Ravenclaws care about efficiency, dear. Gryffindors want things.

Okay. Fine. All right. She can do that. She can do anything.

What does she want?

I want - 

She wants to learn, she realizes with a puzzled start, what Ron Weasley knows.

Bruce, of course, is like her, and she loves him already, the missing left hand she never knew she didn't have. But Ron, this strange new friend she could never have expected until Bruce dropped him metaphorically in her lap, is not like them. Ron is gratingly ordinary, uninterested in books, ill-mannered and carelessly smudged with dirt and enthusiastic about the most boring sport imaginable. He's a Gryffindor, obviously, blindingly, unSorted though he yet remains. She can see it already, looming in the distance, how absolutely terrible she's going to be at being friends with him. She's going to be frustrated by every third word out of his mouth and a determination to get a good grade in friendship is not going to stop her from snapping at him eventually, no more than it stopped her from reading the riot act to her primary school science teacher about telling easily verified lies. And he's going to snap at her right back, smiling, because he is not afraid.

She wants that.

It's been several minutes. The crowd is starting to murmur. (Hatstall - McGonagall's record - )

In another world she might have had even less reason, less understanding of what she's reaching for, and it would still have said, resigned, fond:

Yes, yes, all right.

Rowena would have loved you, too, you know. In her way.

But you can do anything, can't you, little lioness, even be a -

"GRYFFINDOR!"

Damn straight.

She hands back the Hat, and goes among the applause to sit where she belongs, beaming fit to rival the sun.

Few dare ask anyone what the Sorting Hat said to them, and fewer choose to tell, but stories do accumulate. When it takes that long, a lot of the time, it's because someone has the seeds of the virtues of multiple houses, and their own choices count the most. McGonagall is proud of every child that comes to Gryffindor, but the ones who choose it over something else they could have been do warm her heart a little more.

She calls the next name, and the next, smiling encouragement at each of them. And then she gets to "Perks, Sally-Anne", and then--

"Potter, Bruce!"

"Potter, did she say?"

                   "The Bruce Potter?"

"It's the right year--"

He walks over to the stool and puts on the hat. It falls down over his eyes so he can't see the staring crowd; he is no less aware of them for that.

I want to go to Gryffindor, please. I know I'm not very brave yet but I'll try. 

He thinks about the confrontation with Malfoy on the train, how much he had wanted to run. Ron hadn't wanted to run. He wants to be someone like that, someone who can stand beside his friends no matter what, because now that he's tasted friendship he doesn't want to give it up. He wants Ron's smiles and his oddly harmless jokes and his love of sports. He wants to be where Hermione is, the sister he never had, to learn with her and grow with her and chase the vision that finally someone else can see.

He has spent ten years surviving. He wants to try living. If that isn't courage, at least it's hope.

Oh, my. Difficult, very difficult indeed.

Well.

I shan't let you leave my stool without hearing this, at least, first, Gryffindor or no. You are very brave, child. Has no one ever told you that? Courage comes in two kinds: when you do not run because you are not afraid, and when you do not run even though you are afraid.

He only didn't run because there was nowhere good to run to he doesn't know that. Maybe having one other person standing next to him would have been enough.

It is, at least, an easier goal to aim for than never being scared. 

Thank you. What did you mean by "difficult"? He is reminded suddenly of Ollivander.

You are very welcome! It is my job, and I wouldn't still be here after this long if I didn't like my job, eh?

Speaking of which - you are difficult to Sort, I mean. it's a compliment. From the way you remember his tone, I suspect the wandmaker meant it so as well.

You could be nearly anything, you see. Not just brave but also clever, so clever, with the kind of curiosity that cleverness is so much less useful without; and sitting here on my stool with your eyes set already above childish concerns, fixed on a vision; and ready at once at the slightest opportunity to open your heart to new friends, when many in your position would fear ever to reach out for human connection again. But Rowena and Salazar would have fought a duel over the right to invite you into their houses first and then both sat down without a word when Helga raised her hand, I think, and been right to, so I will not speak more of those choices now, though they are available to you if you want them.

This last, I suspect you must hear, before you choose. It will not be a fair choice, for you, if you do not know in detail what you are deciding, as your friend knew some of this already from her history books when she sat down and put me on. You should know that the children of Hufflepuff will love you very much, as Helga would have, if you choose to be one of their own. They love each other the way a family should, because that is what they are and have always been, the way that the fractious little army of Gryffindor's tower is not, loving each other so conditionally as they are wont to do. In Hufflepuff's keeping you may find that it is easier not to be afraid at all.

