competition: SillySilenia's Wishful Thinking at HPFC
prompt: "I wish I could make [them] proud of me."
The Lion's Cub
Stumbling feet and sweating hands, he's just a little boy in robes too big. His own eyes are wide and green and serious behind his glasses, and the eyes of everyone else in the room heavy upon him.
Too heavy for him to lift his feet, heavy enough that he trips but, thankfully, doesn't fall. No, if he fell right to the ground he'd never be able to get back up again. He'd never be happy again, not unless he was lucky enough to evaporate into the atmosphere, to escape this hall and float with the wind until he landed safe at home in his bed where no one was trying to label who he was or decide who he should be.
Albus Potter doesn't want to be sorted. Not like this.
He wishes it could be as simple as a conversation one on one, where someone, smiling kindly, asked the question and Albus could answer with a polite and confident smile, "I'd like to be in Gryffindor, please," and so he would be.
The daydream splits in half and the memories break through; his brother teasing, his father kneeling beside a scarlet steam engine, saying, "It doesn't matter to us."
The more Albus thinks on those words, the hollower they sound. Now, so many hours later, they feel more like something out of a dream than anything actually said. Though Albus can imagine imagine acceptance and "We still love you, we'll always love you," from his parents, no matter what house he is sorted into, he just wants more than that.
He wants bright smiles and admiration and the knowledge, firm and real and warm in his heart, that he has made them proud. He wants to live up to their names and to expectations, to exceed such if it is at all possible. He wants to be all he can possibly be. Albus wants all this, but he knows too that it can all be taken away from him, and that's precisely the problem.
It all rests on the decision of one battered old hat.
The thought frightens him, and Albus doesn't like to feel frightened. That hollowed scared feeling - the cave in his chest, the twisting in his stomach - it leaves him believing in anything but his own bravery. It makes him feel small and weak and so incredibly un-Gryffindor.
So all in all, it's a vicious cycle, and being sorted is the only way out.
Somehow, after a walk that feels like forever, Albus manages to reach the stool. He stares down at the hat, trying his very hardest to block out the whispering crowd behind him. He picks it up, sits down on the stool and pulls it over his head so quickly that he gets only an impression of the hundreds of pairs of eyes and the people and their judgements that they are attached to.
"Potter," says a voice in his head.
For some reason Albus hesitates for a moment before nodding.
The hat laughs, if indeed a hat can laugh. "No need for that, boy. I can read everyone of your thoughts like they've been laid about before my eyes."
Eyes? thinks Albus.
The hat doesn't respond. "So you want to be a Gryffindor, then? Like the rest of them."
Albus doesn't answer, he doesn't need to. Every thing that he is has been laid out in the open for inspection. It's an uncomfortable thought. He shifts in his seat, fighting the desire to rip the hat from his head.
He doesn't apologise for these thoughts, and the hat doesn't acknowledge them. Instead it asks, "Why?"
"What?" Albus actually says it out loud, so great is his surprise. Realising his mistake he blushes furiously, glad that his face and hopefully his voice is hidden by thick material. Is the hat meant to do this? Is this his first school quiz?
As he considers the question, images of family and friends flit through his mind. Ideas, too, of comfort and security and a desire to be included, to be one of them. One thought, one wish, rises above all the rest. I want to make him proud.
The hat doesn't have to ask who he means. Harry Potter, Albus's father and, in his mind, the greatest man who has ever lived.
Albus's desperation grows. Please, I'll do anything. I have to be a Gryffindor.
"You'll do anything, will you?" The hat's tone conveys all the wry amusement of the smirk it can't actually form.
Al feels a little like he is drowning. Anything.
"You're a Slytherin, boy. I can't go changing that."
But my father-
"Was a great Gryffindor. You have the potential to be a great Slytherin, and you'll both be great wizards. House has barely a thing to do with it."
Not coherent thoughts but raw feeling is all there is for the hat to read, a cloud of anger and fear and hopelessness and through it all, Albus almost thinks he hears the hat sigh.
"Slytherin!"
Albus wrenches the nightmare device from his young Slytherin head and throws it down upon the stool. He wants to cry, but he thinks of his father, and of Gryffindor, and decides he will be like them, no matter what some hat says, no matter the colour of his uniform. He can still make them proud, make himself proud.
His aunt Hermione once told him that good luck came from hard work, and that wishing works much the same.
It is with a rapidly fluttering heart but his head held high and his gaze clear that Albus walks to join his new family, carrying his own securely in his heart.