contradict this.

Indeed, we do have an example of another piece of magic capable of reading a person's entire character, including their abilities and skills: the Goblet of Fire.

 

Fair enough, however at the end this comes down to a debate of semantics and whether or not the hat has superior legilimency skills or another ability which allows it to read the persons character.

The point I was making, which is to use the Mirror or Erised in addition to the sorting hat, is that an 11 year old's character is far from fully formed. While the Mirror only shows "their greatest desire" it would be interesting to see how it would affect the sorting, if at all.

 

I wasn't disagreeing with the Hat sorting based on personality and character.

But if the Sorting Hat is skilled at Legilimancy it should also be able to view memories. It wouldn't do that during a sorting for obvious reasons, but it could work for the plot bunny in question.

 

Quick Plot Bunny: In 1995, a foreign magical nation starts a war by invading wizarding Britain. Dumbledore and Voldemort are forced to cooperate to defend Britain.

Bonus points if the Goblins see this as an opportunity and begin another rebellion.

 

I've been thinking about this for a while:

We know before the Statute of Secracy that in the UK many magical families had close ties to the muggle aristocracy. Presumably before this time, it wasn't a hatred of muggleborns and muggles that existed, rather a hatred of poor people. Given witches and wizards have magic it was pretty difficult for them to be truly poor like the average commoner.

So, what if this magical/aristocracy relationship continued to exist post-Statute in other parts of the world? Take Imperial Russia for example; up until the October Revolution they were still a very feudal society; commoners had no rights at all. So lets imagine that Eastern European magicals didn't feel the need to separate themselves from the aristocrats.

This practice would have continued for several centuries, and then the October Revolution rolls around. The Tsar is dead, the noble men and women are fleeing lest they get strung up from a tree with piano wire. Some decide to take refuge with their magical friends.

Lenin and his compatriots spends the next few years rebuilding the Russian government into the Communist Utopia (lol) they dreamed of, but they begin to hear rumours of magic from the Cheka (predecessor to the NKDV which was the predecessor to the KGB) and find documents left over from the time of the Tsar talking of a secret magical society living along side them.

The Soviets do some digging and send agents to investigate these claims. They discover that these magicals were closely linked to the aristocracy and continue to harbour to this day enemy's of the State. Lenin decides that these magical are a threat to the revolution and decree threat they must be exterminated, thus beginning the purges.

Using the time proven methods of blackmail and extortion, the Cheka forces several magicals to help the Soviet Army gain access to various magical locations and slaughter every magical they can. Magicals flee when they discover that the protections on their homes don't stop artillery shells or bombs. Given their magical teleportation methods, many magicals escape safely.

However, many don't want to move too far from their homeland and thus they end up in the border regions of the newly formed Soviet Union. Meanwhile fear of muggles and muggleborns rises causing Dumstrang to close its doors to muggleborns. Many of the magicals in the countries that would one day make up the satellite states of the Soviet Union look cautiously east for the threat of the Soviets, remembering the attempted purges.

It's the thirties, and magicals in Eastern Europe are closely watching the rise of a German man called Gellert Grindlewald. He's closely tied himself to Adolf Hitler who is a staunch anti-Communist. Magicals hope that he may lead them agaist the Soviet so they can enact revenge and reclaim their homes.

So, when the call to arms is made, many immediately sign up in Grindlewald's magical army.

I thought this out as an attempt to humanise and justify why so many would sign up with Grindlewald. The fact is, both the Nazis and the Soviets were fucking evil. They both did horrible things, but the average layperson in those respective countries wasn't. So I wrote this as a thought exercise of why magicals might sign up with someone like Adolf Hitler.

 

Plot bunny - another "alternate school" with a twist.

Dumbledore died soon after Voldemort's demise at the Godric's Hollow. His attempt to tell the truth about Tom Riddle's origins backfired, resulting in more strict laws against muggleborns and 'half-breeds'. For example, the children with 'unclean' blood are not allowed to attend Hogwarts. Instead they are sent to a less known school of magic in the Northern Ireland.
The new Minister of Magic demands the Department of Mysteries to create the Detector of Blood Purity. The results of the mandatory tests are unexpected; Marcus Flint shows the traces of Troll blood; Malfoys had Veela ancestry; Lovegoods are part-Fae etc. The Minister lost a lot of his 'financial benefactors', but can't stop without losing face.
End of the Second year - Harry's blood mutated thanks to the exposure of Basilisk venom and Phoenix tears (Fawkes didn't abandon Hogwarts despite Dumbledore's death), so he fails the Purity Test.
He ends up transferred to the new school. Madame Maxime is the Headmistress (French Minister of Magic followed the example of his British colleague), Flitwick is a Charms teacher, Remus Lupin teaches DADA, Hagrid teaches Care. The Astronomy teacher is a Vampire etc.

 

And these schools become the nucleus of the movement for a revolution against the pureblood racist regime. Harry, The-boy-who-liberated!

 

This guy bragging about the broom, that could reach the moon at the Quidditch Cup actually said the truth: There is a Wizard colony at the backside of the moon for the case, that either Voldemort takes over or starts a war with the muggles.

 

Plot Bunny: A Potterverse/Buffyverse fusion in which Rupert Giles is Hermione's father. He trains her from a young age to be a watcher, then the Hogwarts letter arrives and opens a lot of new possibilities.

In this fusion, the Watchers know about the magical world, but have no way of using magic themselves unless they get a muggleborn to join them.

Furthermore, the Watchers try to keep their existence a secret from both muggles and wizards, knowing that the former would think them crazy while the latter would obliviate them.

Vampires are a lot more badass than in the Potterverse and even wizards have a hard time dealing with them. This is where the Slayer comes in.

The Slayer is a perfect vampire-killing weapon, but cannot use magic herself. However, her Slayer Abilities allow her to see magical creatures, such as Dementors.

The reason the Slayer deals with vampires better is because vampires possess a certain degree of resistance to magic (though not a complete one), requiring physical strength to deal with them. After all, you cannot slay a soulless creature with the Killing Curse.

Anyway, back to the Plot.

Hermione's Hogwarts letter arrives and Giles notifies the Watcher's Council of this development. Hermione is to receive the required education at Hogwarts, after which she will join the Watchers as an agent inside the magical world.

From this point the story could go in several directions:

1 - Either Hermione or Harry-centric story in this setting, showing how different their first year would be in this fusion universe.

2 - Fast forward to 1998 when Harry graduates Hogwarts and learns Hermione's secret.

3 - The second idea, but with Buffy's adventures involved. It turns out that during Hermione's sixth year Giles moved to Sunnydale to train Buffy and now Hermione is going to join them with Harry deciding to go as well.

 

Would you strip out Buffy magic and replace it with HP magic? I've only seen a small part of Buffy but I know their respective magics are very much incompatible.

 

Is this actually based on anything? I mean, removing a persons soul doesn't kill them. So why would the Killing Curse kill by removing the soul rather than just killing? If a being can be killed at all, I would think a spell that is specifically causes target to die without even needing to do any kind of damage to them would kill them.

The only stuff it logically wouldn't work against is stuff that outright can't be killed.

 

The killing curse expelling a soul is conjecture based fanon mostly based on Voldemort's killing curse removing the scar-crux. At the same time though dementors remove the soul yet don't kill the body.

 

That just means killing sends the soul on. As you pointed out, the very nature of dementors shows it doesn't work the other way around. Hence the killing curse doesn't kill by removing the soul. It kills and that removes the soul.

I mean, Harry even still died and talked to Dumbledore and then got the choice to go back because he's the protagonist and nothing really matters where protagonists are concerned.

 

The Killing Curse kills things.

Vampires are already dead, which is why they can't be killed only destroyed (slain).

Therefore, it can be reasoned that the Killing Curse does not work on vampires.

 

Not really a plotbunny, but an idea I had: the name 'Unforgivable' has nothing to do with a legal interpretation of spells (or division into light/dark magic), but is instead derived from being an 'unforgivable' sin against magic. Imperius, Cruciatus, and Avade Kedavra are the only spells in existence that rip tiny holes into the fabric of magic whenever they're used, thus making them unforgivable.

Haven't thought it through much further though, and it would require magic to be something akin to the force.