The instant the Sorting Hat settled onto his head, Draco felt a familiar power probing his consciousness.
But it soon ran into an invisible wall.
The hat froze for a moment.
"Hmm?" Its voice rang out in my mind, distinctly surprised. "You little brat... interesting."
The Sorting Hat instinctively tried to announce the answer that best suited his "bloodline" and "family tradition": "Slyther-"
Sort me into Gryffindor, Draco said calmly in his mind.
The hat's voice cut off abruptly, as though someone had seized it by the throat.
The word "Slytherin" stuck fast in its "throat."
"Do you want to go to Gryffindor, young wizard?" The hat's voice grew serious. "That might not turn out well for you."
"Old hat," Draco replied lazily, "aren't you the one who decides the sorting? Why are you asking me?"
"I can't see your true nature, young wizard!" The hat sounded exasperated. "Your mind is like something locked inside a safe!"
"You're not very good at this, old hat," Draco teased deliberately. "The legendary Sorting Hat that can see through people's hearts can't even see through a child?"
"You haven't already taught yourself Occlumency at home, have you?" the hat asked suspiciously.
"Take a guess."
The hat nearly swore aloud. "Guess my-"
It forcibly swallowed the curse. "You didn't learn Occlumency specifically to keep me out, did you?"
"You're a tiny bit right." Draco smiled innocently.
The Sorting Hat sank into deeper confusion. "What do you mean, a tiny bit right?"
"Exactly what it sounds like." Draco couldn't be bothered to explain the system and transmigration to it.
"Since you won't let me see your true nature-wait, no, since you won't let me see your true nature, that means you have ideas of your own." The hat's thoughts went in a circle inside his head before it finally regained its confidence.
"Tell me, young wizard, which house do you want to join?"
"What if I said I had no ideas?" Draco deliberately made things difficult for it.
"Fuck," the hat couldn't help swearing. "You little shit, you came here just to wreck the proceedings, didn't you?"
"Come on, old hat," Draco hurriedly soothed it. "At your age, why get into an argument with a child? I was only joking. Think about it. You've been doing just one job all these years. How boring must that be? I'm only keeping you company for a little chat."
"No need!" the hat refused flatly. "This is my job, and clocking out on time is my lifelong dream. Brat, waste any more of Grandpa Hat's time, and I'll draw lots and stick you somewhere at random!"
"No, no, no." Draco quickly backed down. "I'll choose right now, all right? I suppose I'll settle for Gryffindor."
The Sorting Hat didn't want to spend another second talking to this "little fucker," afraid that a few more words would ruin the reputation it had preserved for so long. It immediately shouted at the top of its voice:
"Gryffindor!"
[Ding-original plot altered. Fortune Points +10]
Dead silence.
Absolute, all-consuming dead silence, as though even the candle flames had frozen.
Draco was in no hurry to get off the stool.
He knew these people needed time to digest the result.
After all, a Malfoy going to Gryffindor was even more absurd than Harry going to Slytherin.
"No..." Pansy Parkinson let out a strangled whimper, her hands clamped over her mouth as her whole body began to shake.
She simply couldn't believe that the blond boy she had always been certain would enter Slytherin with her and rule Hogwarts's social circles alongside her had actually been chosen for Gryffindor.
Goyle and Vincent gaped in unison, their mountainlike bodies turning blankly toward the Gryffindor table, then back toward their petrified leader, their brains crashing completely.
The entire Slytherin table looked as though it had been hit by a Freezing Charm.
The older students' faces were so dark they could have dripped water, their gazes like poisoned daggers boring into that blond figure's back.
Whispers rose among them, not welcoming, but an angry, humiliated buzzing.
"Traitor."
"A disgrace to the Malfoy family."
"He actually went to Gryffindor?!"
After the dead silence, the Gryffindor table erupted.
"Merlin's pants!" Ron Weasley's shriek cracked as he grabbed Harry's arm beside him. "Harry! Did you hear that?! Malfoy?! With us?! Has that hat been clogged with troll snot?!"
Hermione Granger drew a sharp breath, her brows knitting tightly.
Her gaze was sharp as a blade, sweeping back and forth between Draco and the Sorting Hat as her brain analyzed every possibility at a mile a second: a mistake? A conspiracy? Or had the hat seen some deeply buried essence?
"Ladies and gentlemen!" George Weasley jumped straight onto the bench.
"Get down!" Percy snapped, to absolutely no effect.
"A historic moment! Welcome our newest, brightest, most unexpected... little lion!!!"
Fred immediately let out a piercing whistle, and a few older students eager to stir up trouble joined in, but more were still reeling from the shock, unsure whether to cheer or curse.
At the High Table, the silence was also broken, but in an entirely different way.
The hand in which Professor McGonagall held the parchment trembled almost imperceptibly.
Shock tore through her habitual sternness, but years of discipline swiftly pieced it back together.
