Choices: 1971

Choices: 1971

Minerva McGonagall had attended many sortings since her own time at Hogwarts. She had seen countless terrified children, watched each of them walk up and sit on the stool as the Sorting Hat dropped down over their eyes. When they emerged, the purple H on their robes had vanished, replaced by a red, yellow, green, or blue patch. Every year she watched the eleven-year-olds place their future in the hands of a magical object more than a thousand years old, and every year she saw choices.

You had to know what to look for in order to see it, and only those who had read off the names of the first years could really tell.

Albus could see it as well.

It was a subtle change in the way they walked away from the hat. It was the false confidence, the unashamed fear, the clenched fists, the wary glances, the moment of hesitation before they joined their housemates on the long table.

Albus had once told Minerva that it was a person's choices that showed who they truly were. Years later, Minerva had asked if it was a wise choice to put your faith in a hat whose voice was fading and who had gained several more patches since last year. Albus had said that sometimes you had to trust, and let someone else make choices for you. Minerva had asked if the hat had ever made a mistake when it was making a choice.

Albus had never given her an answer.

"Black, Sirius!"

The boy did not pause as he strolled casually up to the stool, sliding onto it and dropping the hat onto his head so that it was tilted precariously to the right. Several people snickered and someone made a loud comment to their neighbor, but it was lost amongst the laughter.

A minute later the usual silence had returned, and yet still the hat had not called out a house. Minerva was not worried, (three years ago Devin Cromby had taken a full twenty-five minutes to be sorted into Hufflepuff) but some of the younger students were getting restless. One minute turned into three, when finally the rip in the Sorting Hat opened wide, and shouted,

"Slytherin!"

It was a moment before the boy, Black, tugged the hat from his head. His jaw was set, and there were those clenched fists. He took a seat at his new house table, which had burst into applause a few moments earlier, and now fell silent as a blond girl with pig tails came up to the stool.

It was five students later that a red haired girl stepped out of the line of first years when her name, "Evans, Lily!" was called. Evans let the Sorting Hat fall past her ears, and twenty seconds later it had come to its decision.

"Ravenclaw!"

The blue and bronze table cheered in approval as Evans walked to join them. All the same, she hesitated for a moment before she slid onto the bench beside her new classmates.

Names and faces blurred together into a haze of memory until Minerva could not have recalled the name of the tall dark haired girl, even as she walked to sit with the Hufflepuffs.

"Lupin, Remus!"

She knew the sandy haired boy who walked very quickly up to the stool and jammed the hat over his head without a second thought. But he was unable to escape the Great Hall and its many watching eyes for long, because the hat apparently knew where it wanted him to go. It took a mere ten seconds to shout out the house name.

"Ravenclaw!"

Once again the house known for its intellect cheered enthusiastically as Lupin set the hat carefully back on the stool. He glanced warily at his house table while he slid into a seat beside Evans, who gave him a small smile which he returned quickly.

Minerva paused for a moment while a pale boy scrambled to keep the hat from falling of his head, her eyes flickering to where Albus sat at the head table. Albus wore an expression of calm indifference, but she knew he was thinking the same thing she was. Three choices.

"Pettigrew, Peter!"

Pettigrew quickly broke Sirius's record of four minutes under the hat. The blond boy looked as though he would rather be anywhere else at this point, and he was fidgeting slightly when the hat finally shouted the house.

"Slytherin!"

The boy looked unashamedly petrified as the green and silver house clapped politely. Black made room for Pettigrew next to him at the table, and Pettigrew gave him a grateful smile in return.

Minerva looked at her list before she called up the next first year, a familiar name and distinctive hair she knew, though she had never met the boy before.

"Potter, James!"

Potter looked relaxed as he strolled towards the stool, and Minerva could tell that he was already sure of which house he was going to end up in. Sure enough, the hat needed two seconds only before it had declared him a,

"Gryffindor!"

A wide grin on his face, Potter easily found a place amongst his cheering housemates.

It was a few minutes later that the sorting was drawing to a close, when Minerva reached the fourth to last name on her list and paused for an instant before she read it aloud.

"Snape, Severus!"

A skinny boy with dark, unwashed hair left the shrinking cluster of remaining first years to make his way up to where the Sorting Hat stood.

The hat seemed to be having trouble coming to a decision, because a minute later the boy had folded his arms across his chest and was kicking the stool's leg rebelliously. Another minute passed.

"Gryffindor!"

Snape took off the hat with an air of false confidence, and Minerva thought he looked almost as though he were going to his own funeral. He seemed to expect his new classmates to boo as he moved closer to the red and gold table.

Shock flashed across his face as the Gryffindors broke yet again into loud cheers, not as loud as it had been for the rest of the first years, but it was enough. The nervous boy took a seat across from Potter, who held out his hand and introduced himself over the table. Slowly, Snape reached out and shook his hand.

Five minutes later and it was over. Minerva took her seat beside Albus at the head table, watching the headmaster stare out over the sea of heads, all the while the hall filling with the happy buzz of conversation.

"Things could have gone very differently this year," she said quietly, so that only he could hear her, as the golden platters of food appeared before them.

"Things have gone well enough," Albus said, as he chose one of the peppermint humbugs from a small dish.