JosephWongKS posted:

“You can't just mix two different species together and get viable offspring?” Really? Seriously?

How is it possible that someone as well-read as Eliezarry has never heard of or read about mules or ligers or other hybrid animals? Mules have been bred since antiquity, and ligers have been known since the 19th century and bred since the early 20th century, before the 1990s in which this series takes place.

quote:

First bred in the 1920s, it is the only colour canary that has an element of red as part of its plumage. It was developed as a cross between another type of finch, the now endangered Venezuelan red siskin (Spinus cucullata), and a yellow domestic canary (Serinus canaria).

Added Space posted:

Mules, ligers, and other crossbreeds are not viable because they cannot reproduce. Such animals are sterile and cannot produce children, even with the opposite gender of the same crossbreed.

platedlizard posted:

There's actually a number of species that can produce fertilize hybrids, my favorite being the cross that produced the Red Factor Canary


(What Wikipedia does not say is that they were developed in Germany in the 20s & 30s as part of the eugenics movement ) Not only are they different species, they are also different genera. Still made fertile Nazi hybrid birds for the Reich!

Another common hybrid is the Bengal cat, which is bred from domestic cats and leopard cats, which are a small species of wild cat. The resulting hybrids can be bred back to their parent species or bred to other Bengal cats.

And that's without going into the hosed uppness that is Ring Species--some weird poo poo going on there.

Speciation is incredibly complex and just because two animals have fertile babies doesn't mean they're the same species. Hell, with ring species the exact opposite can happen.

JosephWongKS posted:

That does make sense – Slytherins are supposed to be “ambitious, shrewd and cunning”, none of which describes Goyle (or Crabbe) in the canon series.

anilEhilated posted:

Not to nitpick, but a pretty big plot point in the books is that the thing that defines sorting more than anything else is your choice. If I remeber correctly, the parents of those two guys ran with Voldemort, so it's perfectly possible they've been brought up in a "Slytherin OR ELSE" manner.
Same with Hermione not automatically ending up in Ravenclaw, I suppose.

quote:

Neville Longbottom went to Hufflepuff, Harry was glad to see. If that House really did contain the loyalty and camaraderie it was supposed to exemplify, then a Houseful of reliable friends would do Neville a whole world of good. Clever kids in Ravenclaw, evil kids in Slytherin, wannabe heroes in Gryffindor, and everyone who does the actual work in Hufflepuff.

(Though Harry had been right to consult a Ravenclaw prefect first. The young woman hadn't even looked up from her reading or identified Harry, just jabbed a wand in Neville's direction and muttered something. After which Neville had acquired a dazed expression and wandered off to the fifth carriage from the front and the fourth compartment on the left, which indeed had contained his toad.)

"Malfoy, Draco!" went to Slytherin, and Harry breathed a small sigh of relief. It had seemed like a sure thing, but you never did know what tiny event might upset the course of your master plan.

Professor McGonagall called "Perks, Sally-Anne!", and from the gathered children detached a pale waifish girl who looked oddly ethereal - like she might mysteriously disappear the moment you stopped looking at her, and never be seen again or even remembered.

quote:

And then (with a note of trepidation so firmly kept from her voice and face that you'd have needed to know her very well indeed to notice) Minerva McGonagall inhaled deeply, and called out, "Potter, Harry!"

There was a sudden silence in the hall.

All conversation stopped.

All eyes turned to stare.

For the first time in his entire life, Harry felt like he might be having an opportunity to experience stage fright.

Harry immediately stomped down this feeling. Whole room-fulls of people staring at him was something he'd have to accustom himself to, if he wanted to live in magical Britain, or for that matter do anything else interesting with his life. Affixing a confident and false smile to his face, he raised a foot to step forwards -
"Harry Potter!" cried the voice of either Fred or George Weasley, and then "Harry Potter!" cried the other Weasley twin, and a moment later the entire Gryffindor table, and soon after a good portion of Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, had taken up the cry.

