Disclaimer: Harry Potter: not mine! Draco Malfoy in tight jeans: Mine! Okay, I only wish he was.
The Sorting
"Potter, Harry!" The Sorting Hat was placed onto a head with unruly dark hair. The boy squirmed nervously underneath it. The hat explored young Mr. Potter's mindscape; it was certainly complex. The sorting hat chuckled softly—it loved a challenge every once in a while.
Of course, living in Albus Dumbledore's office as it did, the hat had heard gossip about young Harry Potter, the Boy who Lived—but it discovered that Mr. Potter was more—a boy who could live. He had great potential as a wizard. He would do well in any of the four Houses—Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw, or Hufflepuff—but as the hat was making its decision, the boy began to whisper, chanting, "Not Slytherin, not Slytherin..." The hat was surprised. It caught glimpses in Mr. Potter's mind of young Draco Malfoy, the boy the hat had sorted into Slytherin House just a few minutes before, and a feeling of disgust. The hat held back a chuckle, instead telling Mr. Potter that he would do well in Slytherin—many great wizards had come out of that House. But Mr. Potter shook his head. "No," he whispered, "Not Slytherin. Any other house but Slytherin." The hat was skeptical. He had heard what had happened to the last boy he had sorted who had begged for any House other than Slytherin, even though that, looking at his mindscape, had been the House he was most suited to. He had reluctantly sorted young Peter Pettigrew into Ravenclaw, and years later had heard that he had been blown to smithereens by another man who'd been in his year, Mr. Sirius Black. The hat rememberd Mr. Black well; one look at him and it had immediately sorted him into Gryffindor. The hat would have shaken its head, if it had had one, and thought that young Mr. Potter would be rather frightened if the hat shook his head. "All right, then," it said, "Better be--" and it shouted the last for all to hear—"GRYFFINDOR!" There was a cheer from the Gryffindor table and the hat was removed from the head of Harry Potter, who went to sit with the rest of his new House. As the next name was called, the hat hoped it hadn't made a grave mistake.