Sorting Error

Chapter Seven

Cabbages and Kings

"What good is it going to a lecture when the professor's in Australia?" Ron grumbled.

"As opposed to being a ghost?" Hermione asked. "Don't worry, I'm sure they've found somebody to teach a few lessons. They couldn't leave us without History of Magic, after all. Not this close to NEWTs."

"You'd be glad if they substituted lectures for meals, Hermione."

"So would you be, when the examiners arrived." Hermione wasn't really worried. She didn't know what Harry and Ron had said to each other, but something had obviously happened; they were laughing, joking, making Quidditch feints at each other, practically climbing up the corridor walls. Their friendship had brought them through war and basilisks, it would probably keep Ron from failing his NEWTs as well. . . Though no friend could substitute for her studying, not with the sort of marks she wanted. Hermione hoped whatever substitute Headmaster Snape had found would be reasonably competent; she hoped, moreover, that it wasn't Snape himself, since although competent he rarely allowed her to pursue the most interesting tangents, especially the ones he hadn't thought of himself.

But the substitute Hermione expected was nowhere to be seen. No Snape; no McGonagall; in fact, except for the heavy gold frame hung over the blackboard, the room was entirely empty.

"Typical," Ron complained. "You drag us away from breakfast so we won't be late for class, and the professor doesn't even exist!"

"But he used to exist," said a voice. A figure in stately purple robes appeared in the depth of the portrait, and slowly moved forward. It was Dumbledore, got up in some official garb. Gold threads were plaited in his beard, but his right sleeve had a telltale smear. It looked like chocolate cream.

"Professor Dumbledore!" said Hermione. "Are you our lecturer?"

"Possibly, yes, possibly. Though lecture is such a spiky word. I prefer conversation, or even chat-- I'd offer you a cup of tea, but our respective situations don't allow that." Dumbledore peered over his glasses at the gold frame.

Hermione heard rustling behind her, as the other students began to arrive. The choked giggle had to be Lavender; the muttering might be Seamus, or Dean.

"Well!" said Dumbledore. "Well!"

Hermione dipped her pen in the inkwell and waited impatiently.

"The history of magic is a fascinating topic, and I seem to have become living history-- so ask me questions! Ask anything you like!"

Hermione had her hand in the air before she knew what she was going to ask. What's wrong with the Hat? What did you do to Grindelwald? How long will you be our professor? And with all that talk of inter-House unity, why didn't you ever mention that Gryffindor used to be all-male?

Dumbledore seemed to wink at her-- but he called on Parvati. "I'm so glad you're here!" Parvati said. "Could you tell us . . . how you died?"

Parvati always had to go for the drama, Hermione thought. She could have done perfectly well with Harry's version of events. Still, Dumbledore's point of view was bound to be useful.

"Such a lovely question! But you must recall that I am a portrait." Dumbledore patted the edge of the picture, as if it were a cat. "I do not know what happened after I was painted, and my original had forgotten more than I ever contained . . . But I do know why Dumbledore died, of course. Even the merest smudge of me knows about Voldemort."

"So why did you die?" Lavender asked.

"Because that is Voldemort's greatest weakness. He is afraid of death. He is afraid even when his spirit is barely half alive. And no matter how many times he sees it, he cannot believe that somebody would die for someone else. Our weakness, our danger, our ability to sacrifice-- that is our strength. Besides, I was awfully old, you know. I could even have been tired of chocolate cabbages!"

The students were quiet, caught between giggles and tears. Hermione pushed her hand higher, ignoring the dull ache in her shoulder.

The portrait rubbed his glasses with his sleeve, smearing the lenses with chocolate. "It isn't only Voldemort, of course. All sorts of people are scared of dying, scared of growing old . . . Some are so terrified that they might as well be portraits, and not real people at all!"

"You're not real, Professor Dumbledore?" Neville sounded uneasy.

"Not as real as you are, Neville. Choices make one real; and all my choices are behind me."

Neville nodded carefully.

"Hermione, you've been astoundingly patient . . . What is your question?"

"Tell us about the origin of the Sorting Hat."

Dumbledore blinked. "The Hat originally belonged to Godric Gryffindor, and was enchanted by the Founders to select appropriate students for each House."

"But how did they enchant it? What were their techniques?"

