"To the extent you really believe that... you must equally believe that you could be the most terrible Dark Lord the world has ever known."
Destruction is always easier than creation. Easier to tear things apart, to disrupt, than to put them back together again. If I have the potential to accomplish good on a massive scale, I must also have the potential to accomplish still greater evil... But I won't do that.
"Already you insist on risking it! Why are you so driven? What is the real reason you must not go to Hufflepuff and be happier there? What is your true fear?"
I must achieve my full potential. If I don't I... fail...
"What happens if you fail?"
Something terrible...
"What happens if you fail?"
I don't know!
"Then it should not be frightening. What happens if you fail?"
I DON'T KNOW! BUT I KNOW THAT IT'S BAD!
There was silence for a moment in the caverns of Harry's mind.
"You know - you aren't letting yourself think it, but in some quiet corner of your mind you know just exactly what you aren't thinking - you know that by far the simplest explanation for this unverbalisable fear of yours is just the fear of losing your fantasy of greatness, of disappointing the people who believe in you, of turning out to be pretty much ordinary, of flashing and fading like so many other child prodigies..."
No, Harry thought desperately, no, it's something more, it comes from somewhere else, I know there's something out there to be afraid of, some disaster I have to stop...
"How could you possibly know about something like that?"
Harry screamed it with the full power of his mind: NO, AND THAT'S FINAL!
Then the voice of the Sorting Hat came slowly:
"So you will risk becoming a Dark Lord, because the alternative, to you, is certain failure, and that failure means the loss of everything. You believe that in your heart of hearts. You know all the reasons for doubting this belief, and they have failed to move you."
Yes. And even if going to Ravenclaw strengthens the coldness, that doesn't mean the coldness will win in the end.
"This day is a great fork in your destiny. Don't be so sure that there will be other choices beyond this one. There is no road-sign set, to mark the place of your last chance to turn back. If you refuse one chance will you not refuse others? It may be that your fate is already sealed, even by doing this one thing."
But that is not certain.
"That you do not know it for a certainty may reflect only your own ignorance."
But still it is not certain.
The Hat sighed a terrible sad sigh.
"And so before too long you will become another memory, to be felt and never known, in the next warning that I give..."
If that's how it seems to you, then why aren't you just putting me where you want me to go?
The Hat's thought was laced with sorrow. "I can only put you where you belong. And only your own decisions can change where you belong."
Then this is done. Send me to Ravenclaw where I belong, with the others of my own kind.
"I don't suppose you would consider Gryffindor? It's the most prestigious House - people probably expect it of you, even - they'll be a little disappointed if you don't go - and your new friends the Weasley twins are there -"
Harry giggled, or felt the impulse to do so; it came out as purely mental laughter, an odd sensation. Apparently there were safeguards to prevent you from saying anything out loud by accident, while you were under the Hat talking about things you would never tell another soul for the rest of your life.
After a moment, Harry heard the Hat laughing too, a strange sad clothy sound.
(And in the Hall beyond, a silence that had grown shallower at first as the background whispers increased, and then deepened as the whispers gave up and died away, falling finally into an utter silence that no one dared disturb with a single word, as Harry stayed under the Hat for long, long minutes, longer than all the previous first-years put together, longer than anyone in living memory. 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 somehow infected the Sorting Hat itself and the Hat was about to, to demand that a whole new House of Doom be created just to accomodate Harry Potter or something, and Dumbledore would make her do it...)
Beneath the brim of the Hat, the silent laughter died away. Harry felt sad too for some reason. No, not Gryffindor.
Professor McGonagall said that if 'the one who did the Sorting' tried to push me into Gryffindor, I was to remind you that she might well be Headmistress someday, at which point she would have the authority to set you on fire.
"Tell her I called her an impudent youngster and told her to get off my lawn."
I shall. So was this your strangest conversation ever?
"Not even close." The Hat's telepathic voice grew heavy. "Well, I gave you every possible chance to make another decision. Now it is time for you to go where you belong, with the others of your own kind."
There was a pause that stretched.
What are you waiting for?
"I was hoping for a moment of horrified realisation, actually. Self-awareness does seem to enhance my sense of humor."
Huh? Harry cast back his thoughts, trying to figure out what the Hat could possibly be talking about - and then, suddenly, he realised. He couldn't believe he'd managed to overlook it up until this point.
You mean my horrified realisation that you're going to cease to be conscious once you finish Sorting me -
Somehow, in some fashion Harry entirely failed to understand, he got a nonverbal impression of a hat banging its head against the wall. "I give up. You're too slow on the uptake for this to be funny. So blinded by your own assumptions that you might as well be a rock. I suppose I'll just have to say it outright."
Too s-s-slow -
"Oh, and you entirely forgot to demand the secrets of the lost magic that created me. And they were such wonderful, important secrets, too."
You sly little BASTARD -
"You deserved it, and this as well."
Harry saw it coming just as it was already too late.
The frightened silence of the hall was broken by a single word.
"SLYTHERIN!"
Some students screamed, the pent-up tension was so great. People startled hard enough to fall off their benches. Hagrid gasped in horror, McGonagall staggered at the podium, and Snape dropped the remains of his heavy silver goblet directly onto his groin.
Harry sat there frozen, his life in ruins, feeling the absolute fool, and wishing wretchedly that he had made any other choices for any other reasons but the ones he had. That he had done something, anything differently before it had been too late to turn back.