A/N: Just a little look at a character not much delved into by books or fanfiction.
Read and review, please!
Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, or any other associated corporations. If I did... well then, things would be a tad different.
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Hogwarts is a silent place after the term ends.
Occasionally, you may come across a ghost or two, but they're not much in the way of decent conversation. And of course there's Hagrid in his hut, you could always go visit him, expect for the fact that, more often than not, he's off in the Forbidden Forest with Fang.
So for the most part, there really is no one there.
And this leaves the poor Sorting Hat all by his lonesome.
He usually doesn't think about the solitude; it gives him plenty of time to compose the beginning of year song. But there is something within him that aches everytime the students are shuttled off to the train station at the end of each year and Hogwarts empties its halls.
Maybe it's just the loneliness. Through his brief glimpses into the minds of the young, the Sorting Hat has seen the world a million times over and from so many points of view. Each and everyone fascinates him. To know that not one of those minds he peruses will ever give him another thought, much less thank him, is depressing enough for your average magical sentient object.
It's enough to prove that the Sorting Hat is completely alone.
In the silence of Hogwarts, especially; that is when the Sorting Hat mourns the most. He mourns so many. In his years of service, he has seen child after child grow up in the halls of his beloved home, only to leave and never look back. All of their endings are the same: death. But the magic in the atmosphere of the school seems to absorb their laughter, their tears, their cries, and their mischief 'till the air hangs heavy with countless memories.
They echo on and on inside the Sorting Hat hollowness, he who has heard all of these things since he was first placed upon a child's head.
Or perhaps it's his age, the knowledge that yet another year has passed. He is, after all, well over a thousand and getting older. Since the day Godric swept him off of his head, the Sorting Hat has done his duty, year after year.
Anyone who has immortal life will tell a mortal that immortality is not what its cracked up to be. To live forever, without end, without closure; it's a more terrible torture than any you could imagine.
The Sorting Hat only wishes that someone could have made that Voldemort fellow see; before he decided upon his reign of fear and death. For the Final Battle was indeed the most horrific occurrence he ever witnessed in his long lifetime. So much, so very much was lost. The absences would rot away in the Sorting Hat's heart, if he had one.
If only.
Whatever the reason, the Sorting Hat still remains, entombed in the silence of Hogwarts.
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:)