Disclaimer: The setting, houses, and characters named are all from JKR's stunning debut, Harry Potter, and all the books and randomabilia that follow it. Except for the two OCs: unnamed curly brunette boy and Darla Diggle (though I think she's related to Dedalus Diggle) in Albus' compartment are completely loonynamelass invented.

Oh yeah, and the underlines are just in case you get very confused among the paragraph.

The apple his mother has given him was round and red, crunchy and tart. Albus stared at it, at a loss for words. Yet, he had to admit, it wasn't only the apple's odd, unrealistic flawlessness that had stunned him to silence.

The other students in the compartment were preoccupied with a game of Exploding Snap. They seemed kind enough, inviting Albus in and asking him to play. "Oh sure, come on in! We've always got room -budge up there, Scorpius," "Did you say your name was Albus? Wasn't there like a headmaster named that! Boy, Dad goes on for like ages about him!" "Say, want to try your hand at a game of Explodin' Snap? Sure, it's old fashioned, but it's real excitin'!" "Sorry, these lame guys haven't introduced themselves, like, at all! I'm Darla Diggle, this is..." and the girl went on with it. The first boy to speak, who had curly brown hair, said, "Say, you ne'er tole us your surname! If you don' like it, like dear Scorpius here, we won' force you to reveal its splendor." The blond boy next to Albus glared at the brunette boy.

"Er- Potter," Albus said, automatically turning red when recalling the reactions of so many others when he said it.

The boy next to him snorted. "Ha! That's not so bad of a name, not like Malfoy- means 'bad faith' in French. Now who in their right mind wants to be called 'bad faith'? Honestly, if I ever get married, I'm taking my wife's name should Father allow it." Albus breathed a sigh in relief. Maybe they hadn't heard of his fath-

"POTTER, did you say?" squealed the girl lounging next to the first boy. "Are you related to HARRY POTTER? He is like the coolest guy ever!"

"I thought I was the coolest guy ever!"

"You dumb donkey! Stop your mock pouting! Did you not hear what I said? Harry Potter! He like got rid of the freaking evilest person in the whole wacky universe!" She turned to Albus. "So are you related to him?"

"Um, my Father's name is Harry, so maybe," Albus felt uncomfortable by the girl's proximity as she leaned into his eyes.

"Ohmigosh! He even has green eyes! You got Harry Potter's green eyes! WOW! So what's he like? Is he like super-cool?" He's my dad, Albus thought. What else would he be?

"As dads go," he finally mustered. Then deciding it was no use to try to make peace at this point, he went on, "No, but thanks to the Exploding Snap. Not today, I think."

So now he was forlornly staring at an apple, thinking of not apples or people or fathers, but of differences. And destiny. His father and uncle and brother had said a few lighthearted sentiments concerning such, but he didn't know what to do. Nothing made anything clearer. It seemed like everything didn't make sense.

So it all came down to an extraordinarily gifted hat. This hat that can see into your mind and classify you, make you another of the clique, of the cast (or caste, Albus added as an afterthought.) What gave a hat the power to do such a thing? The words he had been mulling over swam into his mind for the billionth time. "It did for me..." "If you're not in Gryffindor we'll disinherit you..." "You were named after two headmasters. One of them was Slytherin..." "No pressure..." "And the bravest man I ever knew..." "He might be in Slyth-" "The Sorting Hat takes your choice into consideration..."

But I don't know what I choose! thought Albus in frantic despair. They make it sound so easy. It's not; don't they understand?

He drifted into an uneasy sleep without his companions noticing, so used to his silence by now.

He sat on the damp grass in a very curvy line of first-years. They all seemed very relaxed, but he felt absurdly shaky. Why were these people so calm? Then he glimpsed their faces, and sitting in the line was Dad, Mom, Uncle Ron, Aunt Hermione, Neville, Hagrid, Albus Dumbledore, Severus Snape, and many others. Their young faces gleamed, and he wondered faintly why they wouldn't talk to him or look at him.

Albus whipped her head around to see, at the head of the line, a tall witch holding an old hat. She placed it on the ground, and then consulted a list. "Sorting will now take place. The first person is..." Darla paused. "Albus. Oh, Albus, you never told us your surname!"

He looked up. A for Albus. He was at the beginning of the list. "Potter," he said.

"Ohmigosh! Potter, like Harry freaking Potter! He is like too awesome for words!" Then she pushed him towards the hat, which to his horror was as tall as the Burrow where his grandparents lived. A mouth at the brim opened up and swallowed him.

