"
"Professor, does legilimens work on portraits or ghosts?"
"Of course not."
"Creatures, then?"
"Same as muggles, a clear mirror surface of emptiness. What made you ask?"
"It works on muggles though? You may see nothing, but you still *see nothing*?" (*in italics)
"... Where are you going with this?"
"Ghosts and portraits can both learn new things and retain the information, but legilimens doesn't work on them, despite that they clearly have minds, and animals which have much less intelligence, perhaps in even true mindlessness, still *connects*, but shows the same as muggles."
"..."
"What if legilimens doesn't connect *minds*, but rather connects the soul? Through which it would then magically interpret the mind?"
"-" (-insert response)
"
Can't remember if the principles of legilimency were explained if HP:MoR, but the topic of souls and using the aforementioned spell succeeding but giving no data as evidence tickled my intellectualism.

Wow. Top notch, thanks for writing

Yup. This is the stuff. I always thought another good argument against the argument that souls don't exist is the "antenna" argument: that is, the brain is an antenna to the souls, and breaking the antenna gives garbled messages to the soul, causing the soul to act on incorrect information, and for its messages to be garbled as well. It fails Occam's Razor, though. Then there is the "backup copy" argument…

One experiment Harry should conduct immediately is to see if Hermione gets the petals of the rose's rule faster this time. Antereograde amnesia allows people to build skills, if I recall correctly.

excellent story

Hi, I just read and listened HPMoR and HPMoRpodcast twice.

I really enjoyed this story (which could be a part of HPMoR with no doubt) and I must say I was a little sad when found myself as a muggle, and then, with no soul. :(

Just a comment: Madam Pomfrey said wizards don't have what Harry calls "brain damage". I think Neville's parents do qualify as brain-damaged.

I will read you other works soon. Thanks for writing!

Greetings,

You may know most of this, but I'll say it anyway: you've produced an exercise in cheating.

You've tried to come up with evidence of "souls" compatible with the text of MOR. But that story states the Harry and Hermione have many experiences beyond what made it onto the page. Most importantly, they both read a great deal in the Hogwarts library.

Now even in your story, even before we get to the bizarre situation with your "Quirrell", you come up with ways that the evidence you invented might have changed the world. It would be odd if there were actually souls that affected the world and yet neither of the students found better reason to believe in them before now.

In fact, Harry did encounter evidence nearly as good as this - for portraits. He took his time-travel-produced confusion to a lady in a painting, and she gave him the right answer. But this, like the Horcrux, seems like a straightforward case of magical copying which need not fit your preconceived notions of a "soul".

Wow, Ok. Got to the Petals around the Rose game, I was getting all the right answers by adding the odd numbers then subtracting the number of odd dice, and I was really confident. Then you explained it and my jaw dropped

I'm pretty sure Myrtle could form memories in canon. She told Harry what Cedric had done the last time he'd been in that bathroom, for instance, and they (Hermion, Ron, Harry) didn't have to re-explain to her what they were doing in her girl's loo every time they came to check on the polyjuice.

Still, it makes more sense this way. Rowling can try all she likes to steal personhood from ghosts and photographs by saying that they are not "truly alive" in whatever vague sense she means; it's far more plausible that death is some kind of brain damage to the soul, or however you would put it, I don't think there is jargon for this, but at any rate ghosts are alive and people and the remember their lives but not past interactions as ghosts. And they don't notice that.

Very well done. 10/10.
I'm not sure which is creepier honestly; the HPMOR world of HP-canon world.
In one, you have muggles without souls.
And in the other, you have soul-eating creatures for no real reason.
I honestly would not like to live in either.

Mother of god did not expecat that

Very nicely done.

Fascinating proposal. Very depressing. I like it. Thanks for the oneshot.

Speechless, wow.

This was GREAT... I heard it on the podcast about 20 times and loved it each time. :)))

Aww. Now I'm thinking of everyone asking the ghost at the top of Ravenclaw Tower to help with Arithmancy homework. ;_;