"PICKLED STEWBERRIES!"
"KHAAANNNN!"
At the Head Table, Dumbledore went on smiling benignly; small metallic sounds occasionally came from Snape's direction as he idly compacted the twisted remains of what had once been a heavy silver wine goblet; and Minerva McGonagall clenched the podium in a white-knuckled grip, knowing that Harry Potter's contagious chaos had infected the Sorting Hat itself.
Scenario after scenario played out through Minerva's head, each worse than the last. The Hat would say that Harry was too evenly balanced between Houses to Sort, and decide that he belonged to all of them. The Hat would proclaim that Harry's mind was too strange to be Sorted. The Hat would demand that Harry be expelled from Hogwarts. The Hat had gone into a coma. The Hat would insist that a whole new House of Doom be created just to accomodate Harry Potter, and Dumbledore would make her do it...
Minerva remembered what Harry had told her in that disastrous trip to Diagon Alley, about the... planning fallacy, she thought it had been... and how people were usually too optimistic, even when they thought they were being pessimistic. It was the sort of information that preyed on your mind, dwelling in it and spinning off nightmares...
But what was the worst that could happen?
Well... in the worst-case scenario, the Hat would assign Harry to a whole new House. Dumbledore would insist that she do it - create a whole new House just for him - and she'd have to rearrange all the class schedules on the first day of term. And Dumbledore would remove her as Head of House Gryffindor, and give her beloved House over to... Professor Binns, the History ghost; and she would be assigned as Head of Harry's House of Doom; and she would futilely try to give the child orders, deducting point after point without effect, while disaster after disaster was blamed on her.
Was that the worst-case scenario?
Minerva honestly didn't see how it could be any worse than that.
And even in the very worst case - no matter what happened with Harry - it would all be over in seven years.
Minerva felt her knuckles slowly relax their white-knuckled grip on the podium. Harry had been right, there was a kind of comfort in staring directly into the furthest depths of the darkness, knowing that you had confronted your worst fears and were now prepared.
The frightened silence was broken by a single word.
"Headmaster!" called the Sorting Hat.
At the Head Table, Dumbledore rose, his face puzzled. "Yes?" he addressed the Hat. "What is it?"
"I wasn't talking to you," said the Hat. "I was Sorting Harry Potter into the place in Hogwarts where he most belongs, namely the Headmaster's office -"
Chapter 12: Impulse Control
"Turpin, Lisa!"
Whisper whisper whisper harry potter whisper whisper slytherin whisper whisper no seriously what the hell whisper whisper
"RAVENCLAW!"
Harry joined in the applause greeting the young girl walking shyly towards the Ravenclaw table, her robes' trim now changed to dark blue. Lisa Turpin appeared torn between her impulse to sit down as far away from Harry Potter as possible, and her impulse to run over, forcibly insert herself at his side and start tearing answers out of him.
Being at the center of an extraordinary and curious event, and then being Sorted into House Ravenclaw, was closely akin to being dipped in barbecue sauce and flung into a pit of starving kittens.
"I promised the Sorting Hat not to talk about it," whispered Harry for the umpteenth time.
"Yes, really."
"No, I really did promise the Sorting Hat not to talk about it."
"Fine, I promised the Sorting Hat not to talk about most of it and the rest is private just like yours was so stop asking."
"You want to know what happened? Fine! Here's part of what happened! I told the Hat that Professor McGonagall threatened to set it on fire and it told me to tell Professor McGonagall that she was an impudent youngster and she should get off its lawn!"
"If you're not going to believe what I say then why are you even asking?"
"No, I don't know how I defeated the Dark Lord either! You tell me if you figure it out!"
"Silence!" shouted Professor McGonagall at the podium of the Head Table. "No talking until the Sorting Ceremony finishes!"
There was a brief dip in the volume, as everyone waited to see if she was going to make any specific and credible threats, and then the whispers started up again.
Then the silver-bearded ancient stood up from his great golden chair, smiling cheerfully.
Instant silence. Someone frantically elbowed Harry as he tried to continue a whisper, and Harry cut himself off in mid-sentence.
The cheerful-looking old man sat down again.
Note to self: Do not mess with Dumbledore.
Harry was still trying to process everything that had happened during the Incident with the Sorting Hat. Not the least of which was what had happened the instant Harry had lifted the Hat off his head; in that moment, he'd heard a tiny whisper as though from nowhere, something that sounded oddly like English and a hiss at the same time, something that had said, "Ssalutations from Sslytherin to Sslytherin: if you would sseek my ssecretss, sspeak to my ssnake."
Harry was sorta guessing that wasn't supposed to be part of the official Sorting process. And that it was a bit of extra magic set down by Salazar Slytherin during the making of the Hat. And that the Hat itself didn't know about it. And that it was triggered when the Hat said "SLYTHERIN", plus or minus some other conditions. And that a Ravenclaw like himself really, really wasn't supposed to have heard it. And that if he could find some reliable way of swearing Draco to secrecy so he could ask him about it, that would be an excellent time to have some Comed-Tea handy.
Boy, you resolve not to go down the path of a Dark Lord and the universe starts messing with you the instant the Hat comes off your head. Some days it just doesn't pay to fight destiny. Maybe I'll wait until tomorrow to start on my resolution to not be a Dark Lord.
"GRYFFINDOR!"
Ron Weasley got a lot of applause, and not just from the Gryffindors. Apparently the Weasley family was widely liked around here. Harry, after a moment, smiled and started applauding along with the others.
Then again, there was no time like today to turn back from the Dark Side.
Stuff destiny and stuff the universe. He'd show that Hat.
"Zabini, Blaise!"
Pause.
"SLYTHERIN!" shouted the hat.
Harry applauded Zabini too, ignoring the odd looks he was getting from everyone including Zabini.
No other name was called out after that, and Harry realised that "Zabini, Blaise" did sound close to the end of the alphabet. Great, so now he'd only applauded Zabini... Oh well.
Dumbledore got up again and began heading towards the podium. Apparently they were about to be treated to a speech -
And Harry was struck by the inspiration for a brilliant experimental test.
Hermione had said that Dumbledore was the most powerful wizard alive, right?
Harry reached into his pouch and whispered, "Comed-Tea".
For the Comed-Tea to work, it would have to make Dumbledore say something so ridiculous during his speech that even in Harry's state of mental preparedness, he would still choke. Like, all the Hogwarts students had to not wear any clothes for the whole school year, or everyone was going to be transformed into cats.