Albus could not scream.

Immersed in total darkness, the only sense he could utilize was his hearing. A wise, genial voice spoke to him. "So, Albus, where do you want to go? Your wish is my command!"

He still could not talk, but thought to himself, I don't know...

"Hurry up, boy, I've got a lot of people to sort into Gryffindor or Slytherin!" The voice was impatient.

His brow furrowed. Weren't there more houses than that? One that started with an R and one with an H...

"Don't worry about those inconsequential things, boy, just tell me what you want."

He thought frantically, I don't know...!

"You don't know?!" Anger was clearly in the voice now. "Off with you, you're nothing but a" the hat spat him out on the damp, grassy outskirt of the Forbidden Forest.

"BLIBBERING HUMDINGER!"

Albus covered his ashamed face as the appalled and disappointed yells of "Albus!" rang in the air. Oh no! The worst of the worst! It was the house for the weakest, most unworthy students with a spark of magic in them. What was he going to do? How could he ever face anyone again! Albus was so distraught his shoulders were shaking violently. This was the worst place he could ever end up in-

Scorpius was shaking him awake. "Albus! Wake up! Are you okay?"

"...'m fine, stop shaking me," Albus muttered, realizing it had been a dream. Remembering his father's advice about bad dreams, he stayed very still and went through it piece by piece in his head.

How could Severus Snape and Albus Dumbledore be in line? I don't even know what they look like! What else was there... Blibbering Humdinger, well that wasn't a house at all; that was just some random creature that Dad's good friend Luna knew about. Why was Darla Diggle reading the names for the Sorting? And Sorting was organized by last name, not first! In fact, all of the people waiting to be sorted were adults of different ages and not one of them was eleven like me.

Once he had successfully decided his dream was ridiculous and not to be considered as a source for any wisdom or self-realization, he addressed the wide-eyed students staring at him. "Sorry, just a bad dream..."

"Harry Potter totally had bad dreams too! And they were like prophetic 'cause he was like connected to You-Know-Who's mind! WHOA, man."

Albus laughed at her response, even though it would have annoyed him before. "You were in my dream!"

"Really?" She batted her eyes. "What did I do?"

"You read my name off a list, said that you didn't know my surname, and let the Sorting Hat eat me," Albus said matter-of-factly and smiled.

"You sure have crazy dreams," Darla grudgingly acknowledged.

Albus laughed again. "You don't know the half of it" and then paused. He still had no answer to his problem. How could he know which house was right? He sighed.

"So, do you wanna play Explodin' Snap now?" asked the curly-haired boy, whose name he could not recall. "I've already made mincemeat of these two amateurs."

"Don't!" Scorpius Malfoy next to him hissed in a mock whisper. "You may never look the same..." He pointed to his singed eyebrows under his white-blond hair with a wild expression. Albus only laughed again before shaking his head slowly to the curly-haired boy. He did not respond to their excitement, just pondering his dilemma.

Because he had to look at this methodically, right? If it was one thing he'd learned from Rose, it was that when presented with a problem, he had to think methodically. Let's start with the big one: Gryffindor.

Gryffindor was for those with courage. Courage, courage. But wait! A new idea arrested him. With only courage... the horrid things that could happen! Villainous and shady characters can be brave. Shallow, vain, and stupid people can be brave. Bravery was such an inconsequential virtue when compared to such vital things!

And yet Dad had mentioned so many people who had been in Gryffindor. Albus considered them all, trying to find their pros and cons. Rubeus Hagrid, a large man who was not the smartest in sense of pets, which made for a very dangerous individual. However, he was quite kind at heart. Cormac McLaggen, very able and handsome fellow, but hopelessly dull in the sense of girls - Aunt Hermione said that "Even Ronald wooed better than he!"- and also quite stuck up, overconfident, and unlikable. Uncle Percy was hopelessly boring, though occasionally repentant. Albus Dumbledore, his namesake, had had an annoying habit of trying to withhold truth and was admittedly not to be trusted with power, though otherwise ws an exceedingly wise and humble character... And James was definitely not a model person. Both of them. James Senior, his deceased grandpa, had been arrogant and foolish as a child, but then grew up to be great and loving and fierce. James, his elder brother, was certainly not a model character. He always teased and picked on Albus mercilessly and never knew when to stop. Who knew what he would grow up to be? So maybe the Jameses weren't the best of examples.

