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The Wicked Witch of the West glanced down at her scroll one more time. He was the only kid left standing at the front of the hall, last in line, and behind him he could hear the rest of the school muttering impatiently and whispering amongst themselves. The old witch blinked twice before reading his name.
"Winchester, Dean!"
Dean took his time walking up to the stool. Some student said, just loud enough for him to hear, "Isn't that the brat who punched Pucey on the train?" and he filed that name away, just in case. The asshole hadn't bothered to introduce himself before meeting Dean's fist. One professor--he looked like an overgrown bat, or maybe a vampire priest--glared at Dean with unveiled contempt. Dean stuck his tongue out at the man. Then he settled the hat over his head like it wasn't really the dorkiest thing he'd ever seen in his life, and he waited.
Hello.
He jumped a little, sure, but he covered it up. "Great. A talking hat."
Talking and singing, the hat pointed out, in case you didn't notice.
"Your singing sucks."
You think you can do much better?
Dean snorted. "Whatever, ratty hat-man, at least I know that 'goose' doesn't really rhyme with 'spoon'." When the hat did not reply, he asked, "So how does this work? Do I just sit here while you do some mumbo-jumbo magic shit?"
In a manner of speaking, the hat replied, unperturbed. It is my duty to decide which house will best serve you during the course of your magical education, and the rest of your life. To be honest, I've never quite heard it described as 'mumbo-jumbo magic shit' before.
"Look, don't bother," Dean said. He didn't think it would actually work, but it was worth a shot. "I don't even want a magical education. Just tell them to send me home."
That's a curious request from a young wizard.
"I'm not a wizard!"
Yes, you are.
"Am not."
You most certainly are.
"Shut up, you stupid hat! I am not a wizard!"
Mr. Winchester, I have been doing this job for approximately one thousand years longer than you have been alive. Trust me when I say that I know a wizard when I meet one.
"I don't want to be. I hate magic."
Is that so?
"Yes!"
May I ask why?
"None of your fucking business."
Language, Mr. Winchester.
There was a brief silence. The other students in the hall were still muttering, clearly impatient. Dean figured maybe they didn't get fed until the last kid was sorted, but he didn't care.
If I may venture a guess, the hat said, sounding an awful lot like Grandmother did when she was about to tell Dean how stupid he was, I suspect that your dislike of magic is somehow related to the death of your parents.
"That's none of your business!"
Your mind, Mr. Winchester, is all of my business. Do you deny it?
"Of course I don't deny it, you stupid hat," Dean said angrily. "It was magic that killed my mom and magic that killed my dad. Magic is good for nothing except hurting people and controlling people and making them do things they don't want to do and I hate it. I don't want anything to do with it. I just want to go home."
Home to your grandparents' house?
Dean felt a twist of something in his stomach, something horrible and painful he wished he could shove away. "No," he said quietly. "That's not home."
It never had been, not since he and Sammy had first arrived at the drafty old house on the moor, not since his grandmother had looked down her nose at them and ordered a house-elf to give them a bath, not since their grandfather had taken him for a walk around the estate just to show him the family cemetery and the plot where his mother's body was meant to be. Maybe they had bedrooms and toys and teachers and even pets to play with, but it wasn't home, not like the motel rooms and campgrounds where they used to stay with Dad, not like falling asleep in the front seat of the car while Dad drove through the rain and waking up when they stopped for pancakes.
Sometimes he could remember it so clearly it hurt just to think about it: Dad teaching him to shoot and hunt and fight, laughing at his jokes, scooping up Sammy to carry him on his shoulders, saying proudly that he could always count on Dean.
But other times, more and more lately, he felt like it was fading away. Like he was letting himself forget.
"It's not home," he said, "but Sammy's there. I'm supposed to look out for Sammy. That's my job."
Not your grandparents' job?
"No! They don't know... they don't know..." Dean fell silent. The truth was, Sammy loved living with their grandparents. He barely even remembered Dad and didn't remember Mom at all, and all he ever talked about was Quidditch and hexes and Chocolate Frog Cards and what he was going to train his pet salamander to do. "I promised Dad I'd look after him. I can't do that if I'm stuck in this stupid place."
I see.
He couldn't tell what the hat meant by that. "Can I go now?"
I'm sorry, Mr. Winchester, but that's not up to me. My job is to place you in the house best suited to you. What happens after that is not my concern.
Dean felt a glimmer of hope. "You mean I can leave? Run away?" He thought about sneaking out the castle under the cover of darkness and hitchhiking back to Yorkshire, or stealing a bike and riding it, or something. It wasn't that far. People in Britain liked to pretend they had a big country, but everything was so close together he knew he could make it.
I mean that after I place you in your house, your choices are your own.
"You sound like a fortune cookie."
I shall take that as a compliment, despite never having partaken of such a delicacy.
"So? What are you waiting for? Sort me. I'm hungry." He could even steal food from the feast to take with him when he ran away. One of the kids on the train--not one who started the fight, but one who broke it up--said that there was enough food to feed ten armies at just one feast.
Ah, the impatience of youth.
"Everybody else is hungry too," Dean said. "They're going to blame me."
Pity, that.
"Dude, are you going to sort me or not?"
Yours is not an easy sorting to accomplish, Mr. Winchester.
Dean swallowed and thought about what Grandmother had told him. "My mom was a Gryffindor," he said. "That's where I should go."
I remember your mother quite well, the hat said. Charming young girl. Very polite.
