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When The Hat Screamed
The final, ragged breath of the wizarding war was not a triumphant roar, but a confused, collective gasp. It ended in the Great Hall of Hogwarts, a place already scarred by death, now destined to be scarred by the sheer, baffling absurdity of how it all concluded.
Voldemort, his serpentine face contorted in a fury that had burned for decades, had Harry Potter cornered. The Boy Who Lived was exhausted, his magic a flickering ember. Beside him, Neville Longbottom stood, trembling but resolute, the Sword of Gryffindor held in a white-knuckled grip. And from the shadows behind the Dark Lord, a third figure moved, her face a mask of grim determination.
It happened all at once, a perfect storm of chaotic, uncoordinated heroism.
First, Neville, seeing Nagini coil to strike, let out a cry that was part terror, part defiance. He swung the ancient blade not with the grace of a hero, but with the desperate force of a boy avenging his parents. The sword, gleaming with goblin-forged magic, sheared through the air and took the great snake’s head clean off. The body thrashed once, spattering dark blood across the flagstones, and then was still.
Second, Voldemort, his connection to one of his soul anchors severed in that exact moment, felt a psychic snap of pain. He staggered, disorientated his red eyes widening. He saw Harry, the final vessel for a piece of his soul, and with a guttural scream of pure hatred, he cast the curse that had defined him. "Avada Kedavra!"
The bolt of sickly green light shot forth. But Harry, reeling from the phantom pain of the Horcrux's destruction, stumbled forward at the same instant. The curse, meant for his heart, struck him directly in the forehead. It wasn't a killing blow. Instead, it was a cosmic paradox. The curse that had created the scar met the scar itself, and in a blinding flash of golden light, the last fragment of Voldemort's soul was incinerated. Harry screamed, a sound of pure agony, as the lightning-bolt scar on his forehead burned itself away, leaving behind only raw, seared flesh. He collapsed, his senses shattered, the world a blur of light and pain.
Third, Hermione Potter, she had insisted on the name after their frantic, secret marriage in a Muggle registry office in Gretna Green, a defiant act of hope in the midst of the hunt, saw her husband fall. She saw Voldemort, momentarily stunned by the backlash of his own failed magic, his head turned towards Harry's crumpled form. She saw her chance.
She didn't reach for her wand. She didn't have a spell ready. Instead, she lunged from behind the Dark Lord, her arm swinging a twenty-inch cast-iron frying pan she’d snatched from a house-elf's abandoned cleaning cart earlier. It was a heavy, brutally utilitarian piece of Muggle hardware.
There was a sickening, hollow THWACK as the pan connected with the back of Voldemort’s skull. It was not a magical blow. It was not elegant. It was brutally, magnificently physical. The Dark Lord’s eyes rolled back in his head and he pitched forward, his face smacking the stone floor with a wet smack.
But Hermione wasn't done. The years of fear, of watching friends die, of the constant, gnawing terror, all of it came roaring out of her in a primal scream. She stood over the fallen Dark Lord, the pan held high, and brought it down again. And again. And again.
THWACK. CRUNCH. THWACK.
The sound was horrific, a rhythmic, brutal percussion of metal on bone and flesh. She was a whirlwind of righteous fury, beating the unconscious, headless Dark Lord into a bloody, unrecognizable mass. Bellatrix’s laughter, Cedric’s body, Sirius falling through the veil—it all fueled every swing.
The few Death Eaters still standing stared in utter disbelief. Their master, the greatest wizard of all time, was being bludgeoned to death by a Muggle-born girl with kitchenware. It was so profoundly, cosmically wrong that their will to fight simply evaporated.
It was Harry who finally stopped her. He’d pushed himself to his hands and knees, his head ringing, his scar a throbbing, empty space. He crawled to her and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her back. "Hermione, stop," he rasped, his voice raw. "It's over. He's gone."
She fought him for a moment, still screaming, the pan raised for another blow. Then, the strength seemed to drain out of her all at once. The frying pan clattered to the floor. She collapsed against Harry, sobbing violently.
