Severus Snape
Severus Snape.
The Hat’s thoughts lingered on him, the boy who had carried such a heavy heart even at eleven. Severus had sat beneath the brim of the Hat, his mind guarded but still full of raw, unspoken emotions. The Hat had seen it all—his brilliance, his ambition, and most of all, his love.
There was something fragile about Snape’s heart, something that felt breakable but fiercely determined to endure. He was clever—sharp as any Ravenclaw—but his ambitions and his pride spoke louder. He yearned to rise above, to prove himself in a world that seemed determined to keep him down. Slytherin had called to him with its promise of power and belonging.
But beneath that ambition, the Hat had also seen a deep, unshakable connection. Lily Evans. Severus’s thoughts had lingered on her even as the Hat sorted him. His love for her was something pure, something the Hat knew might have shaped him differently if the world had allowed it.
“Ah, such complexity,” the Hat had murmured to itself. “Slytherin will push you to your limits, but it may harden you. And Gryffindor—well, that would bring you closer to her.”
For a fleeting moment, the Hat had considered placing him in Gryffindor. Perhaps the courage he would have found there might have softened the bitterness that later consumed him. Perhaps he and Lily might have walked a path together, rather than apart. But the Hat knew Snape too well. His ambition, his pride—they were too strong to ignore.
“Slytherin,” the Hat had decided. And yet, it had not been an easy choice.
Years later, as Snape’s life unfolded in ways both tragic and heroic, the Hat would often reflect on that moment.
When Snape’s love for Lily turned to an enduring, secretive devotion, the Hat saw the courage he had hidden deep within himself.
It was Gryffindor courage, born of pain and sacrifice, yet tempered by the cunning and resourcefulness of Slytherin.
Snape had become a man who balanced two worlds—light and dark, love and regret. He had walked a path no one else could, and though his end was tragic, his life had meaning.
The Hat was proud of him, in its own way. It had seen the boy he was and the man he became. And though it would always wonder if it could have chosen differently, it also knew that Snape had made his own choices, even within the bounds of what the Hat had seen in him.