The Sanctity of the Sorting Hat by DesertPlanet

It was three days before Harry Potter finally awoke from his ordeal.

The world to which he awoke was drastically different from the world he had previously been inhabiting. If it weren’t for the fact his injuries were the same, albeit healing, he would have thought he had died or woken up in a parallel universe. It seemed the rules had changed yet again, though this time was different. The rules were reverted back to what they were before.

That was something that had never happened before.

When Harry’s eyes finally fluttered open late that September night, he was greeted by a sight he didn’t think he would ever see. Sitting next to him was Draco, calmly reading a book by candlelight. Looking around, he could just make out Zabini and Theo quietly playing cards while sitting on a bed. Farther in the distance, he could barely make out two figures standing and whispering quietly to each other. One was in all black and the other was shorter and seemed to be in red with a white hat and apron.

His friends were here! But where was here? And why did his chest hurt so much?

Trying to suppress a moan, he slowly tried to sit up.

“Oh my!” a woman’s voice was heard as the person in red and white came bustling over. “Lay back down, Mr. Potter!”

He was barely on his elbows but knew he wouldn’t be able to make it all the way up. Sparkles were dancing in his eyes and pain was lancing through his side from the movement.

“Harry! You’re awake!” Draco said excitedly, though rather quietly to not startle the boy too badly.

“Where-” Harry started to say before his chest spasmed in pain, leaving him gasping.

“Lay down, Mr. Potter!” the woman in red said once more, gently pressing him back down into the bed. “You are in the Hospital Wing. You have two broken ribs, one of which punctured your lung. Now please, do not move. I’ve stabilized the injury, but I need you to take a bit of Skele-grow to finish healing your ribs.”

Harry was only half listening, however. His chest hurt so much and his breaths were coming in gasps. He couldn’t breathe! Why couldn’t she see that?! He needed to get up! He needed to hide!

Try as he might, he couldn’t manage to get himself out of bed. It was as though something were sticking him to the bed. He couldn’t move!

Tears began to well up in his eyes as he struggled against the unknown force. He was trapped. He didn’t like being trapped. He didn’t know what would happen next, but it couldn’t be good. It was never good. How could it be, he was just a freak after all.

“Potter!” Professor Snape’s voice cut through his panic momentarily. “Stop moving!”

“Noooo,” he moaned, trying to lift his hips off the bed. If he could get them off, maybe he could move. He needed to move. He needed to run. This wasn’t safe! It wasn’t safe here.

He could hear frantic talking in the background, but couldn’t make out what was being said. Suddenly, he felt a cooling sensation in his stomach as though an ice cube had slid down his throat and into his stomach unnoticed. The cooling sensation lasted for a moment before the rushing in his ears started to calm and his frantic breaths started to slow.

“There you go, Mr. Potter,” the woman said again, more gently this time. “Deep breaths, that’s it.”

Tilting his head back and staring aimlessly at the ceiling, Harry now felt as though he were moving in a fog.

“What did you give him?” he could hear Draco ask.

“That was Draught of Peace,” Professor Snape said, placing the vial back on the table next to the head of the bed.

When Draco had come running down into the dungeons screaming for help, Severus was immediately on guard. He didn’t know what had happened, nor what to think. A part of him immediately assumed there was an attack on the school. Thoughts of duelling his former compatriots came to mind as he rushed out of his office door. He hadn’t had to use those skills in so long, would he be able to properly duel against the likes of either of the Lestranges?

Whatever he had been expecting, a bloody, bruised, and blue Potter was not on that list. The boy was laying at the end of a short hallway, one of the Weasley boys there next to him begging him to keep breathing though he clearly was not doing well at following this request.

Severus had quickly applied what healing knowledge he had before sending a patronus message to the Hospital Wing and levitating the small, cyanotic boy onto a stretcher and racing towards the wing himself. While he would have loved to question both Weasley and Draco, time was of the essence. He needed to get the boy to someone with more healing skills than him, and quickly.

Madam Pomfrey had been enjoying the first day in a long time where she hadn’t had any students come through her door. Generally there was at least one or two students on any given day who had come in with some sort of injury, usually mild and related to either Quidditch or a simple spell gone wrong. It had been a long time since she had needed to use any of her emergency skills.