Godric would disagree, of course, that his children do not love as fiercely and loyally as Helga's. (I am not quite him, you see, though I am more him than I am anyone else.) He would say that you need not stop loving someone to make him your enemy if you must, and that peace is only ever temporary. Some people are destined to face greater foes than can be defeated with only Helga's kindness, and he would be right, I think, to say that you are among them.

But Helga would say in return that it can still be worth it, to have the peace first, anyway, for a time.

It's entirely your choice, you understand. I will not send you where you do not want to go, and you have good reasons. I only ask: are you sure?

It's tempting. It is. But it's not only the thought of Hermione and Ron that makes him hesitate.

He doesn't want to be loved just because he's a Hufflepuff, any more than he wants to be bowed to by Daedalus Diggle for being the boy who lived. He doesn't want (and he knows as he thinks it that this is unfair to the Hufflepuffs, but they can't hear him and he needs words for what he means) the kind of love Aunt Petunia has for Dudley. He wants to be liked for something he actually is. He wants friends here, not family, and wants to be someone who can earn friends.

And there's another, darker reason too, one he wouldn't admit to out loud but it's alright to think about, the Hat's already seen it. He doesn't want to join the house where he would be expected to love his housemates unconditionally either. Some people are Ron and Hermione; some people are Dudley and Malfoy. Some adults are Uncle Vernon and some adults are Hagrid and there is a measure of safety in being able to make that judgement and he can't, actually, trust this new world enough to stop making it.

Hufflepuff doesn't have what he needs, and he would damage what they have. 

A well-considered answer.

It seems to me you will indeed be a remarkably good

"GRYFFINDOR!"

He did it! Weirdest test ever but he passed, somehow. He gets off the stool with a last mental Thank you! to the hat, sets it (him?) back down, and walks beaming to the Gryffindor table to grab a seat near Hermione.

The whole table claps for him as they do for every newcomer, with the addition of some whooping and the Weasley twins yelling "We got Potter!".

As Bruce sits down, the ghost with the fancy ruff pats him on the shoulder in a genial manner, giving him the brief but strong impression of just having plunged his whole arm into a bucket of ice water.

Hagrid, sitting at the end of the High Table, offers a thumbs-up in Bruce's general direction as the clapping begins to die down so that the last few names can be called.

None of the rest are the kind of children who need to have long conversations with the Hat, so it is quick enough - "Thomas, Dean!" (Gryffindor) and "Turpin, Lisa!" (Ravenclaw) and then "Weasley, Ronald!"

Yeah, let's do this! Ron has no fears, no doubts, and no reservations; the ideal outcome was assured when Bruce got Gryffindor.

There are some worlds where Ron Weasley, as he arrives at Hogwarts, needs to be gently offered a chance at Slytherin. Sometimes he is in a mood where he needs to be reminded more concretely that he is not only the shadow of his brothers, that he has talent in his own right, before he chooses Gryffindor as he is destined to do, to feel ever after that he has earned it. This one, though, like most of them, doesn't. He's already found his bearing, a compass needle pointing to the tower. 

The Hat wants to say to him, ah, here you are, straightforward little knight, at last; thank goodness, your whole cohort is madness and self-doubt and destiny and they need you, so badly. But this would be telling too much: each child gets only their own mind read, not anyone else's. So instead it just says, fondly, with a brief light psychic touch that feels a bit like brushing past the warmth of a kitchen stove,

Of course you are. Never doubt it. You - not just your name but you, remember that - are

"GRYFFINDOR!"

YEAH! He's not gonna forget it and nobody else had better forget it either.

He jogs off to his table, already familiar with more of the faces of his housemates than any other first-year except possibly Malfoy and second to none in how many he already cares for. Bruce and Hermione grin; the twins clap him on the back; Percy shakes his hand ("No surprise there! I'll write mum and dad tonight, they'll be so proud--"). Everything is just as it ought to be.

"Zabini, Blaise!" becomes a Slytherin almost as quickly, and then just like that the Sorting is over.

The man at the center of the high table stands, his long hair and beard glittering silver in the star-and-candlelight. "Welcome!" he says, his voice carrying easily throughout the Hall. He sounds exactly like you'd expect a wise old wizard to sound. "Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words, and here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak! Thank you!"

Then he sits back down.

"Was that . . . typical?"

"Oh yeah, Dumbledore's mad."