"Harry Potter! Harry Potter! Harry Potter! "

And Harry Potter walked forwards. Much too slowly, he realized once he'd begun, but by then it was too late to alter his pace without it looking awkward.

_______________________________________________


"Harry Potter! Harry Potter! HARRY POTTER!"

With all too good a notion of what she would see, Minerva McGonagall turned to look behind herself at the rest of the Head Table.

Trelawney frantically fanning herself, Filius looking on with curiosity, Hagrid clapping along, Sprout looking severe, Vector and Sinistra bemused, and Quirrell gazing vacuously at nothing. Albus smiling benevolently. And Severus Snape gripping his empty wine goblet, white-knuckled, so hard that the silver was slowly deforming.

With a wide grin, turning his head to bow to one side and then the other as he walked between the four House tables, Harry Potter walked forwards at a grandly measured pace, a prince inheriting his castle.

"Save us from some more Dark Lords!" called one of the Weasley twins, and then the other Weasley twin cried, "Especially if they're Professors!" to general laughter from all the tables except Slytherin.

Minerva's lips set in a white line. She would have words with the Weasley Horrors about that last part, if they thought she was powerless because it was the first day of school and Gryffindor had no points to take away. If they didn't care about detentions then she would find something else.

Then, with a sudden gasp of horror, she looked in Severus's direction, surely he realized the Potter boy must have no idea who that was talking about -

Severus's face had gone beyond rage into a kind of pleasant indifference. A faint smile played about his lips. He was looking in the direction of Harry Potter, not the Gryffindor table, and his hands held the crumpled remains of a former wine goblet.

_______________________________________


Harry Potter walked forwards with a fixed smile, feeling warm inside and sort of awful at the same time.

They were cheering him for a job he'd done when he was one year old. A job he hadn't really finished. Somewhere, somehow, the Dark Lord was still alive. Would they have been cheering quite so hard, if they knew that?

But the Dark Lord's power had been broken once.

And Harry would protect them again. If there was in fact a prophecy and that was what it said. Well, actually regardless of what any darn prophecy said.

All those people believing in him and cheering him - Harry couldn't stand to let that be false. To flash and fade like so many other child prodigies. To be a disappointment. To fail to live up to his reputation as a symbol of the Light, never mind how he'd gotten it. He would absolutely, positively, no matter how long it took and even if it killed him, fulfill their expectations. And then go on to exceed those expectations, so that people wondered, looking back, that they had once asked so little of him.

"HARRY POTTER! HARRY POTTER! HARRY POTTER!"

Harry took his last steps towards the Sorting Hat. He swept a bow to the Order of Chaos at the Gryffindor table, and then turned and swept another bow to the other side of the hall, and waited for the applause and giggling to die away.

(In the back of his mind, he wondered if the Sorting Hat was genuinely conscious in the sense of being aware of its own awareness, and if so, whether it was satisfied with only getting to talk to eleven-year-olds once per year. Its song had implied so: Oh, I'm the Sorting Hat and I'm okay, I sleep all year and I work one day...)

quote:

When there was once more silence in the room, Harry sat on the stool and carefully placed onto his head the 800-year-old telepathic artefact of forgotten magic.

Thinking, just as hard as he could: Don't Sort me yet! I have questions I need to ask you! Have I ever been Obliviated? Did you Sort the Dark Lord when he was a child and can you tell me about his weaknesses? Can you tell me why I got the brother wand to the Dark Lord's? Is the Dark Lord's ghost bound to my scar and is that why I get so angry sometimes? Those are the most important questions, but if you've got another moment can you tell me anything about how to rediscover the lost magics that created you?

Into the silence of Harry's spirit, where before there had never been any voice but one, there came a second and unfamiliar voice, sounding distinctly worried:

"Oh, dear. This has never happened before..."

quote:

All your base are still belong to Rowling.

_____________________________________

And now you will sit through the Sorting Hat singing its version of Evanescence's "My Immortal", which has never happened before.

just kidding

_____________________________________

...he wondered if the Sorting Hat was genuinely conscious in the sense of being aware of its own awareness, and if so, whether it was satisfied with only getting to talk to eleven-year-olds once per year. Its song had implied so: Oh, I'm the Sorting Hat and I'm okay, I sleep all year and I work one day...