It was too good of a day to last, however.

The boy Severus had brought her was in dire condition, though he had done well to stabilize the boy’s condition as best he could before bringing him. Her shock at his condition barely managed to override her shock that this was Harry Potter. She, like everyone else, had assumed the boy would be healthy, strong, and like his parents. The waif that was now laying in her ward was not what she expected in the least.

The bruising, malnutrition, and broken bones were not what she expected to see at all, but she couldn’t pause and create theories as to what happened. That could come later, once the boy was stable.

Once he had been stabilized then came the long wait for him to finally wake up. Healing magic on such severe injuries would put the boy into a sleep-like state, dreamless and unaware of his surroundings, until he was well enough to finally awaken. She expected it to last at least a week, possibly two depending on how quickly his magic would deem him healed enough.

Due to the unknown of when he would awaken, Poppy allowed his friends to come see him. While she wasn’t normally keen on allowing visitors, he did seem to relax a bit more when they were around. Particularly, she noticed, when Draco was there reading to him.

Once, the youngest Weasley boy had paid a visit to him as well. This did not have the same effect as the Slytherin’s visits however, so she rapidly escorted the red-head out despite his desire to stay and apologize. Apparently he was not directly involved in the attack on the boy however he was involved in some of the bullying Harry had experienced. Unlike the other boys in Gryffindor, Ron felt some remorse for what had happened to the boy in her care.

It was quite a surprise to everyone when Harry awoke three days later. An ominous surprise. The only reason a wizard would awaken after that amount of healing magic so quickly was if he was used to being injured regularly. And badly.

The panic the boy had at being restrained also fed into her suspicion there was something more that was going on in his homelife.

She had tried spelling a simple calming draught into the boy as soon as he awoke, but as his panic grew as he tried to get out of bed after the sticking charm was applied she knew she had no choice but to give him a Draught of Peace to calm him down. She couldn’t have him moving around just yet. Had he actually stayed asleep for a week like she had hoped, his magic in combination with the healing spells would have knitted his ribs back together much more substantially and him moving around wouldn’t have been an issue.

“Severus, I can’t give him any more Draught of Peace after this. He is much too small to keep giving him such a high powered sedative safely,” Madame Pomfrey said as Harry continued to trace the stonework on the ceiling with his eyes and blink dopily.

“A small dose of Skele-gro will work just fine,” Professor Snape said. “You won’t have to worry about dose adjustments or interactions unless you are needing to regrow whole bones.”

Madame Pomfrey nodded and went to her potions stores to pull out the required potion as the Slytherin boys gathered around their fallen friend.

“Harry,” Draco started, waiting until Harry slowly looked over at him. “How are you feeling?”

“I huuuuuurt,” Harry said, dragging out the words as he struggled to move his mouth. “Wha’ ‘bou’ chu?”

“I’m ok,” Draco said, taking his friend’s hand. “I hope the headmaster sees some sense and moves you back to Slytherin.”

“Like green,” Harry said, reaching a hand out to pat his friend’s robe’s green lapels. “Snakessss.”

“You like snakes?” Draco asked.

“Pretty snakes,” Harry mumbled. -Nice snakes.-

Professor Snape whipped his head around when he heard hissing coming from the boy’s bed. He had heard the boy drunkenly talking about how he liked green and snakes and would have ignored the hissing sounds the boy made if it hadn’t been for one thing.

His Dark Mark responded.

He could feel the snake in the skull’s mouth writhe slightly in response to the sound. It was a feeling unlike any he had felt since the first war. He didn’t even need to look at his arm to know what was happening. But he needed to know, desperately, immediately, if his suspicions were correct.

Quickly undoing the buttons on his sleeve, he rolled it up to reveal the horrifically scarred tattoo. Over the past few years he had noticed it occasionally changing shades, and he couldn’t help but let out a sigh of relief when he noticed the color hadn’t darkened. But still, the feeling of the snake-tongue moving was unmistakeable.

“Draco, keep him talking about snakes,” Snape said, eyes never leaving the Mark.