"So put me there." He crossed his fingers under the sleeves of his stupid robes. At least wearing a big billowy dress was good for something.
Why should I do that? the hat wondered.
"I'm brave," Dean insisted. "I'm always brave. I never cried when Dad left me and Sammy alone. I took on that big asshole on the train when nobody else would tell him to stop. Everybody else was just standing around staring like stupid-heads, even the older kids, so I punched him." His knuckles still hurt a little, but it was worth it. Dad would have been proud of him. He had a killer right hook.
Interesting. What was young Pucey doing that was so deserving of a punch?
"He was picking on little kids! Some stupid little twerp half his size. Dudes like that deserve to be punched in the face."
If one were being unkind, the hat said slowly, one might point out that you, in fact, are a little twerp half his size.
Dean beamed proudly. "Exactly." Then he thought about it. "But not really. I mean, I'm not a weakling. I'm tall for my age! Jeez."
I suspect then that Slytherin is not the best choice for you. It would not be wise to start the school year by humiliating your elder housemates.
"I don't want to go to that stupid snake house anyway."
Your grandfather was a Slytherin.
"Yeah, and he smells like moldy cheese."
A very wise basis for the choice. You do seem like a bright boy, if a bit rough around the edges, and you've spent a remarkable amount of time delving into the mysteries of the magical world.
"Delving into... er, what? I don't think I ever did that, hat."
Researching magic, in spite of your distaste for it.
"Well, duh. How am I s'posed to kill the thing that killed my mom and dad if I don't know anything about it? Dad always said you gotta know your enemy before you go after it, and it's not my fault Grandma and Grandpa have all those weird old books. You're not very smart for a hat."
Ravenclaw House would be most beneficial to you in that purpose.
"Ravenclaw? That bunch of tweedy geeks with pocket protectors and glasses? Are you out of your mind?"
Knowledge is power, Mr. Winchester.
"Yeah, but only if you're not a gigantic dork at the same time." Dean shifted uncomfortably; the stool was hard on his bottom, and the murmurings throughout the hall were growing louder. He risked a glance over his shoulder at the staff table. The Wicked Witch of the West--okay, fine, he knew her name was Professor McGonagall, but it wasn't his fault what she looked like--was staring at him with an unreadable expression, and the crazy dude with the beard and the purple robes was smiling like, well, just like a crazy dude who wore purple robes. "Put me in Gryffindor," Dean told the hat. "That's where my mom was. And where my dad would be, if he was a wizard."
But this is your life we're discussing, Dean, not that of your parents.
"But Dad gave me a job to do," Dean said, a little desperately. "I gotta look out for Sammy, and I gotta find the thing that killed him and Mom. Gryffindors are fighters, right? I gotta be able to fight."
Your devotion to your family and your pursuit of justice is admirable.
"I'm not gonna let some evil thing get away with hurting my family."
But all witches and wizards choose to fight, or choose not to fight, in their own way.
"Dude! Fortune cookie again!"
Very well. Dean Winchester, I place you--
"Finally! A thousand years, man, you're getting kinda slow in your old age."
--in HUFFLEPUFF!
"What?"
But there was no time to argue. The Wicked Witch of the West swiped the hat from Dean's head and shooed him off the stool, toward a long table full of cheering students who all looked like they were going as bumblebees for Halloween. Lots of people patted him on the back and smiled at him, and some other first years scooted aside to make room for him on the bench.
Dean was sitting down before he could think of a decent plan to escape, and then the old dude in the purple robes was saying something about butterflies and caramel toffees, and suddenly the table was filled with more food than he had ever seen, and by then it was too late. Eat first, Dean thought, and escape later. He reached for a chicken leg.
"Hey, Winchester."
He looked up, automatically squaring his shoulders and jutting out his chin. One of the older kids was talking to him, a boy with light brown hair who had about fifteen pounds of potatoes piled on his plate.
Dean said warily, "Yeah?"
"Did you really punch out Pucey on the train?"
"Yeah? What of it?"
A girl across the table laughed. "Brilliant! He's had it coming for years."
Dean let himself smile, a little uneasily. All around him his housemates when on to describe in varying degrees of gory detail other fights and brawls that had taken place on the Hogwarts Express, and he chewed on his chicken thoughtfully and listened.
One of the other first years, a girl with blonde braids, looked around furtively, then leaned over and whispered in his ear, "I was afraid of getting put in Hufflepuff. Everybody says they're a bunch of duffers. But I think it'll be okay, don't you? They seem fun."
Dean started to answer, but he was interrupted when a seventh year girl with rainbow-colored hair dropped an entire pitcher of pumpkin juice on the table, splashing it all over every Hufflepuff within eight seats. There was a moment of stunned silence before the entire table burst into laughter and the older kids began casting spells to clear it away, making more of a mess in the process. The girl who had dropped the pitcher was laughing so hard she turned as orange as a pumpkin herself, and pretty soon there were droplets of pumpkin juice flying through the air, splatting against people's faces with enthusiastic fervor, and the other houses were glaring at the Hufflepuff table in a mixture of annoyance and envy.
Dean wiped pumpkin juice from his face and took another bite of chicken. Down the table, he noticed one older boy slyly picking up a handful of Brussels sprouts and winding up to throw them.
"It doesn't seem so bad," he said.
The girl with the blonde braids smiled, and at the same time they both reached for dinner rolls as ammunition.
He could always plan his escape later. But for now, he couldn't wait to write and tell Sammy all about this crazy place.