The Hat
There was something to be said about the tradition of placing a grouchy, somewhat sentient hat on a child's head and asking it to decide the entire future of that child. For one, no one quite understood the hat's logic or reasoning (leading some to speculate that the hat had none) and for two, many people found that the thoughts and ideals of their eleven-year-old self should hardly be used to decide what kind of person they were. What these people failed to realize was that sorting was more than that. It felt as if there was neither rhyme nor reason because of the fact that each individual that was sorted was judged on different criteria. Some students were needed by their House. Other students needed their House. Each case, carefully considered and individually judged, was almost entirely different from the next. The hat did not care what children's families wanted. It did not balk at sorting those from lines of one House into another and it did not care what danger they put the student in, for the hat felt no emotion at all.
This is how one Sirius Black had ended up dressing in red and gold, and how now, years later, one of his cousins will end up shamefully dressed in black and yellow. The hat cared not who was disowned or disgraced, it thought (if what it did could be called thinking) only of the climate of the school and the truest needs and desires of the students. There was no section of a student's mind that the hat could not sift through and thus it sorted everyone carefully but with firm decisiveness and it did not take well to being questioned once its verdict had been called out.
As the new first year students arrive, each with their own worries and hopes, everyone waits patiently for the lengthy ceremony to begin as everyone slowly files in. There are students spread all over the great hall, and each one had once stood in the shoes of the now entering eleven-year-olds. This generation has seen the greatest deviation from familial tradition that the hat had presented in years, while still keeping in line with more subtle expectations.
No family better portrayed this than the Weasley clan. The first two boys, Bill and Charlie, had predictably and correctly been sorted into Gryffindor. Then came Percy, shockingly, but understandably, sorted into Slytherin. Followed by the creative and witty twins being quickly shoved towards Ravenclaw tower. Now, awaiting the hat's jurisdiction among the other first years, is Ron.
Ron will be among the last to discover his fate, and after three sons weren't sorted into what was considered the "family House", nobody is sure what to expect for him.
The Weasley boys all watch and listen as those ahead of Ron are sorted. They take note of some. A girl in the G's sits with the hat for what feels like ages before she is shuttled off to the Slytherin table where Percy is sitting and clapping politely. Then a boy they know in the L's spends an equally long time before he is triumphantly sent to sit among the red and gold lions where Charlie and Bill had once sat. Quicker sortings follow. A familiar, pale blond boy in the M's looks terrified as he's gently guided towards the Hufflepuffs and an even more familiar brunet in the P's offers him a few words as he joins him.
Finally Ron's turn arrives and a collective breath is held. Very few Wizarding families have quite as many children as the Weasley family does, and while the "real" purebloods were prestigious nobody cared all that much where they were sorted. Big families like this, especially split up over several houses, were much more interesting.
Ron immediately understands what his brothers had meant when they said that being sorted was the strangest thing they encountered at Hogwarts. He can practically feel it rifling through his mind, seeping into his head and poking around in his memories. If it weren't for the warning he received from his brothers Ron likely would have found this horribly invasive.
Instead, he relaxes and allows the hat to do its work as it sorts out what kind of person he is or needs to be.
"A Weasley!" The hat seems almost excited to sort Ron, "Let's see... Your Father is a Gryffindor, he was nearly a Ravenclaw did he tell you that? No need to answer I know he has. Then of course your darling mother was the same but with Hufflepuff. Lucky I sorted them together, hm? Now we both know you're no Bill or Charlie, and thank goodness for that! Percy and I quite agree that we can't possibly send you over there, and although the twins would love to have you as an in House guinea pig, I can't say I want to send you there either."
Before Ron can even process what the hat means by that it is shouting out, "Hufflepuff!" And Ron is stumbling towards the table of yellow and black.
He spots Harry and Draco at the table. Ron and Harry have known each other for years now, with Sirius and Remus deeming the Molly and Arthur to be some of the few responsible people capable of looking after Harry when they couldn't. Draco was a distant fact known to Ron through Harry. Harry knew of Draco from vague comments made by Sirius or Remus, and what little he knew he had transferred to Ron.
"You're related to Harry's godfather!" Ron blurts out to Draco without thinking.
Draco flinches at his loud voice and recoils, turning in on himself at Ron's comment. His grey eyes avoid Ron's gaze and briefly glance at Harry as if to ask for help.
"He's not quite where he expected to be," Harry says quietly, offering a reassuring smile to Draco as he adds, "But we'll be alright, the three of us together!"
Ron nods and offers an awkward smile to Draco. Obviously he's vaguely aware of the Malfoy family, and his brothers have told him countless horror stories to terrorize him over the years, but the shivering grey eyed boy sitting across from him hardly looks like the monster his brothers describe other purebloods to be.
"What's so bad about being in Hufflepuff anyway? There's nothing wrong with being loyal," Ron says with an almost petulant tone ringing in his voice, "My mum was almost in this House you know!"
Draco frowns, "Malfoys are not sorted into Hufflepuff. We are cunning and ambitious. My father will not be pleased that I have disgraced our family in this way."
"You're eleven," Ron says bluntly, "Embarrassing your parents is the whole point!"
"Mine are dead," Harry notes as if that's in any way a helpful comment.
A stiff silence settles over them now, all three boys awkwardly avoiding eye contact as they desperately grasp for another topic of conversation. They remain silent until they are lead away to the Hufflepuff common room.