Draco’s eyes widened at the sight of the professor’s Dark Mark, but he wasn’t overly surprised or concerned by it. His own father had one as well.

“Harry, tell me about your favorite snakes,” Draco said, watching Harry’s reactions closely, hoping he didn’t drift back to sleep.

“Snake in the garrrrrden,” Harry said in a rather sing-song voice. “Snake in the grasssssssss.”

“Do the snakes ever talk to you, Harry?” Snape asked gently, eyes still staring at his tattoo.

“Yeah, they’re my only friends,” Harry said, eyes filling with tears suddenly. “Aunt Petunia killed her!”

“What kind of things did you and your snake friends talk about?” Zabini asked, realizing they were trying to instigate parseltongue.

-Silly humans- Harry giggled. “She liked to say that a lot. -Silly humans have no scales.-”

Snape’s eyes went wide and his face lost what little color it had as the snake-tongue of the Dark Mark wriggled twice more in response to the boy’s hissing. So it was true then, he was a parselmouth. But how? The Potters were direct descendants of Godric Gryffindor himself and Lily was a muggleborn.

It was a feasible conclusion that somewhere along the line a Slytherin was a squib and married a muggle and generations later Lily Evans was born, but that seemed absurd as Lily was also sorted into Gryffindor and had never spoken to snakes. That much Severus was sure of. Lily had loathed real snakes with a burning passion and would never be seen near them, let alone talking to them.

“Professor?” Theodore Nott asked, pulling him from his reverie. “Is he a …”

Snape nodded and swallowed heavily as he pulled his sleeve down. “Yes, he is a parselmouth.”

“He can’t go back to Gryffindor then?” Draco asked rather excitedly.

“I’ll have to speak with the Headmaster. In light of recent… events, I would assume the Headmaster and Professor McGonagall would agree.”

“Oh,” Draco said, looking down sadly. “He shouldn’t have to go back there.”

“I agree,” the rather sad, wistful voice of Professor Dumbledore said from the entrance to the Hospital Wing. “I agree wholeheartedly.”

Snape glared vehemently at the man. Where was this agreement when the world seemed to want him moved to Gryffindor? Where was this agreement when he had pleaded his case for the boy not to be moved? Never in the history of Hogwarts had a child been removed from the house they had been sorted into, and for damn good reason.

“I am afraid, my boy, that I let the pressure of the public get to me,” Professor Dumbledore said, sadly as he gingerly sat on the bed opposite the dozy boy. “And I fear my complacency has led to the situation we find ourselves in.”

Snape could barely control his anger. Complacency? Was that what he called it? Cowardice was a more fitting word. Cowardice in his old age. The Wizarding World respected Dumbledore greatly. If he stood up for something, the Wizarding World would follow. Perhaps unwillingly at first, but it would follow. This was a fact.

Complacency was an understatement. Prior to Severus taking over Slytherin house, the students within its walls were constantly operating under the fear of persecution. A fear which was not unjustified as many students immediately assumed those sorted into Slytherin were immediately going to become the next Dark Lord. The Headmaster had the power and ability to change this, however he chose not to do anything about these perceptions and the bullying which came with it.

He chose to do nothing and a student had nearly died because of it.

“I told you,” Severus seethed.

“That you did, my … Severus. And I apologize, truly, sincerely, for not listening to you.”

“I am not the one you should be apologizing to,” Severus growled, nostrils flaring. “The child in the bed with broken bones and a punctured lung is who you should be apologizing to.”

“I am aware of this,” Dumbledore said, looking sadly at the frail boy in the bed who was trying to grasp at something only he could see. “How would you prefer I proceed? Mr. Finnegan and Mr. Thomas have been suspended until the end of term for their actions already. They and their families have been informed that any other infraction against another student, no matter how small, will end with their expulsion.”

Severus’s lips disappeared into a thin line in his fury. If they had been Slytherins, both boys would have been expelled instantly for nearly murdering a classmate. But they were Gryffindors, so the rules only loosely applied to them.

“How would I prefer you proceed? I would prefer you expel them as you would if they had been a student in any other house. I would prefer if the rules and the consequences to breaking them were consistent amongst all of the houses. I would PREFER it if the Headmaster didn’t consistently play favorites and would stand up for ALL of his students.”

