"I really think that quill is broken, but it's never wrong. It's even older than I am."
The Sorting Hat muttered to itself, making a comment out of the blue. If a hat could make a facial expression, it would be a look of pure bewilderment.
"Whether it's right or not doesn't matter, at least I'm here."
Dudley said, trying his best to keep his mind as still as a calm lake.
"A fair point," the Hat conceded with a nod.
"So which House will I be in? Hufflepuff?"
Dudley was mentally prepared for the result.
"Just put me in Hufflepuff already, I'm starving."
The Hat was silent for a moment before speaking up again. "I take back what I just said. You have plenty of ambition, and you're quite capable. You like to be prepared for everything before you do it… what's the word? Ah, yes, you plan for every possible outcome. You really remind me of him…"
"You can read my mind?"
A slight ripple of alarm went through Dudley's mind. He had meditated five times before getting on the stool, just for the extra mental defense.
"No, I can only read your qualities," the Sorting Hat said.
"Qualities?"
Dudley's mind raced with a thousand possibilities.
"Yes, stop, stop! Your mind is like a jar of scattered ideas, all tumbling over each other. It's giving this hat a headache. You're not at all like the other wizards and witches whose minds are so simple."
Of course Dudley's mind wasn't simple.
"Sorting Hat, are you sure you don't read minds?"
The Hat dodged the question. "I'm just a hat, there's no need to pick a fight with me."
"Usually, I should follow the wishes of you young witches and wizards, but my consciousness was created from the ideas of the four founders of this school…"
At this, the Hat's voice changed. It became slower and much deeper. It was still the Sorting Hat, but it gave Dudley the bizarre feeling that he was talking to someone else.
Perhaps it wasn't an illusion.
Or maybe it was a split personality?
"You are very much like him," the Hat emphasized once again.
"You have a strong will and a disdain for rules. Of course, if you could just stop all these ridiculous thoughts! Now! Immediately! The Hat is going to explode!"
The voice was mysterious for a moment, then it became urgent, returning to its usual tone.
Dudley didn't like anyone prying into his thoughts, even if it was a hat. So he kept reviewing all the knowledge he had accumulated over the years, from the Pythagorean theorem and calculus to the differences in male and female anatomy.
"The derivative of sin x is cos x, the derivative of cos x is -sin x, the derivative of tan x is sec^2 x."
"When particles interact with each other, their individual properties combine into a collective whole, and they can no longer be described individually."
Seeing that Dudley had no intention of stopping, the Hat gave up. "All right, all right, I won't look, then."
The sea of chaotic knowledge was threatening to consume its consciousness.
It swore that in all its thousand years, it had never met a student like this.
Where in the name of Merlin had he learned all this?
It had been quite a while since Dudley had put on the hat. Even though most people's attention was on Harry, they had begun to notice Dudley's long wait. He had been on the stool for an exceptionally long time.
Longer than Harry had.
"Perhaps you've heard a lot of bad things about that place, but… what you hear from others is not always the truth. A thousand years can spoil many things. I hope you will see past the surface and find the true essence."
The Sorting Hat suddenly shrieked at the top of its voice.
"So… SLYTHERIN!"
Almost at the same moment the Hat shouted the name, a system notification sounded in Dudley's mind.
"Mission complete. You have been sorted into Slytherin. Mission reward: Data Eye LV0."
Before Dudley could check out his reward, the Hat's voice sounded again.
"Salazar's consciousness hopes you can straighten that place out. The Slytherin House is a complete mess right now… it's a cesspool."
The Hat's words were the first thing that brought a visible change to Dudley's face.
Salazar, full name Salazar Slytherin, was the founder of the Hogwarts house.
Salazar wants me to fix his house? At first, it sounded absurd, but the more Dudley thought about it, the more it made perfect sense. The Sorting Hat was born from the founders' thoughts. With magical portraits that could hold conversations with the dead, it wasn't so strange that a hat would possess their consciousness.
It wasn't science, but it was certainly magic.
"Then…" Dudley had a brilliant, audacious idea.
Before he could even put it into action, the Sorting Hat called out, "Hey! I'm just a hat, a normal magical hat! I only have their thoughts from back then, not all their knowledge!"
"What a shame," Dudley said, his face filled with disappointment.
He suddenly remembered something. Slytherin had split from Gryffindor over the issue of which students to admit. Salazar was against letting Muggle-born wizards into Hogwarts, and Dudley was a Muggle-born wizard in every sense of the word.
"Slytherin is Slytherin, and I am me. I possess his consciousness, but I am not him."
The Hat's words made perfect sense, in a magical sort of way.
"Now, get to the Slytherin table! Immediately!"
A large hand came out of nowhere and yanked the Sorting Hat off Dudley's head, cutting the conversation short. A black-haired, black-robed, and very sour-faced man spoke coldly to Dudley.
It was Severus Snape, the Head of Slytherin.
Dudley had been on the stool for so long that his Head of House couldn't take it anymore. Snape pulled at Dudley, only to find he didn't budge.
Snape's lips moved as if to spew his usual venom, then he paused, remembering something. What came out instead was an uncharacteristic statement.
"What are you waiting for? Do you need a formal invitation, Mr. Dursley?"
A few stifled laughs came from the Gryffindor table. They were always happy to see a Slytherin get embarrassed. A few of them even looked confused, as Professor Snape's insult seemed to lack his usual bite. Still, they shrugged it off; Snape was notoriously protective of his own students.
Normally, when a first-year was sorted, they were met with applause, or at least a welcome, but when Dudley arrived at the Slytherin table, there was no applause, not even a single word of welcome.
The students automatically made a small space around him.
The message was clear: he was unwelcome.
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