Many of the first-years still standing in line up at the front of the Great Hall were looking even more terrified than before, but Harry noted that the boy with the curly black hair looked incredibly relieved. He turned to a small girl with two long, blonde plaits down her back and exchanged a high-five, laughing. Harry couldn’t help but grin bemusedly, reaching back in his mind. Had he really wanted to be sorted?No, he answered himself. Not at all.

Harry was all too conscious that he was one of the students that the Hat had willfully mis-Sorted, and felt the shame of being placed into Slytherin overwhelm him all over again. He hadn’t wanted to be Slytherin – didn’t that count for something?

Hermione remained quiet, but she was the only one.

“What does that mean?” Ron’s face was white, his eyes wide. “There’s never been no Sorting Hat! Not in all of Hogwart’s history!”

Hermione straightened briefly, as if she were about to mention the exception to this rule that she’d read in Hogwarts: A History, but then subsided, looking slightly gloomy.

“I expect they’ll enchant another,” she finally said darkly.

“But you wouldn’t want them to,” Harry deduced.

Hermione frowned in thought. “No.”

“Well, I don’t see what’s all that wrong about the Houses,” Ron said.

“It’s why I hate Millicent,” Hermione announced. “She’s in Slytherin. There’s no other reason.” She was blinking, as though waking from a dream. “Who would have thought that placing people according to their strongest personality trait would ever work?” she continued. “I mean, look at the three of us. It’s obvious the reason we all get on is because we’re so different, not because we’re the same.”

Ron snorted. “We all got placed in Gryffindor, didn’t we?”

“Didn’t you hear the Hat?” Hermione shot back. “One of five! There’s a twenty percent chance that you weren’t placed in Gryffindor first! Well – were you?”

Harry watched the color climb on Ron’s face. “Yes, I was, thanks.”

“Well, I wasn’t.”

Harry’s eyebrows shot up. “Hermione?”

“I was placed in Ravenclaw, of course,” she said.

“You’re having me on,” Ron protested.

“No, I don’t think she is.”

“Hermione?” Ron said in a small voice.

“Oh, blast them,” Hermione said, her own voice distant as she gazed up to the front of the hall where the first-years were still milling, confused. “Even Dumbledore looks thrown. I’m going to go up to see if I can help. Come along, Ron.” She stood, tugging absently at his robes.

When Ron didn’t move, she turned the full force of her glare on him. “Come on, Ron, we’re prefects!” She tsked. “I shouldn’t have to remind you of that every other moment, you know!”

Harry blinked across the way, where Neville was sitting, looking shell-shocked. “All right, Harry?”

Harry laughed, then turned his attention up to the front of the Great Hall. Hermione, apparently, wasn’t the only one of the prefects who’d seen the need. A Ravenclaw and a Slytherin had also joined Professor McGonagall and Hagrid, who were attempting to soothe some of the more frightened of the first-years.

Neville was now looking worried. “Where will they go? Where will they sleep?” he wondered.

Harry shook his head in bemusement.

“I expect they’ll be placed somewhere meantime,” Seamus put in.

“Meantime?”

“Until they can enchant a new Sorting Hat, of course.”

“But will they?” Neville wondered. “The Hat was pretty definite, wasn’t he?”

Dean turned an anxious glance on Neville. “Were you put in Gryffindor first, mate?”

Neville pinked. “Yes, actually.” He turned his attention away from the other boys, though, playing with the Gryffindor crest on his robes.

“Ahem.”

Harry, Neville, Dean and Seamus all jerked slightly at the sound of Dumbledore’s voice echoing across the Great Hall with the use of Sonorus. The Hall quieted rather abruptly.

“As something truly historically momentous has occurred,” he said expansively, “there can be no question as to what to do: talk about it, in a long and boring fashion. However, I have found that the mind does not well function on an empty stomach. In that spirit – tuck in!”

Food then appeared at every spot of the table; the tables seemed to be groaning with it. Harry, however hungry he was, kept his eyes trained on the first-years still standing up front.

With a wave of Dumbledore’s wand, another small table appeared, likewise laden with food. The blonde girl and black-haired boy exchanged another series of comments before setting-to with a will. Most of the other children looked ill at ease; Harry noted a girl he would have labeled as a Weasley had he not known better – she didn’t even pick up a fork, staring instead at the food as though she supposed it might leap down her mouth of its own accord.

After a moment, Hermione sat by the small redhead and began chatting her up; the blonde Slytherin prefect did the same to Harry’s black-haired boy. Harry couldn’t help but feel a strange, instinctive anger. He didn’t even know the small boy’s name, but he did not want any Slytherin bothering him. The fact that everyone at the table appeared to be having a decent time of it bothered him more, if anything.

Ron slid into the seat across from him again, looking bothered. “Ravenclaw,” he said immediately. “Did you know?”

Harry shook his head. “No clue, mate.”

“Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it? And the way she rolls her eyes whenever anyone says she should have been Sorted there?”

“I’d roll my eyes if people kept saying the same thing to me over and over,” Harry offered neutrally. “For instance: ‘Harry Potter! Is that you? Oh, what a pleasure it is to be meeting you, Mister Potter!’” he intoned in his best Colin-Creevey sycophant voice.

Ron snorted into his potatoes.

“Anyway, it’s not like it matters,” Harry went on, feeling as though he were defending himself instead of Hermione. “She’s been with Gryffindor for years now. No way she can be anything else.”

There were nods around the table.

“One in five, though,” Seamus said darkly. “That’s a lot. I wonder who else...?”

Harry reddened, hiding his blush with a cough.

“The Hat said Slytherins in Gryffindor,” Neville added.

“Yeah, and Gryffindors in Slytherin,” Ron joked. “Don’t know which is harder to believe.”

“Did anyone see the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher?” Harry inquired suddenly, peering up at the empty spot at the staff table.

Neville shook his head. “No... it’s been empty since the beginning.”

“Maybe they’re giving up,” Ron said.

There was a general laugh at this, but Harry had to wonder. The school had such terrible luck with Defense teachers that it was no wonder no-one wanted to apply any longer. If that were the case... if the others wanted to continue with the D.A., he supposed he would. He was no teacher, but any Defense instruction was better than none.

The meal disappeared suddenly, causing Harry to realize he’d only eaten three or four bites of his food. Sighing, he placed his fork on the empty table, where it immediately disappeared.

Dumbledore rose from his chair to survey all of the students of the Great Hall. “First,” he intoned, “some general announcements. As always, the Forbidden Forest is just that. Second, Argus Filch has added some two-hundred new items that shall be confiscated if they are found on school grounds, most of which can be bought from a shop known as Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes, and, as always, magic is not permitted in the corridors between classes.” He broke off to gaze down at the first-years, a kind smile on his face. “As for the Unsorted House, they will be delivered to the Northwest Tower. Even now, Professor Flitwick, along with certain helpful prefects, is providing beds and rooms for each and every one of them. As to prefects, they will be chosen from other houses to serve until these students are Sorted.”

Harry realized that Hermione was gone, along with the blonde Slytherin prefect and the dark-haired Ravenclaw boy.

“Needless to say,” Dumbledore went on, with a twinkle in his eye, “such a thing has never before occurred in the history of the school. There have always been Houses at Hogwarts, and, to my thinking, it should always be thus.” He cleared his throat. “However, the Sorting Hat has sacrificed itself so that its message may come through all the clearer. Thus, I shall be required to reconsider this notion, as should all of you,” he concluded, eyeing them severely.

“One final notice: your new – or shall I say, your old – Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Remus Lupin, will be arriving tomorrow, due to... certain circumstances which cannot be helped. On the days which Professor Lupin is indisposed, your Assistant Professor, Harry James Potter, will serve – if he agrees. That is all.”

Harry gaped soundlessly, his eyes automatically going up to the staff table. He met Professor Snape’s eyes – the Professor looked horrified rather than furious, which was somehow even worse. Professors McGonagall and Sprout, along with Hagrid, looked fondly pleased. Dumbledore himself wore one of his most somber expressions, as though he wished to convey the seriousness with which he viewed this matter. When Harry turned back to view his housemates, they each wore an expression that Harry supposed must mirror his own.

Neville was the first to break into a grin. “Wow, Harry!” he exclaimed. “That’s incredible – you’ll be brilliant!”

“Well, of course he will,” Ron said, as though to contest the dubious-sounding whispers that seemed to be rippling through the Great Hall.

“I haven’t accepted yet, you know,” Harry retorted, still processing the shock mixed with derision on Professor Snape’s face.

“It’s better than going three days of the month without lessons,” Neville protested. “We need Defense, Harry.”

Ron nodded. “Your lessons last time were good, Harry,” he acknowledged. His eyes went faraway. “I expect it’ll be tough, planning lessons for more than one group and all, but you could ask Professor Lupin to help you.”

“And Hermione,” Dean added. “She is a Ravenclaw, after all. Bound to be brilliant.”

“Hermione’s a Gryffindor,” Ron spat. “Come on, Harry.”

Harry stood, his stomach full of the nothing he’d eaten all evening, and followed Ron up to Gryffindor Tower, just as Hermione re-entered the Great Hall, shouting, “first-years! First-years, to me!” 