"Actually they used a form of Reimancy not unlike the process of painting. Imagine the Hat as a group self-portrait, imbued with the essences of Helga, Rowena, Godric, and Salazar."

"But you just said that portraits can't make choices. And the Hat makes a hundred decisions every year at least."

The portrait tilted its head. "The Hat is more alive than I am, Hermione. It needs more life."

"So life and change are synonymous. Has the Hat been known to change drastically?"

"It's been ragged and tattered and terribly opinionated as long as I've known it."

"But recently," Hermione insisted, "Has the Hat been metamorphosing?"

Dumbledore smiled, that old, familiar, half-secretive, half-laughing smile. "Why don't you ask the Hat?"

***

Harry still wasn't used to Fred and George being back. He supposed the way they hovered about Hermione might have been unnerving, the way the thought of McGonagall flirting with anyone was unnerving, if he hadn't felt his own skin growing warm whenever Ron stood too close or grinned unexpectedly. As it was he felt a fraternal approval, whether Hermione slipped her hand in George's or tried to slap Fred. He'd forgotten how much faster everything moved once Fred and George were involved, though. Only yesterday Hermione had left History of Magic with the light of a new theory upon her face, and already Fred and George had learned the password to Snape's office-- "We just slipped the gargoyle lemon drops till it gave in," George had remarked. "Dumbledore spoiled the thing rotten."

They were all in agreement: the only way to explain the odd events of the past few months was to ask the Hat. And, Hermione added, they had to move quickly; once Snape learned about Dumbledore's advice, he would surely take precautions to ensure his office's privacy. As seventh-year prefects, Hermione and Ron could easily manufacture an excuse to leave Transfiguration early (Trelawney was not at all sad to see them go), and Fred and George had enlisted some young Hufflepuff to make a fuss in Defense Against the Dark Arts, distracting Snape. Almost before Harry knew it they were leaping onto the stairs to Snape's office.

Ginny stood guard in the hallway. Before the door swung shut on her, she hissed, "That cloak's too small for you, Ron." She was right. Though Harry's cloak of invisibility was trying to accommodate his height, Ron's scuffed bootheels still peeked out from underneath. Harry tried kicking at his boots. Ron laughed and clapped his shoulder, and Harry grinned in his general direction. Then the stairs ground to a stop, and they rushed into Snape's office together.

Snape kept his office neater than Dumbledore had. It seemed dark, and empty, and dead. The Sorting Hat sat on a bookshelf, its tip drooping forward, as if it were asleep. A spiderweb hung between the Hat and the wall.

"Hullo, Hat!" said George loudly.

The Hat twitched upright, sending the attached spider scuttling. "Yes?"

"We need to ask you some questions," Hermione said.

"Questions, questions! What sort of questions?"

"Are you metamorphosing?"

"Of course not! I'm a hat, not a butterfly. I do not even flutter by."

"Why did you sort everyone into Hufflepuff this year, then?" asked Harry.

"Maybe they were all Hufflepuffs," the Hat said, a trifle sulkily. "One-fourth of the students can't be ambitious and another fourth brilliant every year."

"But what about Clarence?" said Hermione.

"He's loyal, at least. Gryffindor and Slytherin don't have a monopoly on being difficult."

The Hat sounded tired. Harry stepped forward and tried to brush off some of the cobwebs. It made a whirring noise, rather like the sound Hedwig made when he stroked her feathers.

"Why is this year different?" Hermione asked. "What's really going on?"

"It's a message," the Sorting Hat told her. "A message in a bottle."

"Who's the message for?"

"Memory. Easier if someone else remembers . . ." The Hat twitched its brim. It seemed to be trying to stand. "Put me on, Harry."

Harry picked the Hat up and set it gently on his head. It felt light and dry, like an autumn leaf. After a moment he had a familiar swirling sensation, as if he were falling into a Pensieve. He was standing in the Great Hall at Hogwarts, at the end of one of the long tables. The Hat was on the other side of the Hall, calling out a long list of names. Sitting near Harry was a girl with mouse-brown hair. She looked young, thirteen or fourteen maybe. Her yellow robe had wide, ballooning sleeves, caught at the wrists by black ribbons. It was far too tight across the shoulders.

And then quite suddenly the memory shifted, the way dreams shift. Harry was sitting at the Hufflepuff table, and he knew that he was Sadie Sanders.

