A Simple Question
A/N: Another one-shot here. Review please.
Disclaimer: Do you really think I own Harry Potter? If you do, I don't think you're old enough to sue me yet.
Like the others, she stood in the long, broken line of new students. Much to her neighbor's annoyance, the girl repeatedly clicked her heels against the floor and yanked the sleeves of her robe up because the hems reached past her knuckles. It was plain that she was nervous, and with good cause. Just as the boy next to her opened his mouth to berate her, she left her fellows.
"Hartley, Katarine!" was called out, but it was a full minute before she responded. With a quivering breath, Katarine approached the plain stool where several of her future classmates had been, and settled herself upon it, after lifting the Sorting Hat.
Katarine looked at it with wary, jade-green eyes before placing the Hat on her ebony curls, turning it at a jaunty angle so it would not slip over her face. Folding her hands demurely in her lap and crossing her ankles, she awaited some speech from the Hat, but none came.
"Hello!" she thought enthusiastically, not wanting to talk to it out loud.
"Greetings!" was answered.
She could feel the Hat sifting through her memories and thoughts, scrutinizing and categorizing her attributes. Though she trusted the Hat, it was distinctly uncomfortable. After thirty seconds, Katarine asked in her mind what it's verdict was.
"Your blood is fittingly pure for the house of Slytherin, and you do have pride as the best of that house's students tend to do. Your pride is not in your lineage though, and you are not much for guile. Hufflepuffs are known gentleness, which you possess, and patience, which you do to a lesser degree...but your greatest potential does not lie that way. As for Gryffindor..."
The Hat lapsed into contemplative silence once again, and it was only now that Katarine realized that most of the Great Hall was watching her speculatively. It rarely took so much time to decide on a pupil's house.
Briefly, she glanced to her remaining options: Ravenclaw and Gryffindor. At the first table, she saw clusters of people watching her, or furtively whispering to their friends. A new fifth year Perfect was trying to inconspicuously quiet them when he was not checking on his prized badge. The second table was similar, but adorned with red and gold, and the group was a bit more rowdy. Katarine tried to spy the esteemed Harry Potter, but regretted it when she realized that he was staring at her just as attentively as everyone else.
"Can't you hurry?"
"Would you have me rush through something so important?"
"Well...No, I wouldn't." Katarine responded, anxiously, then wondered "What house would you be in, or is that just for people?"
The Hat seemed to take a moment to consider her question, making a faint humming sound while doing so. Soon after, it said "Ravenclaw...I seek knowledge."
"But that is more your nature than your choice, right?"
"A person's nature is the truest part of them. Choices are based on that."
"Are you a...person then?"
The Hat paused again, absolutely taciturn now. She could feel the depth of it's thought as it announced "Can you define what a person is? Does it take only the most basic of emotions? Compassion? Intelligence? A soul? I cannot die, but I can be destroyed. I do not feel pain, but I can empathize with your kind."
"Do you ever want to be, um, human?"
"Why would I?"
"Because we can walk and eat and...and all sorts of stuff."
"And I can read a person, anyone but the most skilled witches and wizards, and even then, I see that something is hidden, yet you have no desire to be a Sorting Hat?"
Another Sorting Hat? It had never occurred to her that there would be others, perhaps one for every magical school in England, or even in the world as a whole. It led her to ponder if the Sorting Hat had a mother, if a Sorting Hat could fall in love. Was it an enchanted object or a living thing?
"Are you ever lonely?"
"Yes."
"I'm sorry." Katarine communicated earnestly, feeling pity for it.
"I believe you have shown where you belong. In asking, in searching for knowledge, you have illustrated that you would be suited to Ravenclaw. I sense, though, that your reasons for asking were not rooted in learning, but in kindness. Thus it is that you are...
"Gryffindor!" it shouted out the last word.
"Farewell!" she thought, and left the Sorting Hat to join her house table.