The world had gone dark the moment the Hat touched his head, and for a long second there was nothing but silence — the kind of silence that came not from an absence of sound but from being somewhere else entirely, somewhere that existed only between one thought and the next.
Then the voice came again, dry and amused, right next to his ear.
“Oh. Another Falker.”
Felix kept his thoughts still.
He had prepared for this, the way he prepared for everything.
The Hat could see into his mind, and there was no point in trying to hide anything from it.
The Hat always knew.
“You know who I am,” Felix thought.
The Hat laughed — a quiet, rasping sound that only Felix could hear.
“Of course I know who you are. I remember every Falker who has ever sat on this stool. Your father. His father before him. And I know the two who never did.” A pause.
“Andros, who was dust before this castle had a name. And Cassandra.”
Felix went still.
“You know about Cassandra,” he thought.
“I know what she made,” the Hat said.
“Every Sorting Hat that has ever existed knows what she made. The three curses that have no counter, no defense, no mercy. I have sorted thousands of children into these four Houses over the centuries, Felix Falker, and I have never once had to wonder what kind of mind it takes to invent something like that.” Its voice was still dry, but there was something underneath it now — something older and quieter.
“I wouldn’t want to know what horrors would have to be in someone’s mind for them to create the Unforgivables. I’ve had eleven centuries to think about it, and I’ve never wanted the answer.”
Felix felt the words land, and something in him rose up in response before he could stop it.
“She was my family,” he thought.
“Yes,” the Hat said.
“She was.”
“You don’t know why she did it. You don’t know what she was trying to protect, or who she was fighting, or what the world looked like from where she was standing when she decided those curses needed to exist.”
The Hat was quiet for a moment.
“No,” it admitted.
“I don’t. I only know what she left behind.”
“So do I,” Felix thought.
“And I’ve chosen not to touch it.”
“Yes,” the Hat said.
“You have. You walked into that library and you turned away from her shelves, and you picked the dueling notes instead.” A pause.
“Most boys your age would have gone straight for the forbidden books. You didn’t.”
“The forbidden books aren’t going anywhere.”
“Very well. I’ll grant you this: whatever Cassandra became, whatever she did, she is not you. You’ve made that clear enough.”
Felix said nothing.
He had not expected the Hat to concede the point, and he was not sure what to do with the concession now that it had been given.
The sensation that followed was strange — not painful, not invasive, but heavy, as though something very old and very patient was turning over the pages of a book that happened to be his thoughts.
The Hat lingered on his memories of the High Library, then moved on to his footwork drills, to the ache in his calves after three weeks in the dueling hall, to the way he had learned to stand still in a room full of watching eyes.
It paused at Ollivanders — at the dragon that had erupted from his wand in a burst of dark-green fire, at the strange, familiar weight of the blackthorn in his hand.
“That wand chose you,” the Hat said.
“Most wands don’t do that. Most wands simply allow themselves to be chosen.”
“I noticed.”
“I imagine you did.” The Hat’s voice was dry again.
“You notice a great deal, don’t you, Felix Falker? More than most boys your age. More than most boys any age.”
Felix didn’t answer.
The Hat didn’t seem to need him to.
It moved on to the memory of Fred and George — laughing in a compartment on the Hogwarts Express, mocking Percy’s bathroom schedule, and the quiet promise Felix had made to himself when he looked at the two of them and remembered what the future held for the older of the pair.
The Hat went very still.
“Ah,” it said.
“There it is.”
Felix kept his thoughts steady, but he felt the Hat settle on the memory the way a hand settles on a familiar object.
“You know something,” the Hat said quietly.
“Something about that boy. Something that hasn’t happened yet.”
“Yes,” Felix thought.
“And you intend to change it.”
“Yes.”
The Hat was silent for a long moment.
When it spoke again, its voice had lost some of its dryness.
“You understand that you may not be able to.”
“I know.”
“And you intend to try anyway.”
The Hat let out a sound that was almost a sigh — the sort of sound something very old makes when it has seen the same thing happen many times before and knows it will see it again.
“Very well,” it said, and the dry tone returned.
“Now. To business. You’re not a Hufflepuff. You could be, if you wanted to be. You have the loyalty for it. You have the patience, and the willingness to work hard, and the sort of quiet steadiness that Helga would have appreciated. But you don’t belong there.”
“Why not?”
“Because your loyalty is not the kind that asks for anything in return. You would give everything you had to the people you care about, and you would never once expect them to notice.” A pause.
“That’s not Hufflepuff. That’s something else. I’m not sure what to call it.”
“You’re not a Slytherin either,” the Hat went on.
“You have ambition, but it’s not the kind that seeks power for its own sake. You want to be strong, but you want it for a purpose, and the purpose is not yourself.”
“So not Slytherin.”
“No. And not Ravenclaw, for all that you’ve spent the last three weeks buried in ancient dueling notes. You value knowledge, but you don’t love it for its own sake either. You love what it can do.” The Hat paused.
“Which leaves one, doesn’t it?”
Felix considered that.
“I wouldn’t mind Gryffindor,” he thought.
The Hat let out a short, dry laugh.
“Wouldn’t mind it,” it repeated.
“That’s the most Falker thing you’ve said all evening. Most children sit on this stool and beg me for Gryffindor. They want the glory, the stories, the certainty of being on the right side. You just told me you wouldn’t mind.”
“I don’t need glory.”
“No. You need to be useful. And Gryffindor will make you useful.” The Hat shifted again.
“There’s courage in you, Felix Falker — the real kind, not the kind that shows off. And there’s a stubbornness that borders on dangerous. And you will not do what you’re told if you believe the person telling you is wrong. I can work with that.”
Felix waited.
“Very well,” the Hat said.
“If you say so. GRYFFINDOR!”
The last word was shouted aloud, and Felix felt the rip near the brim of the Hat open wide as the announcement echoed across the Great Hall.
The Gryffindor table erupted into cheers, and the Hat was lifted from his head, and the light of the floating candles rushed back in around him.
He stood up, blinking, and climbed down from the stool the same way he had climbed up — evenly, deliberately, without looking back.
As he walked toward the Gryffindor table, Fred and George were watching him with identical grins.
“Knew it,” Fred said.
“Told you,” George added.
Felix’s mouth twitched, and he took a seat across from them.