Ron and Harry waited in the Gryffindor Common Room for Hermione, who stumbled in after most everyone had already gone up to bed. She looked harried, and bits of dust and cobweb were clinging to her hair.When she settled down on one of the sofas with a huff of breath, Ron sat close to her, carefully picking the bits of detritus away from her hair and robes.

“Awful,” she breathed, when she had the breath at all. “Awful! Rooms not used in years – vermin – dust – and Dumbledore, calling them the Unsorted House! Missed the point, hasn’t he?”

Harry couldn’t help but agree, but he knew better than to interrupt Hermione when she was on one of her rants.

“I was thinking about it the whole time, recalling what the Hat said, and I really think it had a point,” she continued, frowning. “I mean, where has Sorting ever really gotten us? Enmity, that’s what. I recognize that, these days, it’s a way to sort potential Death Eaters...”

“Of course,” said Harry, who’d never once thought of it that way.

“...but I think it actually causes more problems rather than less,” she went on as though he hadn’t spoken. “Picture this: Draco Malfoy is placed in this part of Hogwarts, and he rooms with you, Harry, and maybe Ron and Neville. What happens?”

“We tear him apart?” Ron went on hopefully.

“No,” Hermione snapped. “He probably makes nice with the lot of you. He’s a Slytherin, isn’t he, which means–” She paused, took a deep breath. “ – that is, if he wasn’t mis-Sorted – he looks for advantage. And it would be awfully stupid to make enemies of his roommates; no advantage in that. So he doesn’t. And eventually advantage turns to actual friendship, somewhere along the line. He has doubts. He never becomes a Death Eater...”

Ron was staring at Hermione like she’d lost her mind. “You don’t really think-” he began.

“Oh, but I do,” Hermione said, the same spark shining in her eyes that Harry recognized from any discussion of S.P.E.W. “And there’s not much use in being nice to sixth-year potential Death Eaters, is there, when they’ve already decided what they’re going to do with their lives? It’s probably far too late for Draco.”

“Draco?” Ron squeaked.

“He’s a human being, Ron,” Hermione said, and this time her voice had slipped from matter-of-fact to cold. “Besides, this isn’t about him, or only him, anyway. It’s about the way this school is run.”

Harry frowned. He’d never heard Hermione refer to Hogwarts in that tone before, as though she was somehow dissociating herself from the very name.

“I helped those children get settled, and it occurred to me that some of them would have undoubtedly been placed in Slytherin,” she went on, her voice lilting faintly as her thoughts turned from the school. “But I couldn’t tell who. They’re all the same right now, all innocents. Sending a child to Slytherin is like telling them they have to be deceptive.” She frowned. “For that matter, sending a child to Gryffindor is like telling them they must be brave, even stupidly; sending one to Hufflepuff says that they must put others before themselves.”

It’s also, Harry thought, like informing them they’re clever, or brave, or loyal. Those are good things. But at the mutinous look on Ron’s face, he decided to refrain from calling Slytherins clever. Ron was a bright red.

“Maybe you don’t understand the importance of the Houses because you weren’t brought up in the wizarding world,” Ron mused coldly.

The spark in Hermione’s eyes died. “Oh,” she said. “I see. Well then, I’ll just go up to the girls’ dorm and be Muggle where they don’t mind it.” She stood, rigid, and stomped her way up the stairs.

“Mental, she is,” Ron said vaguely, but he looked a bit guilty. After a moment, he gazed at Harry. “You know what I mean, don’t you, Harry? I mean, you were Muggle-raised, and I don’t have a problem with that, it’s just...” He paused, obviously trying to convey his thoughts in a way that wouldn’t insult Harry. “You grow up with it all your life – from when you’re a little kid – and you begin to sort of... Sort people unconsciously. It’s background, I’m not even aware of it.”

Harry thought about that. In a way, the Dursleys did that themselves, Uncle Vernon in particular: by car, or house, or clothing, or the attractiveness of the wife hanging on another man’s arm. “I don’t think that’s limited to the wizarding world,” he replied.

“It is important. How do you tell whether you want to associate with someone unless you know their House? Any of those kids could be a Slytherin.” Rather than finding this thought warming, as Hermione had, Ron looked disgusted, a small sneer decorating his face. It looked odd there.

Harry stood. “Uh, I’m going to go on up to bed. I have Potions first thing,” he managed, faking a yawn. Ron nodded, stating he was going to stay by the fire for a bit, while Harry went up the stairs.

When he got to his bed, Harry lay silent and wide-eyed, staring up at the slats of the bed above his. It had been one thing when Vernon echoed Draco Malfoy – they went together, in his mind.

It was another thing entirely when Ronald Weasley did.