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Hermione Granger is eleven years old, sitting on the sorting stool and sitting up straight and not kicking her legs, and the sorting hat says, Well aren’t you an interesting one?
Hermione isn’t surprised, because she’s read about the sorting hat in Hogwarts: A History, but it is strange, hearing a voice in her head and not through her ears, and she thinks back, Hello, hat.
The hat… laughs? and says, You’ve got certainly got cunning, but I think your ambition is more toward consuming the whole of our library, eh? No, not Slytherin, nor Hufflepuff, not that you’re lacking for a hard working spirit, are you… Gryffindor could teach you bravery, certainly, but you’d find more alike companions in Ravenclaw, I think, and both seem like something you’re in search of.
Somehow, even without the hat saying it, Hermione can tell the hat is giving her a choice. She frowns a little in concentration, because she does want to be brave, and Hogwarts: A History says that Gryffindor is where all the most powerful witches and wizards come from, but…
The boys that had whispered mean things about her while they were waiting in line to be called are in Gryffindor, and they had all seemed rather loud, and she saw people at the Ravenclaw table reading when she walked in, and she knows that they would’ve liked her fact about the ceiling.
Her mum quite likes bronze door knobs, too, Hermione thinks, not that it seems terribly relevant at the moment.
She doesn’t actually say anything, but the hat seems to know her decision regardless.
A fine choice, Miss Granger. May you find what you’re looking for in RAVENCLAW!
(The Ravenclaw table claps, and the rest of the houses shift their attention soon after. Nothing so special about another Ravenclaw, after all. Young Hermione Granger is drawn into a fascinating conversation with Terry Boot about how they make the candles float.)
Harry Potter is eleven years old, sitting on the sorting stool and feeling very grateful that the hat is big enough to cover his eyes, because if he can’t see everyone in the hall’s eyes on him, he can almost pretend that they’ve all looked somewhere else.
Hello there, Mister Potter.
Harry starts in surprise, and is surprised he doesn’t fall off the stool from shock.
Oh! Hello, um, Mr Hat…?
The hat chuckles, but it’s a nice-sounding chuckle, and it makes Harry feel ever-so-slightly less nervous.
Just Hat is fine, if you must. I must say, you’ve got quite the fascinating young mind here. Bravery in spades, of course, but that’s to be expected, I suppose, given your parents. But, if you look deeper- which, of course, is my job- you’ve got a wealth of cunning-
Not Slytherin! Harry thought, desperate. He couldn’t help but remember Hagrid’s words in Diagon Alley, and that horrible Draco Malfoy…
Please, please, not Slytherin!
Harry was then presented with the peculiar sensation of a hat non-verbally frowning at him.
Well. There’s no need to be rude, Salazar was a fine young man. But cunning is hardly all you are; no, none of the thirst for knowledge that Ravenclaws tend toward, but I daresay you’re familiar with hard work, and loyal to Mr Weasley already. Hufflepuff would fit you well, Mr Potter.
Harry pauses. Not that he’s done much considering about houses, aside from Hagrid’s warning and Ron’s angry muttering about dark wizards on the train. He hasn’t really heard anything about Hufflepuff, except for their animal being a badger. He’s read about honey badgers; once, for a science project. They are very cool…
I’m quite glad you think so, because the house that’s right for you, Mr Potter, is HUFFLEPUFF!
(The strangled silence that falls after this proclamation is a drop in the pond compared to the positive explosion of noise from the Hufflepuff table that comes seconds after it. Several of the surrounding students are blown straight from their benches from the sheer force of the combined decibels.
Harry Potter is welcomed to the black and gold table with dozens of hugs and smiles, and finds himself, for the very first time in his short life, overwhelmed with affection. It’s a rather auspicious start to an unfortunately un-auspicious year.)
(One Severus Snape finds himself feeling much like someone has dumped a bucket of ice water over his head. It’s especially distasteful for the first person in several decades to disabuse him of a notion in such a thorough manner to be a hat, but no matter how hard- and he does try, very hard- he can’t look at the tiny wizard being mobbed by Hufflepuffs and see a miniature of his hated bully. This will prove to be an irritating inconvenience for Severus Snape, who now has to actually deal with all the repressed pain and fury he’d been planning to displace onto an eleven year old. Quite fortunate for the eleven year old in question, though.)
Ron Weasley is eleven years old, sitting on the sorting stool, kicking his legs and feeling, all in all, quite a few complicated emotions, for an eleven year old especially. Among them:
One: A rather drastic shift on his view of Hufflepuff house, because Harry Potter can’t be a left-over; in fact, Ron knows he isn’t, because they spent the whole train-ride talking, and he’d been all but convinced they’d be in Gryffindor together, but instead he’s one of them! If his understanding of one of the most basic facts of his life can be so utterly upended, what other things does he not fully understand?
Two: A certain sense of boredom, because he already knows what house he’s going to be sorted into, because he’s a Weasley. There’s a certain sort of comfort in that, in not having to worry about his future because Mum was a Gryffindor and Dad was a Gryffindor, and Bill and Charlie and Fred and George are Gryffindors, and Ron will be a Gryffindor, and Ginny’ll be a Gryffindor next year, so what does all this matter, anyway? He’s just another Gryffindor Weasley, after all.
Three: A quiet, but emboldened thought; a thought his brothers might even call treasonous; a seed of a both utterly anathema and worryingly alluring idea; a way to make him something more than the sixth son, whose least favorite color is maroon and least favorite sandwich is corned beef. After all, Bill’s a curse-breaker. Charlie’s a dragon-tamer. Percy’s the smartest of them all, and will probably end up Minister for Magic. Fred and George are twins, and pranksters. But none of them have been in a different house. None of them have ever been in- in-
Ron could be the first, for once. Ron could be different.
There are quite a few other thoughts swimming around in his head, but those three are the most important ones, and the first things that the Sorting Hat encounters upon being unceremoniously dropped on Ron Weasley’s head.
Oh my! Aren’t you a busy one. Another Weasley, yes, but are you? Hmm... isn’t this just exciting!
Ron isn’t quite sure what to think, but thankfully, the hat doesn’t seem inclined to let him get a word in before continuing.
Loyalty of a Hufflepuff, certainly, certainly, but not a fan of hard work, I see… Brave, yes, but you’ve got something different about you… you’d thrive in Salazar’s house, you know. Cunning, and I see that ambition you harbor. You want to stand out, stand on your own.
Perhaps in a different time, Ron would utterly refuse to stand for such slanderous things, but here, now, Ron Weasley is thinking about hand-me-downs, and sixth sons, and Hufflepuff Boy-Who-Lived-s.
I don’t want to be an evil wizard, though, he thinks, but not as desperately as he otherwise might have. The hat gives a chuckle.
Don’t be silly. Do you think Gryffindor hasn’t produced a dark wizard or two? Besides, your grandfather Septimus was a proud snake himself.
Ron’s family don’t talk to their grandparents, very much. He’s not very sure about any of this, and there’s still a not insignificant chunk of him that’s screaming about how his family’s going to disown him for this-!
But even as the thought crosses his mind, he can’t help but think of how he’ll get to rub it in Malfoy’s face for seven years.
Oh yes, you’ll do just fine in SLYTHERIN!
(If the bated silence that had hung across the hall during Potter’s sorting could’ve let you hear a pin drop, the silence that followed that pronouncement was so utterly vacuous it almost seemed all the air had been sucked from the room. As much as an event as the Boy-Who-Lived’s sorting is, he is a celebrity; a fleeting moment in wizarding history. This. This! This, a Weasley in Slytherin, is utterly unprecedented, in the minds of the students watching it, and a handful of professors, too. Never mind, of course, that the sorting hat is quite right that Septimus Weasley had been a Slytherin, and a most conniving one at that, or that the Prewetts have as many Gryffindors on the tree as Hufflepuffs. To these young minds, you may as well have told them Dumbledore is a dark lord!
Ron’s brothers, who had been watching their brother’s sorting with gradually increasing worry (Percy) and confusion (Fred and George) the longer it went on, are now staring, slack-jawed (Fred and George) and wide-eyed (Percy), as their littlest brother walks to the Slytherin table with only a little bit of a shake in his knees, and an (only a little bit scared) smile on his face as he sits down. The whole hall, in fact, looks on with a sort of dazed wonder as the (Slytherin!) Weasley! sits down next to the Malfoy! heir and reaches over, and plucks a roll from his plate.
Said heir is too busy staring (in a way most unbecoming of the Malfoy name) at the walking contradiction now sat next to him, to be outraged at the theft.)
(Blaise Zabini is getting a little impatient, because it’s been over seven minutes since his name was supposed to be called.)
(Harry, over at the Hufflepuff table, is, along with the muggleborns and muggle-raised students, an exception to the blanket of silence and shock. He’s too busy basking in the realization that his year-mates actually want to talk to him, and that this sort of food is served all the time, to care much that his friend from the train has ended up in a different house; in fact, the very same house he’d so strenuously warned Harry against just minutes earlier.)
(Hermione Granger has just learned that the entrance to her new common room requires a riddle to be opened, and is asking the nearest prefect whether it’s only wizard riddles or muggle riddles, and what she’s supposed to do if it’s a riddle about something that wasn’t in any of her books, and if there’s only one set answer or if any answer that’s technically correct will do, and why does everyone care so much about that rude redheaded boy anyway, and what if you don’t know the answer at all and get locked out?)
(Many years later, there will be much mockery on all sides, but mostly from Harry, that Harry was in Hufflepuff because of Ron’s dire warnings, and Ron had overlooked his dire warnings because Harry was in Hufflepuff. Ron will insist it was all a part of his cunning master plan, and Hermione will whack him over the head with whatever book she’s reading at the moment- gently, so as to not damage the spine, of course.)