Chapter Text
The sorting hat had a name.
(It was Reginald.)
He had a name, and a personality, and a family.
(His older sister was a tea cozy. He also had a younger sister who was a scarf, and a brother who was a single, unpaired glove, but they weren’t speaking at present.)
He also had a job— one so simple, and yet so frustrating at times that it made him wish he had hair simply so that he could pull it out.
(Of course, that would require that he also have hands to pull it out with... but whatever.)
He was supposed to sort children into different dormitories at a magical school based on their strengths, weaknesses, personalities, and preferences.
(Because that makes sense .)
Really, why would you want to have children mingle with diverse personalities when you could save so many arguments by simply clumping them together where they’ll get along?
(And if you get a few millennia-old feuds because of the system, what was really so bad about that? It taught them to deal with conflict , obviously.)
But when people thought he should take the kiddos’ opinions into account just because of what they wanted, and ignore everything else? It got annoying.
Sure, if there was someone who’d do well either way, it made sense to leave it up to the kid. But this guy?
‘Please Gryffindor, please Gryffindor, please oh please oh PLEASE put me in Gryffindor!’ The kid was almost whining as he begged.
‘Why Gryffindor? You don’t seem like you’d enjoy yourself very much there... you really wouldn’t fit in, and you might not make very many friends because of it. What makes you want to go there?’
‘Gryffindors are strong and loyal! They’ll protect me, and be there for me whenever I need them!’
Loyalty goes two ways, kid... Reginald thought, and after hardly a moment’s contemplation determined that he simply didn’t feel like taking that crap today. He’d already had to deal with the poor Black kid (forty minutes to figure out his house. Forty. Minutes. ), and knowing the Potter brat was coming up was just too much. And now a whiner who thought he could get into the house of the brave by snivelling?
‘Sorry, kid, I can’t do that. It’s gonna have to be...’
“SLYTHERIN!”
And as Peter Pettigrew slumped on the stool before standing and sulking over to the cheering table, Reginald gave himself a mental pat on the back. It was really the best place for him, seeing as he could in nowise fit anywhere else. Slytherin tended to do well at making weaklings into slightly more confident, less obvious weaklings, after all. He had a feeling it would all turn out fairly alright, given what the other options were.
Of course, he had no idea that the moment of the proclamation was filled with gasps of disbelief and breaths of relief from beyond the fourth wall as the Wizarding World’s most pivotal betrayal was simply, unceremoniously—
Averted .