The silence that followed was deafening. Neville stood by the snake's corpse, the sword dripping. Ron Weasley slowly lowered his wand, his mouth agape. Kingsley Shacklebolt just stared, his usual stoic composure completely shattered.
And there, on the floor of the Great Hall, lay the remains of Lord Voldemort. Not vanquished by a noble, poetic duel of legendary magic. Not destroyed by a complex, ancient ritual. But killed by a snake, a backfired curse, and a furious housewife with a frying pan.
Later, when the historians wrote their accounts, they would call it a "unique convergence of events." They would speak of "sheer, battlefield coincidence." But those who were there knew the truth. The war didn't end with a bang or a whimper. It ended with a thwack. And somehow, that felt exactly right.
~~*~~
Two years later, Hogwarts was a place of healing and ghosts, both literal and figurative. The war had stolen a year from so many, and now they were back to reclaim it. The castle halls, once echoing with the shouts of battle, now hummed with the quieter sounds of lectures and late-night study sessions. Most of the returning eighth-years had opted for private tutoring, a fast track to their N.E.W.T.s away from the prying eyes of the younger students. But not all of them.
Harry, Hermione, Ron, Neville, and Luna, along with a handful of others who had been on the front lines, had made a different choice. They had insisted on rejoining their actual year mates. It was a matter of principle, a statement that they were not above their peers, that they had not earned special privileges through their suffering. Headmistress McGonagall, her eyes holding a mixture of pride and sorrow, had welcomed them all back personally.
The start-of-term feast was a somber affair. The Great Hall was decorated not for a celebration, but for a remembrance. When McGonagall stood to read the roll of the lost, a hush so profound fell over the hall that you could hear the torches crackling. Each name she read was a stone dropped into the still water of their collective memory, the ripples washing over every face, young and old.
In the staff section, Professor Flitwick was practically vibrating with anticipation. He had a small, secret bit of excitement that was helping him through the heavy emotion of the evening. An obscure Hogwarts regulation, one that hadn't been invoked in over a century, stated that any student absent from the castle for a year and a day must be Sorted again upon their return. It was a formality, really, a chance for the students to re-affirm their house identity after the trauma of the war.
Flitwick had been studying the list of returnees for weeks, mentally tallying the potential house points. He was a Ravenclaw through and through, and the prospect of adding the brightest witch of her age to his house's roster was almost too much to bear. Hermione Granger-Potter, he thought, a tiny smile playing on his lips. There is simply no question. She'll be a magnificent addition to the Ravenclaw tower. Her O.W.L. scores alone would have secured it, even without her... practical experience. He had also noted Daphne Greengrass and her younger sister Astoria on the list. Both were known for their sharp minds and quiet ambition. A good night for the eagles, indeed.
The Sorting of the first-years was a cheerful, familiar distraction. Then came the returnees. The staff had decided to Sort them last, in order of their official honors, and then alphabetically. The first to be called was Astoria Greengrass, newly awarded the Order of Merlin, First Class for her work in the Hogwarts infirmary during the final battle. The Hat barely touched her hair before shouting, "GRYFFINDOR!" Flitwick's smile faltered. A surprise, but a fine house, of course.
Her sister, Daphne, followed. She had received the same honor for her role in evacuating younger students from the path of the Carrows. The Hat took a moment longer on her, but the result was the same. "GRYFFINDOR!" Flitwick sighed softly. Two for the lions. Ah, well.
Neville Longbottom, hero of the snake, was next. He walked to the stool with a new confidence, his shoulders back. The Hat was placed on his head, and it bellowed with what sounded like genuine delight, "GRYFFINDOR! OF COURSE!" The table of red and gold erupted in cheers that shook the hall. Flitwick clapped politely, his hopes now pinned entirely on the main event.
"And now," McGonagall announced, her voice steady, "we will welcome back Mr. Harry Potter and Mrs. Hermione Potter. As per school tradition, married students are Sorted together."
A murmur went through the hall. They walked up arm in arm, not as children, but as veterans. They sat on the slightly larger bench provided for them, and the Sorting Hat was lowered over both their heads at once. The moments stretched long, filled with a tense silence. The entire school leaned forward.
