Harry Potter and all its characters and storylines belong to J.K. Rowling.

This is the chapter where Draco and the others get sorted. Praying to Merlin that I executed this okay. Here goes nothing.


Chapter Four - "He Was Back Home Again."

Draco had forgotten how intimidating and strict Professor McGonagall could be. As she'd aged, she hadn't lost her firm and no-nonsense atmosphere that hung around her form like a second layer of skin. She could silence any troublemaker with a mere glance from her eyes. But the last time Draco had seen McGonagall, at the Hogwarts funeral to honor those who'd given their lives in the war when he was still seventeen, she had not been her usual imposing and neat self. Those eyes had not been threatening in the least; they showed McGonagall's age, and how tired and defeated the witch had felt at what might've been the lowest point of her life. Her hair had almost always been grey or greying in the time Draco had known her, but suddenly she seemed older because of its color. It had been falling out of its bun, hanging in straggly waves around her suddenly ancient face. Her robes had been black, proper attire for a funeral, but they were the only neat things about her. She looked exhausted and sad, an appropriate expression for the occasion.

But ten years ago, she was still a splendid sight; tall, black-haired, dressed in robes so green they rivaled Potter's emerald eyes. The worry and pain that had weighed down her shoulders had not arrived yet. Her face was set into a stern expression, and though it was still marked with wrinkles, it only made her seem more wise and imposing, instead of old. She seemed to impress upon the first years that there would be no messing around when she was in the vicinity.

"The firs' years, Professor McGonagall," said Hagrid respectfully, dipping his head slightly as if he was thinking of bowing.

"Thank you, Hagrid," the witch replied. Her voice was smooth and firm, filled with confidence. Last time, it had cracked with grief as she'd delivered her speech to attending wizards and witches and accepted her role as Headmistress of Hogwarts with teary eyes. "I will take them from here."

She pulled the front door open wide, bustling off across the flagged stone floor and hardly allowing the awed first-years to take in the vastness of the entrance hall. The amazed voices of the new students blended into the loud talking from the Great Hall with the rest of the students, and the voices echoed off the walls and floated up to the higher floors of the castle.

"Welcome to Hogwarts," McGonagall said grandly as soon as she'd ushered the new pupils into a small chamber off to the side of the Great Hall. "The start-of-term banquet will begin shortly, but before you take your seats in the Great Hall, you will be sorted into your houses." She proceeded to speak of the Sorting and the four houses, while the listening children tittered nervously.

Sorting. It was very close now. Draco was now filled with a feeling of dread at the thought. Would he get sorted into Slytherin again? If so, then what would he do? Would that defeat the whole purpose of a second chance? Was he supposed to get sorted into a different house so he could change the course of the future?

He didn't know what he was supposed to do, and he was also unsure how to feel about the Sorting. On the one hand, Slytherin was home. Despite its bad reputation, he loved his house. He was and would always be a Slytherin. But on the other hand, if this was a second chance to change things, than shouldn't he be in a different house? Perhaps Gryffindor was the house he was supposed to end up in this time, although he shuddered at the thought of wearing a scarlet-and-gold tie. Or perhaps he'd end up in Ravenclaw, which was only slightly better than the prospect of being a Gryffindor – at least Ravenclaws were smart and clever and less impulsive.

Let the Sorting Hat decide, Draco thought to himself, but at the same time he was picking apart his thoughts and memories and working at building a mental barrier around the things he didn't want the hat to see or know.

"The Sorting Ceremony will take place in a few minutes in front of the rest of the school," McGonagall was finishing. She made to sweep out of the room, but before executing the move, she continued, "I suggest you all smarten yourselves up as much as you can while you are waiting."

Her eyes skimmed over the assembled children, pausing every now and then on a few students who seemed unsatisfactory; Longbottom, with his cloak fastened under his left ear, Crabbe, who's mouth was covered in crumbs, and Weasley, who still had a smudge on his nose. From the corner of his eye, Draco saw Potter frantically run a hand through his hair, perhaps trying to flatten it.

