Author's Note: I do not and never will own Harry Potter.

AU snippets of what might happen if people were put in different Houses.

He's never been so nervous, not even when he was sure Dumbledore had come to throw him into the asylum, but he doesn't show it. His face is perfectly still. The other first years crowd around him, whispering and laughing and in a few instances, crying. Let them. He'll show all of them what sort of wizard Tom Marvolo Riddle can be. His mother was weak, but he isn't.

The Sorting Hat is dirty and frayed, its mouth a rip in the brim. He can barely conceal his sneer when it is ceremoniously placed on his head and the edge tips over his eyes. The reverence is undeserved, he thinks, until he can feel it, slipping through his memories and thoughts, slithering into every last discarded corner. He wrenches at it with his mind, but can't dislodge it. Not yet anyway.

Get out of my head, he thinks with barely controlled venom. His body is shaking, but it's so slight, only the professor standing beside him might notice.

My apologies, the Hat replies, but does not retreat. I am sorry, but this is the only way to Sort you. Are you all right?

Of course, he answers, but there's dishonesty hidden in it, and it's a weakness he hates displaying.

He knows where he would like to be Sorted, he's read up on Hogwarts. The stipend Dumbledore gave him stretches just enough for that, and he thirsts for more knowledge. He appreciates Slytherin, and acknowledges Ravenclaw. Gryffindor he disdains, and Hufflepuff might as well not exist. Bumbling, foolish, the lot of them. Their traits remind him of the most simpering at the orphanage.

Where to put you? the Hat muses. He knows what the answer will be, of course. What it has to be. There's a place in Hogwarts where Tom belongs, a place where he never has to think about the orphanage again.

But the brim opens up, and the Hat blares "HUFFLEPUFF" to the Great Hall. There is a roaring in his ears and for an instant, Tom considers summoning all his magic and making the whole place explode with him. He thinks he could do it, spells or no spells. But polite clapping rises up around him and as he hands the Hat back, his eyes meet Dumbledore's. There is shock there, and without realising it, Tom begins to smile.

Hufflepuff is too cozy, too loud, too there, and Tom hates it at first. It is nothing like he imagined (although it is better than the orphanage, anything is better than the orphanage). He keeps his head down and doesn't ask questions in class. Dumbledore's eyes land upon him frequently in the first several months, but by the time winter break has rolled around, the Transfiguration professor seems to have forgotten his presence. He is the first one who signs up to stay at the castle over the holidays, but he isn't the only one. Half his year-mates sign up as well, and he doesn't know what to do with the sympathetic looks directed his way. It's uncomfortable and annoying, but it kind of feels good, too.

The older students show him how to tickle the pear to get into the kitchens, and some of the more well-known secret passages. When a sixth-year Slytherin tries to shove him down a flight of stairs and calls him a Mudblood, he finds himself in a knot of Hufflepuffs, including a prefect, who hex the Slytherin until his face is covered in boils.

"My mother's a witch," he says to no one in particular when the boy has stumbled off, cursing under his breath, to the Hospital Wing. Nobody says anything, but they don't need to.

When exams are over and summer holidays loom, he asks the Headmaster if there's some way he can stay at Hogwarts. When that doesn't work, he yells. When that doesn't work, he tries to curse the man. The answer remains the same, and he closes up again, like he was at the start of term. Cold, remote, unapproachable. It's supposed to work, until he runs into his friends, and then it doesn't anymore.

"Come with me to my house," someone says, and Tom finds himself agreeing without knowing what precisely he's agreed to. It's new and it's strange and he doesn't know how to handle it, but he knows that he will.

And when Lord Voldemort rises in time, it will take years, so many frustrating, pointless years- but at last he will and Dumbledore won't know what hit him, and the Ministry will crumble like a sand castle at high tide, but he's expected that, and he knows how to shore it back up, because Hufflepuffs just play a different kind of dirty- and he's not a pureblood, but he's accepted that (though he curses the name of his worthless Muggle father), and he has friends.

And it's different, he discovers, when you have friends who actually fight for the cause because of you and not because they're afraid of you, and perhaps this Dark Lord does understand the meaning of love, and how to bend it to his purpose-

The world will tremble.