“I understand,” Dumbledore said solemnly, looking every one of his 150 years of age. “I have failed you and your students greatly, Severus. However, I am still asking for your advice on how to proceed.”

“He will need time to recover,” Severus said, folding his arms across his chest

The first year boys who remained in the room looked on at the conversation in thinly veiled shock. For better or worse, they had grown up with tales of the infallible, all-knowing, extremely powerful Headmaster. To see him in such a state shook them to the core. Knowing that he could have prevented their housemate, and debatably friend’s, injuries was unfathomable, yet here they were.

“Understood,” Dumbledore said. “Would you like to place him in private quarters close to yours for the time being?”

“That would be preferable,” Severus said, sneering. “Anything to allow him a safe retreat from the other … What is it Draco?”

Draco had started shaking his head as soon as Dumbledore had offered a set of private quarters for the boy. While that may have been a good idea for a normal student, Harry was far from normal and Draco doubted he would do well with living on his own. In fact, he doubted Harry would appreciate the gesture at all, but rather would feel extremely isolated and that he was needing to be kept away from the other students.

“I don’t think that is a good idea,” Draco said, skillfully hiding his nervousness at talking back to the Headmaster and his Head of House.

“Why not?” Snape asked, curious as to what would lead to the boy to speak out of turn. It was likely he knew more about Potter and his habits than what the adults did.

“He doesn’t know how to take care of himself. It’s not that he can’t or that he chooses not to, he just doesn’t have the practice to remember when to do things. He doesn’t like sleeping in bed, he squirrels away food in case he doesn’t get fed later, and he doesn’t know things like how often he should shower.”

Both Dumbledore and Snape looked at him with rather shocked expressions on their faces. How had they missed this? Had they all been so blind to miss all of the boy’s many struggles? Had they all been so blinded by their expectations of what Harry Potter would be that they had missed who Harry Potter truly was?

“Are you saying he needs a caregiver?” Snape said, raising an eyebrow.

“He’s learning,” Nott said, stepping up behind Draco. “Or he was. He’s probably right back where he was when he started here, if I’m being honest sir.”

Dumbledore looked rather pensive for a moment before his eyes regained some of their normal twinkle. It was obvious, of course. Keeping him in Slytherin was the safest thing. He could learn from the other boys. He could keep to himself and ask the questions he needed answered. He didn’t need to fear being ostracized for his lack of understanding or his strange behaviour. And if he needed a friend to speak to in confidence, who better to speak to than the snakes of Slytherin himself? The boy truly was a Slytherin through and through.

To hell with what the people wanted, they didn’t know or understand the situation the boy was in. Admittedly, Dumbledore didn’t fully understand the extent of trauma in the child’s life either, but removing him from safety for the sake of what others believed was ‘right’ was the largest error in justice he had made in all of the years he had been headmaster. Harry Potter was just a boy after all, and one who needed and desired stability more than anything.

Slytherins continuously were given a bad reputation due to the number of dark wizards which came from the house, but truly there was something more to those who lived in the dungeons. Favoritism and prejudice had damaged their reputation and created fear within the population, and not just the population of Hogwarts. This prejudice carried over into the everyday life of the wizarding world. A little support, true repercussions for discriminatory behavior on both sides of the spectrum, and an understanding of why students were placed into the houses they were was the way forward.

“He will stay in Slytherin,” Dumbledore said firmly. “I will allow him to not go to classes for the time being, however I must require he be given tutoring in the core subjects. Severus, you and I shall discuss his return to classes at a later date when he feels up to it. He will stay in the dorms and be allowed to attend classes at his leisure should he choose to during this time.”

“Thank you, Headmaster,” Snape said, bowing his head slightly and watching as his students did the same.

“I do believe the sanctity of the sorting hat stands,” Dumbledore said with a small smile. “And I believe more than ever we should ask ourselves to evaluate why a student is placed where they are with utmost caution and compassion.”

He then turned to the frail boy in the bed and gently swept the fringe on the boy’s forehead so it covered his scar.

“Mr. Potter, I believe you are saving the wizarding world, but not in the way anyone ever expected.”