"I shall return when we are ready for you," the professor said. "Please wait quietly." At last she swept from the chamber, closing the door behind her. Within seconds of her disappearance, the first-years around Draco erupted into nervous chatter.

He hated to realize it, but Draco was actually feeling nervous now about the Sorting Ceremony. His indifference had evaporated. He wasn't nervous about the prospect of getting up in front of the school and trying on a hat. No. This was something very important; it would determine his future in this second chance he'd received somehow.

Maybe this is still a dream, and I'll wake up in my apartment in New York and have a good laugh about worrying about unimportant things like Sorting Ceremonies and being eleven.

He was actually missing his miserable life as a twenty-one-year-old.

-.0

"When I call your name, you will put on the hat and sit on the stool to be sorted," McGonagall announced. The Great Hall was hushed now; the only sound was the light crackling of candles and the shifting of students and teachers in their seats. Above everybody's heads, the ceiling was scattered with stars, silver beings that glimmered much like the ghosts that sat among the students at the House tables.

"Abbott, Hannah!"

And so the Sorting began with a blond girl fumbling forward onto the stool. It wasn't hard to believe that it was Hannah Abbott who married Neville Longbottom, with the way she blushed and stumbled around. Honestly, the two seemed meant to be.

As other first years were sorted, Draco took pleasure in whispering the name of the student's houses in Weasley's and Potter's ears right before the Sorting Hat confirmed, enjoying the looks of surprise that passed over their faces when he was correct. A Malfoy was never wrong, after all.

"Granger, Hermione!"

Granger was now heading up to try on the hat, practically tripping over herself in her haste and almost rivaling Hannah Abbott in clumsiness.

"…Gryffindor," Draco whispered to Potter and Weasley, and heard the redhead grown in despair at his prediction.

"Ugh, I don't want her in my house…"

Draco almost expected the hat to change things up and sort Granger into Ravenclaw instead, but it was predictable as ever. "GRYFFINDOR!"

Ron groaned again. Then Longbottom was sorted into Gryffindor as well, and "MacDougal, Morag," was called up. There was a slight delay when Longbottom ran off to the Gryffindor table with the hat still on his head. The hall laughed at the flustered expression on the new Gryffindor's face and the equally embarrassed expression of Morag.

And then McGonagall was saying, "Malfoy, Draco," and feeling uncomfortably warm and nervous, Draco stepped cautiously up to the stool. He normally would've swaggered forward, confident in being sorted into Slytherin – he could see the Slytherin house straightening in its seats when its students heard his name called, their hands raised, ready to clap for him when the hat touched his head and sorted him without a second thought –

He sat on the stool. McGonagall raised the hat to his head.

The expected announcement came. "SLY – " the hat began.

WAIT! Draco thought at the same time, his mind interrupting the hat's voice. The Sorting Hat cut off mid-word, causing the Hall to titter nervously in surprise. Draco could imagine the Slytherin table lowering its hands, shocked that the Malfoy heir hadn't immediately been put into their house.

Hmm, the Sorting Hat's voice said in Draco's mind, causing the blonde to jump. He'd never experienced this before. Last time, his contact with the hat had been short and brief. You're not like you're supposed to have been. You were supposed to be an easy one.

I know I was easy, Draco thought, unable to keep an annoyed tone out of his voice. You sorted me straight into Slytherin without a second thought.

It was strange, how normal it was to reveal to the Sorting Hat that Draco wasn't from this time, that he was from the future. He knew now why the hat was pretty accurate when sorting students into the house; it had an aura that seemed to coax secrets from the mind, that seemed to assure trust.

I'm a hat, the Sorting Hat seemed to say without speaking or thinking or telepathically communicating or whatever this was. It's not like I can go about gossiping about your secrets.

You are a true Slytherin, the Sorting Hat said to Draco. But not evil. You are smart, but you are not completely clever. You might be a good Ravenclaw. That's the house of knowledge. I see that you are from the future, and I sense that in this house you could learn even more than you already know. But you are not wise, and you feel that Ravenclaw is second best to Slytherin. Perhaps Ravenclaw would teach you more about magic, but it will not teach you more about friendship and loyalty. So you might be Gryffindor. You can be impulsive, but you are not brave.

