He sounds like her introductory theology teacher. She likes him already.

Gryffindor cared about courage, yes, but not purely physical courage. There's also the emotional courage to speak up when something isn't right even when people you respect don't agree, and the intellectual courage to face the truth no matter what it is. He saw the study of magic as fundamentally practical, oriented towards achieving things in the physical world alone or with a group of allies.

Ravenclaw saw magic as primarily an intellectual pursuit, a quest to understand the true underlying laws of reality. She loved curiosity, the urge to know for the sake of knowing, to share that knowledge with all who sought it, and to use it for the benefit of all.

Hufflepuff was the glue that held the other three together. She cared about friendship and loyalty and hard work, but mostly she cared about people. She saw wizardkind as a community, and the study of magic as a way to strengthen that community and preserve that culture. She cared more than any of the others about making sure every magical child she could reach had a home at Hogwarts.

Slytherin has a reputation, these days, for caring about the magical pedigree of his students more than anything else. And he did care about that, but not exclusively. He saw magic as a gift and a responsibility, something that not everyone was ready to use. He cared about the magical community and wanted to protect it from threats both internal and external. But he also cared about cultivating his students' talents. He believed in intelligence turned to practical ends, in the usefulness of knowing friend from foe and understanding what people want and how to work together with those you disagree with for a common end. He believed in finding the people with the will and the ability to do great things, then nurturing their talents and encouraging them to reach ever higher. His flaws have shaped his legacy more than any of the others, but his virtues were real virtues and many of his students accomplished great good in the world.

I think I understand. I resonate with Gryffindor more than any of the others, but it's obvious that all four of them working together would build something better than any one of them could have done alone.

If only it was so obvious to the eleven year olds I sort. I wish they'd get rid of that foolish "house point" contest they have every year to get them to try harder in class. It encourages the mindset where the houses are set against each other and only one can be the best. But I'm just ranting into the nearest listening ear at this point.

Everyone needs to rant sometimes. I appreciate the explanation! 

You're quite welcome, I'm sure.

Hat off. "That was illuminating."

"Excellent. Now, I believe you asked after my letter? It contained a number of puzzling things. The least puzzling was the solution to a problem in theoretical transfiguration I had been pondering and hadn't mentioned to anyone, and they only got odder from there. But the key part from your perspective was that you were sent here to pursue the final defeat of Lord Voldemort and prevent him from conquering this country."

"That makes sense. I'd appreciate information on his strengths and weaknesses and a map of how to get from here to Albania."

"I'm afraid it's going to be more complicated than that. And here is where I must ask you to promise me that you will keep certain matters secret before I can discuss them with you, even if it seems to you that they should not be concealed." He starts up another Detect Thoughts-alike.

High-bandwidth overview of her understanding of the importance of oaths! Also her reluctance to swear them generally but willingness to do so for matters as important as this seems to be, and the thing where she expects the Inheritor would renounce her for oathbreaking, this assurance being one of Her greatest gifts to Her empowered. Detect Thoughts is so useful, gosh, Samora is really gaining a deeper understanding of why the Inheritor had a permanent Telepathic Bond with her command staff when She was a mortal general.

"I would not ask this of you lightly. Keeping this information secret, especially from Harry Potter himself, may prove key to his survival and Lord Voldemort's downfall."

"Then you have my oath not to share it except with your permission, though my acting skills and susceptibility to mind-reading are as you see them."

"Thank you. I will need to train you in occlumency before sharing certain pieces of the puzzle, as Lord Voldemort is a legilimens of close to my own strength, though for reasons you will understand momentarily I hope you will be able to avoid a direct confrontation with him. Are you familiar with the nature of prophecies?"

"Prophecy is broken on my planet, but I know that elsewhere the gods and certain powerful outsiders are able to see the shape of the future and make plans that mortals can disrupt only rarely and by extraordinary effort."

"Then perhaps the connection between past and future here is weaker than it was on your planet before it broke. Prophecies here are made by Seers, not entirely voluntarily. They can be averted if their subjects choose to avert them, but prophecies and their subjects happen to be such that most of the time--though not always--the people involved will act so as to bring them about whether they are informed of the prophecy or not."

Reminds her of some of the weirder hypotheticals that came up in ethics seminar her senior year.

 "I know," the professor had said, "that thinking about some of these possibilities can feel like trying to turn your brain inside out. Try not to worry about it too much. You're very unlikely to ever end up in this sort of situation, and if you ever think you have you probably still haven't, but if you ever truly do, I hope that having thought about it in advance will help."

Thanks, professor Bjarnarsson; Samora hopes you're right.

"There was a prophecy spoken thirteen years ago," Dumbledore continues, "of which Voldemort already knows the first half; this much I can tell you without risk." His voice takes on the tone of one reciting a long-held memory. "The one with the power to vanquish the dark lord approaches . . . born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies." Voldemort came to believe that the prophecy referred to Harry Potter, and when young Harry survived his Killing Curse and destroyed his body in the process he must have become certain that he was correct. I believe that someday--though I hope that day may be long delayed--he will return to physical form and his full power. And when he does, his nature is such that he will seek out Harry Potter and try to destroy him, and Harry's nature is to stand and fight."

Poor kid. He's been handling it well, at least.

"Are you hoping to avert this prophecy, or see it fulfilled?--No, of course you can't answer that until you can tell me the second half. Is Voldemort undead, then, if he survived the destruction of his body, and what does he need to do to get a new one?"

"There are rituals, too Dark to speak of in any detail, that allow a wizard to tear off a piece of his soul--at a cost to his sanity-- anchor it to an object, and so survive the death of his body as a spirit. I believe this diary is one such. But it was not hidden behind walls and spells and traps, but deployed as a weapon. The Riddle I knew would not have risked his only defense against death so lightly. And so I fear that he has gone beyond even other dark lords in his depravity--that he has made more than one."

A lich. A lich with multiple phylacteries. "Inheritor guard us."

"I intend to research Riddle's history, trace the path of his rise to power, and find out what objects he may have chosen for this purpose and where he might have hidden them. I hope, but do not expect, to find them all; still, I will give Harry Potter whatever head start I can."

"I'll help as much as I can, of course. And--I may be able to meaningfully help already." Being an adventurer gives one a certain ability to put two and two together. "Before I ran into Potter and Weasley, I appeared in a room full of strange objects, and one of them had an Evil aura. I've had some success in the past, albeit with help, in turning powerful Evil magic items into similar Good ones, so I took it for later investigation. It seems rather too good to be true, but when a friendly archmage is picking your landing spot . . ."

"Did you touch it? Where is it? Show me."

"I didn't, I just knocked it into my bag. Getting it out again without touching it is going to be a bit of bother, here--" she unties the bag of holding from her waist and dumps it out on the floor, then starts piling everything except the strange Evil crown back in.