Minerva McGonagall
Minerva tried to keep the irritation from her face. It wouldn't be right to show the new students just how boring the sorting ceremony was for her every year. For them, this was one of the most important moments of their life, but for her or any of the staff behind her, it was an exhausting process with very little change through the years. They all started to blend together after a while. She used to be very strict with sending out harsh glares to the older students whispering, but after so many repetitions, she found herself letting them talk more often than not.
Still, this moment was about the new students at the end of the day, and while Minerva had grown tired of the production of the event, she never grew tired of seeing the wide eyed excitement on all of the children's faces.
And this next one, she just knew was going to be one to remember.
"Weasley, Ronald," she dictated clearly. Weasleys were always such a joy to see pass through her class. While she might have had her fair share of complaints about the twins' sense of humor or Charlie's insatiable flirting, somehow every Weasley she had met had been completely full of charm, creativity, and wit. It was starting to make her think that there was something in Weasley blood that just made them very electric personalities.
Minerva was expecting something similar with this next Weasley child, but the boy that walked up to the hat seemed nothing of the sort. Minerva was shocked at the missing spark of wonder in the boy's eyes. He looked around at his surroundings as if nothing was all that out of normal. To her shock, his eyes had that same glaze that a lot of the staff had in theirs.
The boy sat down politely on the stool and Minerva lowered the hat onto his head. The hat didn't immediately scream out 'Gryffindor!' so Minerva thought she had a few moments before he was sorted. She looked out at the Gryffindor table and saw a few surprising reactions.
Percy Weasley looked incredibly concentrated and was staring directly at the boy. Percy had always been the most serious of the Weasleys, but the expression on his face was downright unsettling. The twins were doing it as well, but she could see a bit of a scowl on one of them, who she thought might have been Fred. The one she thought was George had a very vulnerable expression of hope that Minerva couldn't quite understand from this far away.
As time passed a lot of people started whispering to each other on the Gryffindor table, and that only spread as more time passed. Soon, there was a disquiet hum of chatter throughout the whole hall as the minutes dragged on. Minerva had the strong urge to look to Dumbledore for help, but held strong and just let the hat do its thing.
"SLYTHERIN!" the hat shouted so suddenly Minerva jumped a little. And then she had to do another double take to realize what the hat had said. A Weasley in Slytherin? Minerva thought to herself. I never thought that I would ever see the day.
And it seemed no one in the hall thought that too, as there didn't seem to be anybody clapping. Not any Slytherins and not any of his brothers in Gryffindor. A few more seconds went by before somebody actually started clapping, and Minerva saw that it was one of the twins.
Minerva took the hat off of the boy's head and pushed him towards the Slytherin table. He didn't look overly surprised, just a little confused if anything. Minerva felt something drop in her stomach based on his expression. There was just something off about the way he looked that unsettled something deep inside of her. She couldn't help but wonder if there was something terribly wrong going on in the boy's life.
He walked quietly, to only a moderate amount of nervous clapping, and Minerva internally winced at the harsh glare the Malfoy boy gave to Ronald.
That's not going to end well, Minerva thought to herself.
But that was a problem for another day and sorting had to go on, so she spoke the name "Zabini, Blaise."
A/N: I thought that I should put this here to at least acknowledge my thought process on this story. Obviously the story is going to be written as a series of scenes each told from a different perspective. I wanted to take a commonly known story and see how the one character with some kind of foreknowledge would be able to affect the people around them. Obviously, Ron is going to change things from the basic canon, but this story is really just a side project for me when I don't want to work on Dueling Tournament or Bringing the Dawn. It might turn out a bit stations-of-canon like, even though I usually hate those kinds of stories, but I hope that the unique POVs throughout will be enough to make it its own thing. Oh, and if anybody has any advice on making my writing less crap, I'm open to suggestions.