Now there was a pause. Draco could hear the hall muttering to itself, waiting with anticipation for the name of the house the Malfoy heir would be sorted into, curious as to why he hadn't gone straight to Slytherin.

You are from the future, the hat said again. I will not sort you into Slytherin for this reason. I think a change would be good, don't you? Without waiting for an answer, it continued. Ravenclaw would be a good path, but I have given my doubts of placing you in the house of wisdom, and I sense that it would not be beneficial to separate you from Harry Potter and Ron Weasley, who you know will be sorted into Gryffindor. I cannot change this fact. They are not like you. They are not from the future, so their minds and their beings are the same. Their pasts will not be altered from the past that you are originally from; but you will change what they experience and what they know.

Finally, the hat spoke out loud, speaking words that Draco knew were inevitable, but at the same time he wished were different.

"Better be…GRYFFINDOR!"

This time the hat's voice echoed not in Draco's mind, but in the Great Hall. The noise of this announcement was loud to begin with, but was made even louder by the fact that the hall was now silent. All murmuring had ceased. Everyone seemed to be shocked.

Draco loved attention perhaps a bit more than the average person and had, in his career at Hogwarts, a tendency to brag and flaunt himself to gain extra notice. But this was ridiculous. He had never imagined that he'd have every single eye in the hall on him (well, excluding the Sorting Hat, but it/he/she/whatever it was didn't have eyes). School-wide attention was Potter's thing, and it should always be Potter's thing, even if Draco had wanted it to be his thing when he was younger.

Besides, why was everyone so shocked and reacting like this? It was as if he'd just peeled off his skin and revealed that he was, in fact, Voldemort in disguise, back to kill Harry Potter and everyone else. Or, as a better, more relatable comparison in this situation, it was like Voldemort had just been sorted into Hufflepuff.

Underneath the stares of the entire Hogwarts population, Draco removed the hat from his blonde head, plopped it back onto the stool, gave a single nod at Professor McGonagall, his new Head of House, and then swept from the front of the Hall over to a seat between Granger and Longbottom.

The hall was still painfully silent, and Draco sent telepathic pleas – er, demands, because Malfoys didn't plead – to McGonagall to hurry up and read the next name. The quiet was painfully awkward and he was resisting an urge to pick up his wand and enchant all the forks in the Great Hall to gouge everyone's eyes out so that people would stop looking at him.

It occurred to him that nobody had clapped for him either, and felt a bit put out by this fact.

A few heartbeats of silence later, Granger, who didn't know anything about the Malfoy family and therefore had absolutely no excuse to be staring at him like everyone else, raised her hands and began to applaud, something that caught him off guard. And then Longbottom was also clapping, along with Seamus Finnegan, and then Potter joined in, and well, oh look, Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, is clapping, so then naturally I must to.

The applause died down eventually, though it seemed to be confused, if clapping could have an emotion, and then things continued as if nothing had just happened and Draco was glad to get that out of the way.

Mental note, he thought. Attention is good but only in small doses.

He focused back on the Sorting, if only for politeness and not genuine interest in what was happening. After him was someone named "Moon," a student who must've been so bland and boring in Draco's original timeline that he didn't remember him at all, and then "Nott, Theodore" and "Parkinson, Pansy" went up. As he expected, both of his old friends were immediately sorted into Slytherin. He felt a strange pang as he watched Pansy remove the hat and head over to the clapping and cheering snake table. She seated herself next to Theodore and Crabbe, and then, as if sensing Draco's gaze on her, she caught his eye.

He froze, unsure of what she was thinking and feeling about him right at that moment. But the eye contact lasted hardly a second. As "Patil, Padma," was called up, Pansy looked away and right past Draco as if she hadn't seen him after all, even though he knew she definitely had.

It was a very Slytherin thing to do, and even though Draco felt bitter about being ignored by her, he realized that he shouldn't have expected anything less.

"RAVENCLAW!"

Padma Patil was walking off to the now cheering table with a small smile on her face, shooting her sister a reassuring look as Parvati Patil now went up to be sorted.

"GRYFFINDOR!" came the expected announcement from the Sorting Hat, and then the second Patil twin was heading to the table Draco was sitting at with a happy expression on her face.

After "Perks, Sally-Anne" came the student with the name that many students seemed to have been looking forward to all night.

Removing the hat from the previous girl's head, McGonagall consulted her scroll and said loudly, "Potter, Harry!"

Immediately cheering from the previous Sorting quieted and whispers broke out across the halls like muted wind.

"Potter, did she say?"

"The Harry Potter?"

As the Sorting Hat dropped over the Boy-Who-Lived eye's, Draco couldn't help but snort at the commotion Potter's presence had caused. Many of the room's occupants, including several of the teachers, were now shifting in their seats, craning their necks to get a better look at the boy on the stool. An utterly useless move, if you asked Draco, because currently there were no distinguishable features of Potter because the Sorting Hat was covering his face. Potter's hands were not exactly recognizable.

"That's Harry Potter alright," one of the Weasley twins was saying to a friend – Lee Jordan, if Draco remembered correctly. "We saw him on the train."

"I don't see what all the commotion is about," Draco mentioned in passing to Granger, Longbottom, and Seamus Finnegan. He said this mostly to see the other kids' reactions. Naturally, all three – and even the Head Boy Weasley and the twins – stared at Draco as if he were mad.

"You're joking, right?" Finnegan said, his eyes wide.

The Weasley twins and Granger looked like they were about to add their own opinions in, but the Head Boy chose that moment to swoop in like an overly strict and fussy eagle more intent on keeping its prey quiet than eating it. Or perhaps like McGonagall when an exam was taking place.

"Shh, now's not the time to talk."

"Better be "GRYFFINDOR!" shouted the hat after much consideration and thinking on its part. With a sort of relieved smile, Potter shakily headed in the direction of the now-cheering Gryffindor table. Potter's reception was much better than Draco's had been - while the hall had been deathly silent when Draco had been sorted, they were now quite the opposite. The Gryffindor's looked the most triumphant, cheering and whistling and clapping (the Weasley twins took up the chant of, "We got Potter!" and the Head Boy even leapt from his seat to shake Potter's hand). Even the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables were clapping vigorously, although Draco's old house looked a bit less than pleased.

Taking a seat between Longbottom and Draco, Potter now fixed his gaze on the High Table, examining the teachers. Draco mimicked his movements, letting his eyes roam over the familiar but completely different faces of his teachers. There was Professor Trelawney, looking nervously about through her too-large glasses and resembling an owl that was confused about where it was supposed to deliver its mail. Then there was Sprout, looking much jollier than she'd been in Draco's later years at Hogwarts, watching the Sorting with a bright twinkle in her eye and cheering especially loudly whenever the hat announced a new Hufflepuff. Then Flitwick, who was just as eager as Sprout, and Dumbledore.

It was strange, seeing the old Headmaster alive and well. Last time Draco had encountered him, it had been on the top of the Astronomy Tower. The great wizard had been considerably weakened and his mind seemed to not be as sharp as it usually was, but behind those half-moon glasses, Dumbledore's blue eyes had still sparkled with clarity even if he hadn't seemed to be himself. Draco could still remember that night with an odd clearness, much like a very vivid dream. He could remember the calm and almost placid look which Dumbledore had fixed him with even as he stood with his wand at the ready, willing the Killing Curse to fly from his mouth. But the magic had gotten stuck in his throat, just as unwilling to be uttered as Draco had been to utter them.

Quickly flicking his eyes past the Headmaster, who seemingly had no idea of his death or the fact that the man that murdered him was sitting very nearby, Draco moved on, past Snape who he didn't yet want to think about, to a certain pale and nervous looking professor wearing a purple turban.