She drew a deep breath and said in a voice clearer and more forceful than usual, with even a faint, barely perceptible tremor, "Go on, Mr. Malfoy! Take your seat with your house."
Professor Severus Snape's face went from sallow to ashen.
He stared fixedly at Draco, fury, the coldness of betrayal, and a trace of almost painful disbelief churning in the depths of his black eyes.
Then Snape abruptly looked away, as though one more glance would sully him.
The chill radiating from him made Professor Quirrell beside him shiver even harder.
Professor Flitwick sprang out of his chair with a swish and squeaked, "Merlin! This is truly... unprecedented!"
Professor Sprout wrung her hands anxiously, looking from Draco to the livid Snape before finally turning toward the end of the table.
There, Dumbledore slowly, gracefully began to clap.
His applause was not loud, but steady and firm, striking everyone's hearts like a kettledrum amid the gradually rising, chaotic clamor.
The blue eyes behind his half-moon spectacles gleamed with a deep, all-seeing light.
His gaze passed over Draco and turned toward empty space, as though he saw another wondrous intertwining of fate's threads, invisible to ordinary eyes.
Draco finally moved.
He rose from the stool and gently set the Sorting Hat back on the table.
The hat landed on the floor, its creases relaxing as though it had completed a work it was proud of, and lay there quietly.
At that moment, the sudden cry of "Gryffindor" split a crack through Hogwarts's history that no one could have predicted.
The feast had yet to begin, but everyone's appetite had already been thoroughly overturned by this astonishing "appetizer."
Draco walked toward the Gryffindor table.
Countless gazes followed him like searchlights along the way.
There was shock, anger, curiosity, disgust, and... a little inexplicable anticipation.
"Look at our new little friend," Fred said with a grin as he watched me approach. "He looks like he swallowed an Ice Mouse whole."
"What do you reckon he's thinking?" George chimed in. "Calculating when his dad will send an owl to carry him off?"
The other older Gryffindors kept talking too:
"Is he really a Malfoy?"
"What's he doing with us?"
"Snape must be going mad..."
Unlike the nonstop discussion among the Gryffindors, the buzzing whispers at the other three houses abruptly subsided into an intent, suffocating silence.
Everyone stopped what they were doing, their eyes glued to that pale-blond figure.
At the Slytherin table, there were already collective, icy sidelong looks and deliberate disregard.
From that moment on, the name "Draco Malfoy" would be silently struck from Slytherin's roll of honor, as though it had never existed.
Pansy never raised her head. She stared fixedly at the silver goblet before her, her fingers white from gripping it, her shoulders trembling slightly.
With utter silence and avoidance, she carried out the most decisive severance.
If Draco was no longer a Slytherin, then he was no longer her "Draco."
Goyle and Vincent were utterly stupefied, like two abandoned statues.
They sat in a corner of the Slytherin table, gazing blankly at Draco, unsure whether to cry or laugh.
He chose neither the back nor the edge.
Draco walked straight to the very front of the Gryffindor table, paused at the empty seat beside Harry, and then
sat down beside him, with just one empty seat between them.
Lavender nearly fainted with excitement, crying out in a trembling voice, "Did you see that?! Do you understand?!"
"Gryffindor!" she all but shrieked. "I knew it! I always thought he was different! That coldness is only his armor. There's something in his eyes that other Slytherins don't have... pain, and a suppressed light!"
"Think about it!" She grew more excited as she spoke. "In front of everyone, including those awful friends of his."
She glanced at the rigid Pansy in disgust.
"To be publicly pronounced a 'Gryffindor' in front of everyone! How much courage must that take! It's as good as tearing off his mask in public and declaring war on the entire world! Oh... it's so tragic, so romantic!"
"He's sitting there, all alone..."
She looked toward Draco's somewhat lonely figure at the Gryffindor table, her voice catching with a sob:
"Everyone's keeping away from him. Slytherin hates him, and our people don't understand him... he's like an exiled prince, bearing the whole world's misunderstanding and weight alone... this is more moving than any novel!"
All the Gryffindors looked at Lavender as though she were mad.
But George and Fred didn't care. They were immersed in their own world.
"Wow!" George gave a loud whistle. "Looks like our little lion doesn't just have an unusual coat. He's got some serious nerve, too! Sitting right next to 'the Chosen One'!"
"Order! Order!" Fred feigned solemnity. "A historic meeting is about to begin! The first close encounter between the 'golden boy' and the 'fallen prince'-with a universe between them! I bet one Galleon no one dares sit in that empty seat for the next ten minutes!"
"Never mind ten minutes," George added with a grin. "I reckon no one will sit there for the whole feast."
The candle flames in the Great Hall swayed gently in the night breeze, illuminating faces filled with complicated expressions.
At that moment, no one knew that amid everyone's shock and bewilderment, a new lion king had quietly been born.