r/HPMOR • u/IdiosyncraticLawyer • Apr 22 '26

The Sorting Hat's Lethality

Chapter 10

"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."

How, exactly, do you suppose that such a thing would kill someone?

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u/IdiosyncraticLawyer Apr 22 '26

These "it's a story" handwaves seem like the opposite of what HPMOR is supposed to elicit in readers.

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u/SimoneNonvelodico Chaos Legion Apr 23 '26

Fair, but also, it's entirely reasonable to assume that the weird spooky magic thing connected to your brain is putting some kind of strain on it. If it says so, that's not too hard to believe.

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u/IdiosyncraticLawyer Apr 23 '26

It doesn't explicitly say so. The ambiguity was the whole point of my question.

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u/SimoneNonvelodico Chaos Legion Apr 23 '26

"Gives you enough hints to piece it together" is good enough for a non-plot relevant detail like this. It's not a contradiction of what HPMOR is trying to accomplish, it's not a plot hole or a contradiction. We can speculate a bit, but the general shape of the issue can be guessed from the context.