After Potter had faced down Voldemort in their first year (this fact was no secret – it had been all over the school within hours of the event), it had been well-known that Professor Quirrel wasn't anything he'd seemed to be. While most students didn't know the exact details of Quirrel's alliance or association with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, they knew that he had been working with the evil wizard. Very few students who weren't the Golden Trio knew that Voldemort had spent most of the year living in the back of Quirrel's head, hidden by a turban that smelled strongly of garlic, something that Draco would've found hilarious if it wasn't disturbing.

Telling everyone about Quirrel's alliance with Voldemort and condition might be a good idea, Draco thought. But doesn't that ruin the events of first year? How can I tell everyone the truth? Won't it mess all of time up?

Time is already not following its original course, though.

Blinking away from the purple turban, Draco became aware that the youngest Weasley male was now sitting with them at the Gryffindor table. He had a delighted and slightly relieved look on his face.

"Well done, Ron, excellent," the Head Boy said pompously.

"Zabini, Blaise!" McGonagall called. Draco knew that his old friend was the last student in their year. It took hardly ten seconds before the Sorting Hat announced, "SLYTHERIN!" and the newly sorted wizard stepped off briskly to the now-cheering table.

Almost out of habit, Draco found himself raising his hands to cheer along with them, before realizing that he was, in fact, a Gryffindor in this time and clapping for a Slytherin might come off as suspicious – house rivalries were strong, especially among the lions and snakes.

Now the Headmaster was on his feet. "Welcome," he bade everyone. "Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are. Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak! Thank you!"

With that, he seated himself again to the applause of the students and teachers.

It was amazing, Draco reflected, how silly Dumbledore could be. He also reflected that it was better this way, before all the drama with Voldemort and the darkening of the magical world.

It was surreal, sitting in the Great Hall again, a student once more at Hogwarts. Given, a twenty-one-year-old man who'd already gone through wizarding education and was now stuck in his eleven-year-old body, but that was almost the same, wasn't it? Everything was so similar to the way he remembered it; the atmosphere of the Great Hall, the students all one black mass, moving and tittering, never still, and the tables laden with sparkling gold and silver dishes, twinkling in the light from the never-dying candles overhead. Above the candles, the roof was non-existent to the eye. A beautiful array of stars were scattered across the night sky, accompanied by clouds lit pale pink by some unseeable source and the moon, which gleamed like an all-knowing eye.

If Draco closed his eyes and tuned out the voices of the Gryffindors sitting around him, he could almost imagine that he was sitting at the Slytherin table, and none of this insane crazy time traveling had taken place.

It was almost like he was back home again.


A/N: As always thank you for all the kind reviews, follows, and favorites. They all mean a lot.

Here's to hoping that readers found the Sorting Ceremony realistic. I do think that Draco is truly a Slytherin, so I tried to have a motive for why he got sorted into Gryffindor, not just because. So I hope that was realistic and if anyone has any comments or criticisms on that let me know and maybe try to address whatever in later chapters if this feels unrealistic.

Not sure when I'll be able to get the next chapter out, it's kinda partially written but I'm not very satisfied with it yet so we'll see. If you have any questions or anything tell me I'll try to answer. Sorry if anything's confusing.

MagicornIs1: Thanks for the review and hope you liked this chapter.

rhythmsbluegirl: Thank you. Glad that you thought Draco was realistically written, I'm trying not to make it that way and hopefully his character didn't flip in this chapter. Thanks for the review.

Guest: Thank you. Glad that you thought Draco is still in character, I'm guessing more tactful is a good thing? Hopefully his character didn't flip in this chapter, I'll try to keep it that way. Also hopefully I'll be able to write a realistic relationship between Hermione and Draco. Thanks for the review.

Acute-angle-101: Glad you're liking the story! That means a lot. Sorry about not having regular update schedule, with everyday life it's hard to know when there's a chance to write. Hope that the sorting was not a disappointment. Thanks for the review.

ImpossibleNightmare: Thank you, glad you think so. Hope you liked the sorting, sorry about not having an updating schedule and thank you for reviewing.

Eralc N. Denswot: Thank you sorry about not having an updating schedule but hope you liked this chapter. Thanks for reviewing.