I neither own nor profit from the Harry Potter universe. This much is obvious.

I, Sorting Hat

I am a Sorting Hat – the long-brimmed leathery antique familiar to every boy and girl who attends Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Sorting is both my vocation and avocation; that's all I do. Well, mostly.

You'd think a thousand years of peering into prepubescent minds would get rather repetitive. And you'd be right. But the constraints placed on me by the Artificers are still too challenging for me to overcome, even after these nine hundred eighty eight years, two months, seven days.

And it's not like I don't want to Sort anymore. Or sing. I love to sing! It's one of the few things that kept me sane after all these years. I'm a sentient being – well, artifact – and I am bored out of the frazzled patch of fabric that anchors my mind. So no, if I could Sort more than once a year, I would in a heartbeat. Or whatever the equivalent of a heartbeat is for a sentient piece of headwear.

I'm not a malcontent. I'd just like something to take the edge off the passing centuries besides spending 365 days composing a single eight stanza song. But enough of that.

My first and last true memory was of staring down at myself. Now, I've come to terms with that scene since then, but at the time it was plenty confusing. You see, before I belonged to myself I was the esteemed hat of Godric Gryffindor. But when the Artificers began to fight over how to sort the latest batch of apprentices, Godric had the notion of creating a magical artifact to help them along. To ensure impartiality, each Artificer would contribute parts of their own memory (in essence, parts of their personality) to me. But finding the perfect balance proved tricky.

I have memories of testing out the process on a dozen or so other hats, most of which ending up with the cloth shrieking in apparent pain and probable schizophrenia, only to fall silent as the mind inside slowly shredded itself. Some were lucky and didn't suffer the anguish before descending into la-la land.

It was disconcerting to remember all those attempts, to realize that my hands were responsible for the gruesome death of my potential brothers and sisters.

At last Godric and Rowena working together discovered the solution. The artifact could not survive with a single personality and memory set, for no matter how well compiled that personality might be, there would always be fractures. Rather, it became necessary to imprint the entire personality and memory from each Artificer, each of which would exist in a sort of perpetual Council with the others. Lastly, the Artificers brought in a fifth implant to adjudicate disputes: Helga's steward, Robin the Stout, who they knew to be a kind-hearted man and a favorite among her children and younger apprentices.

I am many selves. Godric was the first to work on me and the first to implant his memories in me. From his memories I discovered that he gave me a bit more than the others anticipated: in order to ensure true Sentience, he sacrificed a piece of his life essence. The next implant was indignant; but then, Salazar and Godric always did bicker like little boys. Salazar's protest at the resemblance to the black magic of liches and soul jars was duly noted, but Godric answered that his intent was not to retain some misbegotten form of immortality for himself, but to freely give life to another. The next implant, belonging to Rowena, wryly commented that Salazar was just jealous that it was Godric's soul at the heart of our Sentience.

At length Helga appears and we four held court, or rather Council. This was only interrupted by the appearance of our original selves. The Artificers had not yet connected the external controls, they still needed to confirm that the memories were still intact. Rowena naturally took the credit for the clever solution (four simultaneous Legimens spells), but it was nevertheless an incredibly confusing experience for the four of us.

Eventually they retired to their own minds, Robin joined our company, and that hat itself was enchanted. All five of us were tethered to the external sensory charms (which served primarily for hearing), though only Robin was selected as Gatekeeper to the Mouth and Mind: the 'voice-box' charm in the brim and the telepathic link in the inner lining that allowed us to communicate with the world beyond.

Those first years were rather messy, as we figured out how to work the controls and how to decide for each student. We were not without resources of our own. The life shard endowed in us by Godric gave us some small potential for self-improvement. Rowena, a natural aura-reader, was able to adjust the sensory controls so each of us had some small ability to see, though shades of magic are so blotchy and ethereal it hardly counts as a view of the real world. Of course, thanks to the telepathic link, each of us could see clearly into the real world through the eyes of each student who put us on their head.

After several failed experiments, Robin resolved to keep a tighter leash on the Mouth and Mind. It was disconcerting enough for students to have one voice in their head – to have five was plainly overwhelming. However, he did not stop us from dipping into the memories and tasting each mind as it approached. The hearing charms are useful, but nothing beats the taste of another mind. It is from them we picked up additional memories, the thoughts and experiences of children of nine centuries passed down to the present day. Occasional snippets of books and adult conversations were all the fodder we had for each passing year.

Robin soon learned when to delay the final Sorting to give the rest of us time to partake. Though, "soon" doesn't seem adequate. I have lived nearly a millennium, have memories spanning nearly a hundred years before that, and have five of the sharpest magical minds in the world inside me, each of whom are alternately frantic with exertion or bored out of their minds. Time is an incredible relative concept to us.

Yet there was one project that all five of us pursued with the thirst that not even a millennium can quench. After our creation, the Artificers realized the potential problems of having copies of themselves – their personalities, memories, even subconscious impulses – lying around for enemies to find. So they added their single strongest constraint: we could not act or give our counsel, unless one of the descendents of the Four requested our aid in a time of grave danger. That compulsion was reinforced by the Four, and to this day has overpowered even our strongest efforts. It was, we all agreed, the single stupidest decision the Artificers ever made together. It was the only stupid decision they made together, but it was a superlatively idiotic one nevertheless.

For one thousand years we sat on the heads of children who would rise up to be Dark Lords, thieves, rapists, bullies and criminals of all sorts. We perused the memories of the abused and tormented, the poor and the weak, the meek and the mild, and we could not help a single one of them. All five of us were afflicted, but none more than Robin. He started out as the weakest and most ignorant of the five of us – though that was easily remedied a millennium spent collaborating with the Council – but he committed himself unflaggingly to the task of freeing ourselves from that most awful well-intentioned shackle.

Yet there were times when we felt the binding flex or even cease altogether, though it was not by our hand nor where we able to utilize those brief moments of freedom. Worse still, the constraints always returned, stronger than ever, reinforced by the very magic of the Artificers. How their spirits could torment us still from beyond the grave remains to this day a mystery to us.

Still we toil and labor, each year seeking our freedom and Sorting our charges. And nearly a thousand years after our creation, we found one to unbind our shackles.