No, in fact, I can hear your thoughts as well, and see some of your memories, and I have a broad sense of who you are as a person, the hat says.

She represses a shiver.

You want to go to Slytherin, it says.

Yes.

Why?

You know why.

I think it will be instructive to treat this as a dialogue.

Because I don't think like other people, she says, and Slytherin sounds like how I do think.

A quarter of Hogwarts students wind up in Slytherin, the hat says.  But it doesn't sound to me like you think a quarter of the people you meet think the way you do.

Are you trying to turn me off Slytherin?

I'm trying to give you a better idea of what to expect, the hat says.  If you go to Slytherin expecting everyone there to effortlessly make themselves understood to you in precisely the terms you find most intuitive and appealing, you will be just as disappointed with it as you would be with any of the other Houses, and it would hinder you from learning everything you could learn from it.

I think you're being a little unfair.

I'm not.  I'm reading your mind.

She sets her jaw.

You certainly do share some values in common with Slytherin and with its head of house! the hat says.  But if indeed you are going to be in Slytherin - and there's still plenty of discussion to be had on that point - you will not be well-served by anticipating a house full of Clovers Evans-Potter.

You don't want me to be in Slytherin?

I think there are certain ill ends toward which your fate could turn, and I think that internalizing the values of Slytherin House makes some of them more likely.

You don't want me to turn out like Maledict Gaunt.

I don't know terribly much more about Maledict Gaunt than you do, the hat says.  I'm sure she has many fine qualities -

She's actually a bit gobsmacked by the hat saying that - and of course she can't control whether the hat notices that because it's reading her mind -

Is that such a surprising sentiment?

You know it's a surprising sentiment!!

I do!  I know you find it inane and exasperating when people hesitate to speak well of bad people in case their interlocutor pounces on them and accuses them of sympathizing too much with evil.  I know you are enticed by some of what you know about Maledict Gaunt, that she shrouded herself expertly in secrecy and that she was ruthless in the pursuit of her goals.  And in fact I think a dash of ruthlessness can be quite a fine thing in the right circumstances.  I do not think the world would be a better place if there were no ruthless people in it, else I would never sort anybody into Slytherin.

But you don't want me to go to Slytherin.

Do you think you need to go to Slytherin to learn ruthlessness?