For the Sorting Hat Challenge by Stiricide at HPFC. My prompt: Peter Pettigrew. I'm actually quite pleased with this.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
"Potential"
He's shaking. He's looking around in awe, but all of the grandeur of the Great Hall only serves to make him feel so small. And then that hat starts to sing, and he nearly jumps out of his skin. The boy next to him laughs. Peter smiles weakly. At this point, he doesn't feel like he belongs anywhere. He doesn't feel brave and chivalrous, nor hardworking and loyal. He certainly doesn't feel clever and intelligent, nor cunning and ambitious.
Right now, all he feels is pathetic. The other first years chatter among themselves, several conspiratorially agreeing to attempt for the same house. Peter has none of that. He's alone.
The crowd around him dissipates slowly, some students madly grinning as they dash off to their houses, others trudging there dejectedly. Some of them, Peter can see, don't even realize that what this tattered old hat decides will affect them for the rest of their lives.
Abruptly, Peter realizes that the name just called was, "Pettigrew, Peter." It takes him a moment to realize that this is, indeed, his own name, and it takes another moment before he begins to walk toward the stool. It feels like every eye is on him, perhaps because they are. He stumbles up the steps. The laughter makes his face flush.
Then Professor McGonagall slips the hat on his head, and Peter stops worrying about everyone else in order to worry about the hat that's deciding his future.
Before the hat can even say a word, Peter asks, "Is it possible to not be sorted anywhere?"
He can feel the hat chuckle. "No."
Peter breathes a sigh of relief and relaxes as the hat begins to muse.
"Interesting. Very interesting."
"I don't belong anywhere, do I?" Peter asks wryly.
"Ah, see, but that's just it, isn't it? If you don't properly belong anywhere, you have the potential to go anywhere. You could be anybody. Slytherin would make you cunning; Hufflepuff would make you hardworking. The question, then, is where do you want to go? Who do you want to be?"
And that's the hardest question Peter ever has to answer, past or future. Who does he want to be?
Peter wants, most of all, to not be pathetic, to not be weak. He wants to be strong and brave and good.
"And there's your answer," the Sorting Hat tells him. "That means, better be GRYFFINDOR!"