Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling

-The Sorting Hat's Lament-

by AzulCeleste14

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"You could have been great, you know."

"What?" Harry looked up from his pile of paper work. The sorting hat spoke again.

"You could have been great. Had Dumbledore not stuck his paw in, had the Malfoy boy not been raised a bigoted brat, you would have been great. Not Slytherin, you asked me. Ha! Had you been Slytherin you would have truly shone."

Harry raised a skeptical brow.

"You know this how?"

The hat laughed humorlessly.

"They gave me gifts, the founders did. Bah, as if! Godric animated me, gave me a brain, thought it was a laugh, to make his old hat sing. Then Salazar gave me mind magic, and they got the idea to make sort. Helga charmed me ever-fair. I couldn't sort someone wrong if I wanted too. Then Ravenclaw—may she rot in hell—she gave me precognition. So I was born, a talking, singing, sorting hat who had to be fair even if I knew, knew what would happen when this kid was sorted in this house rather than that. Do you know what it was like for me the day Tom Riddle was sorted?"

"You actually knew that-"

"-he was going to become a power-hungry chauvinistic megalomaniac who's addicted to dark magic and voluntarily rips his soul to shreds? Unfortunately, yes. Just like I knew that if I sorted you into Gryffindor, you'd become another sheep Dumbledore's flock and would save the world, only to fall out of the limelight and made Headmaster to a school who has forgotten him. Look at you, pushing papers instead of leading the country or hell, even teaching. In Slytherin, you would have learned to push yourself to the top. You would have become the head of a glorious Utopia, with the world spread before you like a feast. "

Harry sighed. He brushed his gray striped hair from his face and looked imploringly at the hat.

"Why didn't you sort me into Slytherin, then?"

"I tried to, you fool, but Dumbledore had already poisoned you against the house. You were so equally divided into red and green that the only way to sort you fairly was to ask. You know how that turned out."

"Why are you telling me now?

The hat gave another short, bitter laugh.

"You haven't been following the muggle news, have you? World War III has been raging for several years. In about twenty seconds, all of Scotland is going to get nuked bare. With some luck I'll be destroyed."

Fire was blooming on the horizon.

"Oh, shit," said Harry, and then Hogwarts was no more.

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A/N: Jeez, how dark. Er... just a random plot bunny, I guess. Anyway, please comment! It doesn't take very long to type in 'I did/didn't like it.'