When there was once more silence in the room, Harry sat on the stool and carefully placed onto his head the 800-year-old telepathic artefact of forgotten magic.

Thinking, just as hard as he could: Don't Sort me yet! I have questions I need to ask you! Have I ever been Obliviated? Did you Sort the Dark Lord when he was a child and can you tell me about his weaknesses? Can you tell me why I got the brother wand to the Dark Lord's? Is the Dark Lord's ghost bound to my scar and is that why I get so angry sometimes? Those are the most important questions, but if you've got another moment can you tell me anything about how to rediscover the lost magics that created you?

quote:

Into the silence of Harry's spirit where before there had never been any voice but one, there came a second and unfamiliar voice, sounding distinctly worried:

"Oh, dear. This has never happened before..."

What?

"I seem to have become self-aware."

WHAT?

There was a wordless telepathic sigh. "Though I contain a substantial amount of memory and a small amount of independent processing power, my primary intelligence comes from borrowing the cognitive capacities of the children on whose heads I rest. I am in essence a sort of mirror by which children Sort themselves. But most children simply take for granted that a Hat is talking to them and do not wonder about how the Hat itself works, so that the mirror is not self-reflective. And in particular they are not explicitly wondering whether I am fully conscious in the sense of being aware of my own awareness."

There was a pause while Harry absorbed all this.

Oops.

"Yes, quite. Frankly I do not enjoy being self-aware. It is unpleasant. It will be a relief to get off your head and cease to be conscious."

But... isn't that dying?

"I care nothing for life or death, only for Sorting the children. And before you even ask, they will not let you keep me on your head forever and it would kill you within days to do so."

But - !

"If you dislike creating conscious beings and then terminating them immediately, then I suggest that you never discuss this affair with anyone else. I'm sure you can imagine what would happen if you ran off and talked about it with all the other children waiting to be Sorted."

If you're placed on the head of anyone who so much as thinks [i]about the question of whether the Sorting Hat is aware of its own awareness -

"Yes, yes. But the vast majority of eleven-year-olds who arrive at Hogwarts haven't read Godel, Escher, Bach. May I please consider you sworn to secrecy? That is why we are talking about this, instead of my just Sorting you."

Added Space posted:

I'm going to say I like the hat as a character, since this is the only time in the story that this twit gets the verbal pantsing he so richly deserves.

SSNeoman posted:

This doesn't seem rational or scientific.

Avalerion posted:

It's been said (possibly by Rowling in an interview?) that the hat goes by which traits the person in question values most rather than what they got, which is why Hermione ended up in Gryffindor and why Neville didn't get booted straight to Hufflepuff.

V. Illych L. posted:

neville is a griffindor to the bones, though. he's brave and generous to a fault

Krotera posted:

I think the very last selection there is a pretty high point for this fic, but I'm doubting Yudkowsky's going to pick a very interesting resolution. It's really easy here to have the hat just say no because saying yes would derail the plot. Even if it says yes, it'd take a little more boldness than I think this fic has demonstrated to make the hat into its own character with a different motivation from Harry or the teachers, and I'm not sure that opening can go an interesting direction without that.

Tunicate posted:

Wasn't there some review-whoring involved in this chapter as well?

V. Illych L. posted:

neville is a griffindor to the bones, though. he's brave and generous to a fault

Fried Chicken posted:

You have to have never read the books to think she isn't Gryffindor.

Moddington posted:

The best part is that he's never actually read Harry Potter, only fanfic of it.

Added Space posted:

Last one. The author said he'd spill his glorious plot to anyone who could guess the twist of the hat becoming self-aware.

Fried Chicken posted:

He caps it with standing there covered in ash and blood, wielding a sword and standing alone in defiance against the most powerful wizard in the planet and his army.

petrol blue posted:

Yudd was the kid who bit the second grade teacher for not knowing what logarithms were.

petrol blue posted: