Chapter Text
Bushy hair. Nervous, overeager hands. What are you, she’s thinking, and when it responds the Sorting Hat, didn’t you hear my song, and she just thinks duh but how? it is, for all intents and purposes, over. It rifles through the rest of it for good measure though.
It sees a child who has never fit right, cracking glass and making things float. It sees recesses spent in the library. It sees the hand go up again, and again, and again. Like many of the children (they are, after all, children), there are futures everywhere. It tells her that.
You have the ambition of a Slytherin, ignoring the reality of blood and how much they would fight her. You could become something, there.
She doesn’t consciously think it, but there is the flash of it, underneath the surface: would I be happy?
You would be happy in Hufflepuff, it tells her; this is true, because she works for things, because she wants to be wanted. Loyalty is not in her blood but she has potential. Would she be challenged, there?
But you are brave, it says, and she scoffs a bit, but it is true. She is brave, she is fearless, she takes things apart. It sees the path for her in Gryffindor, for a moment: it would take a few years, for her to feel comfortable among the ruffians, to realize that she too can be bend things, but she would get there. So perhaps Gryffindor.
I just want to fit in, she thinks, which is her deepest desire. The Hat doesn’t know how to tell her that she will never fit in any of the houses, because they are too broad, too narrow, all at once. It has Sorted thousands of children and at the beginning nothing is set in stone; even the Dark Lord, with Slytherin blood in his veins, would have made a fine Ravenclaw. She’ll never fit in, because she is a Muggleborn witch who’s brilliance and drive and hunger knows no bounds. Because even though it hasn’t sorted the rest of the bunch, it can already sense the tendrils in her mind reaching out to the boy with the scar and the newest redhead, and so what if the hat is thinking about the triplicate before, the way the all asked for things that weren’t theirs, not really, and it said yes?
Of course they were all brave. Most children are brave, or can become so. Helga got shit about letting in anyone but what kind of criterions are chivalrous and courageous? What kind of child really wants that, is that? Over the centuries, the Hat has sorted Gryffindors independent and bold; surly and morally inflexible; pranksters who would kill their best friend to save the world. The rebellious, the devious; the good the bad and the ugly. The Hat thinks of a boy with a hideous secret who hoarded knowledge like this one did, and yet his eyes had kept crossing the hall to his friend already sitting at the Gryffindor table and his other friend, still in line but confident with the weight of his blood line and the choice he made, which might have been wrong, but might have been right, and who’s really to say? Children are malleable, after all.
Gryffindor would make you fit, says the Hat, begrudgingly. Children sorted into the house of tricksters everywhere become tricksters, on their own time. You would belong, eventually. You wouldn’t fit in Ravenclaw, because you are yourself. You would instead accept who you are.
I don’t want to be alone, the girl thinks.
Oh, I didn’t mean to imply you would be alone, says the Hat. Your friends will be with you, always.
I don’t have any friends, she thinks.
You will. In either house. Don’t worry, child.
She chews on her lip. It can hear her thinking. And then, with the kind of bravery that means it was right, all along, that she would have been a damn good Lion, she thinks it.
“RAVENCLAW!”
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Not Slytherin, the boy thinks. The scar is heavy against the brim. The Hat can’t help but think, not of his father who took the stool and thought Gryffindor with an eager finality, but of his godfather, who by the time he got here already flinched from sudden movements and wanted nothing to do with his bloodline. It had been easy enough, for that boy, to find the memories of him standing between his mother and younger brother and give him Gryffindor, no matter how slick and cunning and ambitious he was.
Why not, asks the Hat. The boy with hair like his father’s thinks of words spoken by a man hurt by one of the gnarliest Slytherins of all, and the casual brutality of a boy too young to know not everyone had grown up in the lap of luxury. The Hat understands, too, that the boy doesn’t want to be great, which is what it would normally offer someone of his background. What it offered the Dark Lord, balancing on the cusp between knowledge and greatness.
They would see you, in Slytherin, it offers. They would be on your side. They would teach you how to have more than survival.
Silence, except for the swell of want.
You would be good in Gryffindor too, it concedes. You are a fighter, and they would appreciate that. You would become a champion.
Underneath everything is a leering pit of loneliness, though. There’s the thin, shining thread to the Ravenclaw muggleborn and the newest redhead, and the Hat is no prophet but some things are just obvious. Beyond that, though— Gryffindor will appreciate what he is, but will expect him to stand alone for the final battle. Slytherin will fight dirty to back his play.
It will be more difficult, in Slytherin, the Hat concedes. Not because they are evil, but because they are believed to be that way. The roil of righteous indignation almost makes the Hat chuckle— oh, he would be good in Gryffindor. He’s seen too much for a Hufflepuff, knowledge too much a means to an end to be a Ravenclaw, but— You would fit in Gryffindor. But you would be a figurehead. A capitan, a champion.
I want to be wanted, the boy thinks. Who wants me?
The Hat thinks not of the students— who don’t want the Boy-Who-Lived, who wanst the Boy-Who-Lived, Gryffindors rallying behind their champion because of politics and chivalry and the presumed moral high ground and Slytherins rallying around him because that’s what they do— but of the heads. The Head of Gryffindor, who buried the boy’s parents and perhaps cannot offer anything to someone who looks like two of her best and brightest; she will not hate him, but she will be formal, and remote. The Head of Gryffindor, who knows that if she buries another brilliant student that she loves it will kill her, and so has buried the piece of her that cares, instead.
The Head of Slytherin, who hated the boy’s father and loved the boy’s mother, who came back here with the hands of a killer and the eyes of a spy, who believes himself to be evil and yet unfailingly extracts the children the Hat directs to him from their unfit households. Who’s love looks like snarled threats to abusers and sleepless nights brewing and essays torn apart in red ink. Who is stunned every single time he feels something for any of the children, because he cannot believe he is capable of such a thing.
Easy money there, really.
“SLYTHERIN!”
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The redheads always are such borderline cases, aren’t they? Sixth son, this one, so small on the stool, and he’s asking for Gryffindor because that’s all his family has ever been, but it’s never that simple, is it? First one had some Ravenclaw tangled in there; second one would have made a damn good Hufflepuff; third one would have bloomed in Slytherin. Gryffindor, they said, and that’s what they got. The Hat doesn’t always give in, but Godric loved the symbolism of choosing to be brave. The trembling boy with the round face just did that, skeptical to the last breath but owning it, and the Hat is proud.
(The twins were always going to be Gryffindors, though; it would have been cruel to foist them elsewhere. Slick smooth-talkers, sure, and smart as all hell, but crime lords at heart. Gryffindor got the chivalrous, sure, but it also got the jesters, and the Hat hasn’t meet a duo like that ever.)
Or Slytherin, the boy concedes, and the Hat can feel the shining thicket of friendship stretching out to the boy with the scar, enveloping him. There’s a bit of a tremor in the ask, but it’s there. Or— dunno if I’m smart enough for it, but Ravenclaw. Another thicket, trapping the bushy-haired muggleborn.
Already? the Hat asks, in lieu of anything else. Last in the alphabet makes it easy this time, but rarely is it this obvious. Children were always quick on the draw, but seldom this quick, and the Hat finds itself a bit impressed. It thinks of another boy, with shaggy dark hair, who looked over at the Gryffindor table to find the almost-Slytherin and almost-Ravenclaw and said Gryffindor smugly, because that’s what everyone in his line had been, but at heart it had been with them, they’re mine, and the Hat didn’t have the heart to put him in Hufflepuff like it should have, not with that burning look towards them. It would have been cruel to separate crew.
Of course, says the redhead, like every child is like this. Sixth son, brave enough to just corner two misfits on a train and say mine.
Surely you know you have no Slytherin in you, says the Hat. He does not want to be trapped in his family’s shadow, but he doesn’t have the hard-edged hunger of the third son, the knife-blade ambition that reaches out and takes. He would like to make something of himself, but not at anyone’s expense. It would be enough, the Hat thinks, if he were just in another house. That would be enough of a shift.
Yeah, thinks the boy, flicking his eyes to the boy with the scar.
And you are smarter than you believe, but you have no true desire for knowledge.
A small preen at the praise, a cut of his eyes to the bushy-haired girl. Alright. Gryffindor it is, then?
I think, says the Hat. If you want to be out of your family’s shadow, and you already feel like this about them, you know where you belong.
I just want to be valued, says the sixth son.
Oh, you don’t have to worry about that, says the Hat. Not with the two of them, and not if you’re not in Gryffindor.
And he would be a good Gryffindor, wouldn’t he— loyal to a fault, determined to prove himself, spiteful, holding a grudge, awful to fight with. He would be a good Gryffindor and in the process of becoming one he might loose the part of him that is right now willing to take a subpar house placement to be with his friends. Who would choose his friends over the greater good, because they are his friends.
The Hat thinks of the boy with the scar’s father, and wonders if in a different timeline, he would have forgotten about the war, and the Dark Lord, and chosen the handful of people his love had nested around over the world.
They would value you there, says the Hat. For being you, not for being a sixth son.
If you’re sure, says the redhead, thinking not of a house but of the boy and the girl. The Hat is never sure, not really. Children are fickle, feral things. A Sort is not an inflection point, unless it is. It thinks of how it said no to the Head of Slytherin begging to be in Gryffindor with his friend; it thinks of the third son who would have been such a good snake but it caved to give him what he asked for, out of family obligation; it thinks of the rat who had teetered on the edge of Ravenclaw and Gryffindor, and then had gone to the Dark Lord with a mangled version of bravery, and ruined everything.
That Hat is never sure but neither were the Founders, now were they? Mid-year always found the four of them haggling over mistakes and misjudgments and how well did they even know themselves?
“HUFFLEPUFF!”