And then... there were his parents. His perfect parents. There they were, welcoming him and comforting him. He could never think of a word against them. They weren't mean. They weren't stupid. They never went wrong!

Then there was the close runner-up: Slytherin.

All the bad guys were from Slytherin. You-Know-Who, all the people Dad and Mum hated, etc. etc. And then there was the one goody. Severus Snape. He tasted the name wonderingly. He who had headed the line of first-years during his nightmare. This man who gave up everything for his love. But what was the good of that? Anyone would do that if they loved someone, right?

Then, of course, there was the danger that he faced, and even when his love was dead, he continued for her. He put everything he could into it. For the ones he respected, he had undying loyalty. But those weren't Slytherin traits! That was Gryffindor and Hufflepuff.

Perhaps, Albus thought, your house just defines the obvious traits.

The traits described for Slytherins were ambition and cunning. Those two words often lie in the thoughts of misdoers, which is probably why there are so many of those in the House. But they weren't essentially bad. Dad had ambition. He was cunning. So, people who the Sorting Hat wants to put in Slytherin aren't bad, right?

Then the two others that existed: Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. Oddly enough, it was those two that Albus could find no fault in, even though they were the two that were almost never mentioned by his family. If a person's knowledge was of a devious kind, they would be in Slytherin. And to have such a fountain of knowledge is so invaluable -just look at Aunt Hermione, an almost Ravenclaw! And the Hufflepuffs- well, what could go wrong? They were kind, steadfast, and persistent. Those were magnificent traits, that no one could find any fault in unless they were concerned in any way with the idea of glory or fame. Because it was true. Hufflepuffs, Albus thought, must be essential to the world, for all the good people they house, but the world in general did not view them as particularly amazing. How terribly unfair and strange!

He realized then and there that it did not matter which house he would land in. His family would not mind if he was in Gryffindor or Slytherin, and he himself personally would not mind if he was in Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw. They're all amazing choices, he thought happily to himself, glad just to have been chosen for Hogwarts. He rose from his seat to face the bemused three. "Did someone want to play Exploding Snap?"

They enjoyed themselves until it was time to change into their uniforms. The first years met Hagrid and piled into the boats. Albus went through it all like a dream, so excited he was to be finally sorted. His dread had been completely shed, and this time, as he went into line with Darla and Scorpius and the Exploding Snap boy, he quivered not from fear but from excitement.

Professor Longbottom's voice called out clearly "Potter, Albus!" He ran to the stool and brought the hat to his head.

Once again, it was completely dark. "Why would this be a dream?" asked the rumbling voice of the hat. "Well, the choice is clearer in your head than I've ever seen it. You definitely will fit very well in..."

A/N: The end. What house do you think he's in? Oh, and for the nice people who put this fanfic on Story Alert, I must apologize for the confusion. This is a ONE-SHOT, therefore there won't be another chapter or anything. Sorry, guys!

And by the way, it is so true about the whole dream thing: if you wake up from a dream, stay in the same position and you'll be able to remember a lot of it. If you move- like turning your head, or sitting up- you forget your dream almost completely.

IF YOU READ THIS FANFIC, YOU HAD BETTER REVIEW! Because if you don't, I'll combine my Slytherin deviousness and my Ravenclaw cleverness and my Gryffindor bravery and discard my Hufflepuff kindness... and you wouldn't want that to happen...

Muahahaha,

loonynamelass

REVIEW RESPONSES:

Elphaba's Fiyero: I LOVE your pen name, by the way! Hehe, I may have gushed a little too much on Hufflepuff, I was just in a whole "Gyffindor and Ravenclaw are stupid and Hufflepuff is awesome" mood.

mjmusiclover: All to their own. Funny? If you think so, it is.

: You are one of two minds. Eleven and quite bright... as well as quite kind (to Darla even though she's rather nuts), quite brave (to stray away from Rose's company at least) and quite ambitious (to be thinking about the future so much)

RedCloakedMaiden: Even if he didn't, many do not, but the Sorting Hat still puts them where they ought to be. Oh dear Darla, who is indeed meant to be Dedalus Diggle's relative in some way. Maybe daughter, granddaughter, or niece is what I was thinking. She'll probably annoy half the wizarding world to death, lucky muggles we are. I based her speech off of a very close friend of mine, if not her crazy, nosy, and slightly daft personality.