Then, the seam of the Hat ripped open. It didn't speak. It didn't shout. It let out a sound that was half-shriek, half-gasp, a voice filled with the kind of existential dread usually reserved for impending apocalypses.
"OH FUCK NO! SLYTHERIN! MERLIN HELP THE SCHOOL!"
The Hat screamed the last part, its brim shaking violently on their heads. For a full ten seconds, the Great Hall was utterly, completely silent. You could have heard a ghost drop a pin. Then, chaos erupted.
The scream of the Sorting Hat echoed in the sudden, dead silence of the Great Hall. It was a sound so fundamentally wrong, so utterly universe-shattering, that it seemed to suck all the air out of the room. Then, from the center of the storm, a reaction that was just as shocking.
Harry and Hermione, the two people who should have been most horrified, looked at each other. A slow, identical smirk spread across their faces. It was a look of shared, private amusement, the kind that only two people who had been through hell together could possibly understand. The smirks bloomed into full-blown grins. They turned as one to the Ron Weasley, his face a perfect picture of stunned awe, slowly raised his thumb and gave them a decisive, nod of approval.
That small gesture was the spark that lit the powder keg.
The Great Hall exploded.
It wasn't the organized cheering of a normal Sorting. It was a cacophony of disbelief. The Slytherin table was a tableau of open-mouthed horror, some students actually recoiling from the green and silver banners as if they were on fire. The Ravenclaws were staring, their minds racing, trying to compute the impossible equation. The Hufflepuffs looked bewildered and concerned. And the Gryffindors? They were going mad. A wave of noise built from their table,a mix of laughter, roars of support, and incredulous shouts, that swept through the rest of the school like a tidal wave.
"ORDER!" McGonagall's voice, magically amplified, cut through the din like a whip crack. She was on her feet, her face a thundercloud of fury and profound bewilderment. "SILENCE! I WILL HAVE ORDER IN THIS HALL AT ONCE!" She slammed her hand on the Headmistress's table, the crack of wood on wood making everyone jump. But even her formidable presence was fighting a losing battle against the sheer, unadulterated chaos.
The second thing that halted the proceedings was quieter, but no less dramatic.
Professor Flitwick had not moved a single inch since the Hat's declaration. He remained perched on his stack of books, his face frozen in a mask of cheerful anticipation that had curdled into a rictus of pure, unadulterated shock. His eyes were wide, his mouth slightly agape, and a faint buzzing sound seemed to be coming from him.
Madam Pomfrey, ever vigilant, noticed first. She excused herself from the staff table and made her way over to the Charms Master. "Filius?" she asked gently, placing a hand on his small shoulder. "Are you alright, my dear?"
The touch seemed to break the spell. Flitwick's entire body deflated. He slumped forward, his face falling into his hands. A small, heartbreaking sob escaped him.
"Oh, Poppy," he wailed, his voice muffled by his fingers. "The cup... we've lost the cup!"
Pomfrey patted his back soothingly, completely bewildered. "The cup, Filius? What cup?"
"The House Cup!" he cried, looking up at her, his face streaked with tears. "It's gone! We had it! We were going to have it for the next fifty years! Her mind! Her O.W.L.s! The sheer, unadulterated intellectual power! And now... now she's a... a Slytherin!" He gestured wildly towards the green and silver table, as if pointing at a plague pit. "They'll win everything! Quidditch, the Gobstones tournament... everything! All that potential... wasted on ambition and... and... snakes!" He dissolved into another fit of weeping, lamenting not just a student, but the entire future of the Ravenclaw house's academic dominance.
By the time Pomfrey had managed to conjure a calming draught and coax the distraught part-goblin into a chair, McGonagall had finally wrestled a semblance of order back into the hall. She fixed Harry and Hermione with a glare that could have curdled milk. The Hat was still on their heads, looking rather limp and traumatized.
Harry and Hermione finally stood, the Hat sliding off their heads and into McGonagall's waiting hand. They walked, still grinning, towards the silent, gaping sea of green and silver. As they passed the staff table, Flitwick let out one last, mournful moan.
"My cup..."