Sadie was trying not to cry. She was much too old to cry in public, she told herself; her cheeks would be blotchy and her nose would turn bright red, and nobody would even understand why she was upset. There were already ten new girls in Hufflepuff, after all, and every one seemed sweet and pretty and bright-eyed. Sadie ought not to be jealous. Jealousy was a sin.

But she was jealous anyway. She couldn't help it. What on earth was her brother doing in Gryffindor? Little Alfred was afraid of everything: spiders, mice, clanging dustbins, and Aunt Effie. He told tales; he even made up stories to tell, if he thought it would earn him a toffee or two. And he wrote dreadful childish poetry about the death of canaries. Sadie glared at the Sorting Hat. What a liar! she thought. The Hat didn't care about justice or courage or loyalty or even who was brighter. It just dropped boys into Gryffindor and girls into Hufflepuff, according to its own convenience.

"Young, Lydia!" the Hat called. Lydia seemed to be the last. She only had the Hat on her head for a second or two, before she was rushing over to the Hufflepuff table, grinning wide. "Did you know goldenrod is my very favorite color?" she announced.

Sadie felt a brief desire to smother her new comrade with a napkin, but decided it would be disloyal. She looked balefully at her robe instead. Horrid yellow.

The rest of the Hufflepuffs laughed and chattered about the upcoming feast. "I'm utterly starved!" declared Ada Abbott. "D'you think there'll be seconds of blancmange this year?"

"I hope not!" said Dolores Rutherford. "I'm saving my figure."

Dolores' sister Dahlia piped up, "You're still setting your cap for that Professor!"

"I am not ‘setting my cap' for Professor Binns, or anyone else!" Dolores said, smoothing her hair. Sadie glanced at the High Table. She supposed Binns was handsome-- he had that manly, rugged look-- but she thought he was a bit of a milksop really. On the other hand, so was Dolores.

"When's supper?" whined Dahlia.

As if on cue, steaming trays appeared in the air-- and then whisked up to the ceiling, as the Hat's voice cut through the Great Hall. "Beauregarde, Mary Susan!"

A tall girl entered the Hall and walked between the tables. She was followed by a tottering mass of band-boxes, stacked on the back of a giant green tortoise. The girl couldn't be a first-year-- she had too many of the wrong sorts of curves. One or two of the Gryffindor boys whistled, but she turned her nose in the air.

Mary Susan sat with the Hat on her head for an inordinate amount of time. Sadie's stomach grumbled. At last the Hat cried, "Ravenclaw!"

"You can't be serious," said Mary Susan, in a piercing American accent. She set the Hat down very slowly.

"She's showing off her curves to the High Table," whispered Ada.

"I'd wager she was expelled from her American school," said Dolores.

"Expelled for improper activities!" Ada elaborated. "With a professor!"

"You never can be certain . . ." said Dolores.

"You're improper," said Dahlia.

Sadie turned sideways, and watched the new student sauntering to her table and sitting down among the Ravenclaws. She was near the end of the table-- "I always aim for the top," Sadie heard, in that same shrill American accent.

Mary Susan fit into Ravenclaw about as well as her tortoise, Sadie thought. However, if she really was fearless and improper and willing to defy the Hat . . . She might be an ally.

Sadie vowed, privately, to make this her last year in Hufflepuff.

"This is my last year in Hufflepuff," Harry said. His last year . . . And then he was falling, falling, swirling back and sideways and up . . .

Somebody was shaking him. Harry opened his eyes. The Hat had been snatched away.

"We have to hide!" Ron hissed. "There isn't much time!"

Hermione, Fred, and George were already gone. Somebody was crashing up the stairs. Harry heard shouting: "Not only are you a liar and a thief, you are the most utterly incompetent worm of a child I have ever had the misfortune . . ." Snape was coming back.

Harry grabbed Ron's arm and rushed around the desk and behind an armchair. The cloak didn't fit both of them, not really; but they could huddle together, Ron's arms around Harry, and hope that Snape wouldn't notice.

"You could all have been killed! You nearly were killed! If you knew that feverfew and dragon's dung were an explosive combination, why didn't you pause to calculate the blast radius? Several miles, Clarence. It was several miles. I should write the calculation on your back in blood!"

Harry held his breath, and felt Ron and the cloak wrapped around him, and waited.