Author's Note: For those about to embark on this journey I offer the note that this is a side fic to "When Harry Met Tom" and if you haven't read that... Well, I guess it could be its own thing but it'd be a little less meaningful. Likely though, you wouldn't be too confused.
"Difficult, very difficult…"
If there were words that Harry did not want to hear repeated from the sorting hat, it was those. She had the feeling when the hat said 'difficult' it was rather akin to a surgeon looking down at you as he cut you open and saying, "Oh, well, isn't that interesting?" Just as one did not want to be interesting under the knife, one did not want to be difficult under the hat.
And Harry Potter had been difficult once already.
This time though was different, there was no awed audience whispering to each other, barely an audience at all. No, instead it was just Harry Potter, her fake papers paid with by nearly every knut over the summer declaring her homeschooled orphan Harry Evans, now sitting in front of Armando Dippet and the strangely young Albus Dumbledore.
He…
He looked so different, she thought. He just had always had one of those personas that you never could have imagined on a younger man, like he'd been born this old replication of Gandalf, humming along to the Hogwarts song with a twinkle in his eye. His hair was red, she was pretty sure she'd known that but it was still so odd to see it, that as well as his watered down robes and his far more sober and somber expression.
He looked so tired.
Only a few minutes ago, on Harry having written multiple letters to Dippet and finally being allowed a meeting on August 31st just before the rest of the Hogwarts students would arrive, he'd been… Well, not quite against her coming to Hogwarts, but so certain that Harry wouldn't have the qualifications to enter.
Without OWL or NEWT scores as proof it was hard to say that someone homeschooled like her, muggleborn with a few stray wizard and witches on the side to teach her, could stand up to Hogwarts' curriculum.
In the end it had been Dippet who'd said that they could hardly throw her back on the street, half educated and a danger to herself and others, that Hogwarts had a policy for this sort of thing and it wasn't as if they were letting her stay over the summer or anything drastic like that, and they'd decided to let the sorting hat decide her fate.
It, after all, could see inside the depths of her soul.
She was very still and very quiet beneath the hat, listening to it rummage through her mind, pilfering through all those things best left forgotten and all those moments Harry cherished so brightly.
"Ah, it seems we've met before," the hat noted rather wryly, "Still, I'd say you're more difficult now than even then. Time has made so very many layers out of you, Miss Potter, you make it almost impossible to pick just one."
Yet, that was exactly what Harry was chanting in her head, just pick one. No, not just one, just pick Gryffindor. It'd worked out the first time well enough, hadn't it? If Harry couldn't go home, if she had to live with the burden of everything that had happened, then maybe she could at least have some sort of echo of it…
As the seconds ticked by Harry felt both Dumbledore and Dippet's attention on her growing sharper, intrigued, similar to the hush that had descended that first night in Hogwarts before the excited whispers had started up.
The hat's gravelly voice echoed in her mind, musing over Gryffindor, "Courage, oh yes, you have more courage and valiance than most could even dream of possessing. Courage is both your shield and the crushing burden upon your shoulders, the kind of weight that would destroy even a slightly lesser man. You are, perhaps, Harry Potter, a slave to your own courage and nobility."
Harry wasn't sure she agreed with that. Granted, she didn't say it wasn't hard, but it also had never seemed as if she'd had much of a choice.
"There are always choices, Harry," the hat chided, and the memory of Harry's sorting flashed as a bright golden image in her mind, tiny, terrified, Harry closing her eyes shut and chanting inside of her head 'not Slytherin' over and over, "I even offered you one so many years ago, didn't I?"
"And it really is such a strange thing, Harry, because I find you no less ambitious than you were then," the hat said, "Oh, no, not like that, there are more things in this world to envy and covet than power. You, I think, know that more than anyone. Friendship, honor, family, these are the coins you so coveted and you set out to earn them for yourself without anyone the wiser. Even on that first night, you thought about the odds, didn't you? You thought to yourself, 'not Slytherin', because you knew that if you did find yourself in Slytherin so many doors would be shut to you."
That was not true, that wasn't why and goddammit Harry hated this bloody hat…
"And yet, even then, even with your great fear of my choice, you were already preparing contingency plans for Slytherin. Already preparing escape routes, exit strategies, all those fine detailed maps in your head that you'd never say aloud. Greater than this though, you convinced me. Through your fire and your valor, you convinced me, and made your way into Gryffindor where you twisted yourself so beautifully into everything they ever wanted you to be. Ron Weasley from the train, the first real chance you had at a friend you could stomach, and you so easily slide into the position of his best friend. Was that coincidence? Gryffindor seeker, defender of the weak, champion of Hogwarts, brave almost to the point of endless stupidity when I think we know you're anything but. Yes, some of that is who you are, but how much of that is the role you know you must play? How much of it, Harry, is simply because you have convinced yourself there are no choices?"
Oh, oh that was not what she had meant. And that… Harry had never thought about that much, no, no maybe she had, maybe she had wondered about how she'd had friends for the first time or how she would do anything, almost anything in the world, to have friends for the first time. In Hogwarts there was no Dudley, no constant stream of lies, bullying, and abuse and she had a real chance at this brave new world.
"If only you proved yourself to be nothing like Tom Riddle," the hat thought for her, and at the name Harry felt a chill fall down her spine as the hat continued to muse, "Parseltongue was almost your undoing, wasn't it? Then you met him in the flesh… Ambitious, intelligent, tenacious, sophisticated, suave… I wonder if you truly know, how far you went to strip yourself of these adjectives, so that no one would ever again see anything of Tom Marvolo Riddle in your soul."
The hat then laughed, a horrible, chilling laugh as it remarked, "You are without a doubt the single most Slytherin Gryffindor there has ever been. But, I still wonder, Harry, if you would not have been better as a Gryffindor Slytherin?"
Harry licked her lips, stared at the floor, thought almost desperately and noted inside of her head that if it did that, if it put muggleborn Harry Evans in Slytherin, then there'd be no hope for her. That just… It wasn't bloody done, Harry didn't care if it was fifty years in the past, it just didn't happen. She'd be more than friendless, it would be like fifth year, except there'd be no one at all standing beside her or thinking good of her.
"That's a very Slytherin thing to say, Miss Potter," the hat noted rather drily.
Then it would rather see her miserable, Harry thought bitterly, just to prove a bloody point.
"Miserable?" the hat asked, as if it didn't understand at all, or somehow understood something that Harry herself didn't, "I once said you could be great, and I think that you have more succeeded in that. However, Harry Potter, one can be glorious or one can be happy, very rarely can one be both. Perhaps, Harry, it is time to set down the sword and the shield for a little while and learn to be honest with what you truly are."
She could feel the hat grin over her head as it opened its brim wide, looking towards Dumbledore and Dippet, and announced, "It had better be SLYTHERIN!"
Author's Note: Requested by the 400th reviewer of "When Harry Met Tom", TheOtherEvilTwin, who asked for a fic featuring Harry's first day at Hogwarts or else or what she did before getting to Hogwarts. I chose to expand upon our missing sorting hat scene, because no one cuts quite like the sorting hat. It really has no mercy.
Thanks for reading, reviews are appreciated.
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter