Headmaster Dumbledore stood, in all his cockamamie majesty, and greeted the returning students, "Welcome back, children, to your continuing journey and exploration into your education. Here, before me, sit four young pupils, ready to grace this institution with new insights and perspectives. Deputy - Minerva, if you will, the Sorting Hat." Here, he gestured grandly.
Draco wasn't terribly impressed. But he was listening, and heard the hidden meaning as if it were invisible ink, plain as day to him and only him. He idly supposed that wasn't true - there had to be more people than Draco Malfoy who knew the truth. Well, him and Harry Potter, he amended.
The Sorting Hat sang a song, but it was a different song - as it always was. This one spoke, not as his first song had of virtues, but instead of hidden truths. It spoke of the four houses as if they were of one body. The Slytherins, the left handed shield - and the Gryffindors, of course, as the sword. The Ravenclaws? The head, obviously. And then the Sorting Hat came to Hufflepuff, and Draco found himself leaning forward, as it spoke of the Wizarding World's hands and feet. For it sang of Hufflepuffs' sense of mending, of knitting together, and of the steadfastness and surety that they gained from hard work.
All in all, Draco Malfoy thought, it was an auspicious beginning if - and here his breath quickened - they meant to send Potter to Hufflepuff. Had someone bribed the hat? However would you do that? Was that even a possibility? Maybe Dumbledore offered to put it on his own head, give the poor thing something vast and mazy to think about for the rest of the year... Would that do it?
"Curt Finn," Minerva called, and Draco Malfoy blinked, as Harry Potter trotted calmly up to the Sorting Hat (come to think, the first two hadn't looked terribly scared - perhaps it was because they weren't expected in a house, as Bottomlong and Malfoy had both been). As the hat sat upon Potter's head, Draco Malfoy began to chuckle inwardly, to himself. Who had decided on that name for Potter, who was often as loud and long of words as Percy Weasley (if markedly less officious)!
[a/n: Snape, of course. As he put it, "A bit of a reminder, Mister Potter. Silence is golden."
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