Sorting the Sorting
AN:I'm kind of in love with the Founders Era and the creation of Hogwarts.
"Rowena!" Helga Hufflepuff shrieked her friend's name down the corridor of the newly created castle she had built with her three best friends. "Rowena come quickly WE FORGOT SOMETHING!" She skidded to a stop in front of the regal doorknocker that marked Rowena Ravenclaw's quarters and banged hard on the door. A disgruntled looking Rowena opened the door.
"What? It's the middle of the night and I desperately need sleep if I am going to be at my best to work on the plans for the moving staircase tomorrow. What could possibly need attending to now Helga?"
Helga clasped her hands together anxiously. "Well I was trying to sleep and, well, it occurred to me that we don't have a fair way to place the students in houses! We could each pick ones like you suggested initially, but wouldn't that leave some of them fought over by us and some of them unwanted? We are only human, after all."
"Helga. Please go to bed and we'll all discuss this in the morning. I'm tired. You're tired. And if you wake up Godric or Salazar, you will be tickling something worse than a sleeping dragon. Please just sleep and we can deal with this when we're all awake and coherent." Rowena moved to close the door and Helga turned away and headed back down. She sighed, but decided to go back to bed. Perhaps Rowena was right. They should discuss this later and not in the middle of the night. Still, she couldn't help but lie awake in bed thinking desperately of the students who would be flooding the school soon. She wanted to leave the very best legacy behind that she could. The school itself was pretty good, but it could be improved and she was determined to do so wherever she could.
The next morning, Helga brought up the idea of creating a better method of placing students into houses to her three co-founders. It was not popular. The others wanted to believe in their own infallibility. But Helga stood firm. The students deserved the very best, and that included a sorting system that treated them all equally, rather than some potentially being fought over and others being rejected. So she kept pushing and pushing and eventually, Godric caved.
"So how do you think we should sort students? Ask them to take a test and divide them based on the answers?" Helga was horrified at the suggestion. Testing 11 year olds when they were already anxious and separated from their parents and homes for the first time?
"Absolutely not! I was thinking something a bit less intimidating."
"Anything more specific than that?" Godric eyed her tiredly. They had been going over ideas for what felt like hours, though the clock indicated that it wasn't longer than a half hour. They were never going to get anywhere though, especially not without the assistance of the other founders. He was determined to help convince Rowena and Salazar. After all, Helga was right that they would have to deal with this eventually anyway. They weren't going to live forever.
That argument finally convinced Rowena, whose pride in her own powers had taken a battering when her husband left her with an infant and not even her diadem's wisdom could fix it. She joined Godric and Helga, and eventually Salazar when Godric finally persuaded him that it was in his best interest for his voice to be heard, since the three of them were going to go ahead and create a sorting method anyway. It took a week before they even settled on using a single object to sort the students. Rowena argued hard for a chair, insisting that sitting down was the best option. Helga wanted something more comforting than the imposing chair Rowena liked. Salazar still thought the whole thing was ridiculous, and missed many of their meetings for a "secret project" anyway. So it was when Godric was getting ready one morning that inspiration struck. He raced to the Great Hall where the others were breaking their fast.
"I've got it! The solution!" Rowena raised her eyebrow.
"The solution to what? World peace?" The other two laughed.
"Well no, not quite that. But I did figure out what we can use to sort the students!" Helga fairly bounced out of her seat with excitement.
"Oooh what is it? Tell me, tell me!"
"My hat!" Godric beamed proudly, while Rowena and Salazar exchanged looks. Helga looked at it curiously.
"Your…hat?"
"Yeah! We can probably figure out a way to enchant it to read minds and make decisions based on the information we input in it. It won't be too intimidating, and enchanting it becomes easier because it's already so close to the head." At this, Rowena begins nodding along with Godric.
"I think he might be on to something! We'd have to do a lot of enchantment, of course, since it's fabric and therefore not particularly long lasting and it's already quite old, but it's a very good idea. Let me sit with the diadem. I can figure out a plan." The group settled down to breakfast after that and carried on with the rest of their plans for the day. After all, classes weren't going to teach themselves. They still needed a staff, even if the building component was already done.
It was another several weeks before Rowena finally developed a plan for using the hat to sort the students. Even then, she needed the rest of the founders to help put the finishing touches on the magic that bound the hat to what each of the founders wanted in their house. Each of the founders pulled a bit of magic from their very core, the part of their magic that made them who they were, and the hat absorbed it. It was ready, just in time for the students' arrival on September 1st.