Disclaimer: I wish I was J.K. Rowling. But I'm not. So I own none of these guys and I'm not making money off of them either.

A/N: Give me reviews.

Chapter 1

"I wonder what Dumbledore is going to say," Hermione fretted. Harry looked up at the table where all the teachers were sitting. Dumbledore was talking to Snape, who was arguing very heatedly with the Headmaster.

"Who cares?" Ron snorted. "If it is getting us out of potions he could be telling us that Ginny's dead, for all I care."

"Thanks, Ron," Ginny said, suddenly appearing on the other side of him. "Hi Harry."

"Hi Ginny," Harry greeted her absently. He knew that Ron was joking when he was talking about Ginny being dead, but he wished he hadn't said it. Losing people like that wasn't something to joke about.

Sirius. He thought with a pang. Dumbledore stood up and Harry pushed those thoughts away. He didn't need to show any kind of weakness in the Great Hall, especially in front of the Slytherins. Especially in front of Draco.

Dumbledore regally approached the podium and an instant hush fell over the great hall. Like a wave crashing over a shore instantaneously. Even the Slytherins quieted as his aged hands were lifted and his mouth opened.

"Welcome students," He said very anticlimactically. Harry withheld a sigh. He sensed that Dumbledore was good, but sometimes he was a bit much, and not in a good way. He was the "much" that let small details that cost people lives slip through the cracks. "I have been talking with the rest of my colleagues and a brilliant thought appeared to me. People change, students," He sent a sweeping gaze through the audience. "And I feel like perhaps we have sorted everyone a bit early."

"What?" Hermione whispered in shock. Harry and Ron turned to look at her, expecting her to fill them in like she usually did when they were a step behind her. She just shook her head and returned her gaze back to Dumbledore.

"That is why, students, I am starting a new tradition in which students will be resorted every three years," Dumbledore announced calmly. He continued on, oblivious to the cries of protest that erupted throughout the hall. "That means that all children in year two, one, four, five, and seven are exempt from this rule, as to maintain the every three year schedule."

He must have continued talking but Harry couldn't hear a thing. He was closing in on himself until all noise around him disappeared. He knew that he was going to be put into Slytherin this time. If the hat thought he was good at sneaking around before he came to Hogwarts then there was no way it would let his new and improved ability of sneaking and lying go without correctly sorting him.

And it wasn't really the fact of being a Slytherin that worried him. He understood that Slytherin was only as bad as people made it out to be. No one really gave Slytherins a chance, and Harry, dealing with the same thing with Snape, was loath to do that same thing. But instead it was the fact that Gryffindors were used to Harry's little idiosyncrasies. They knew he liked to shower on his own, that if he woke up in the middle of the night only Ron was allowed to talk to him and that was only short conversations consisting of Ron checking to make sure he was okay and Harry responding in an affirmative. They knew if Harry had his curtains drawn he was not to be disturbed under any circumstances unless somebody was dying.

Also, there was the fact that Harry simply was not safe there. He knew that not all Slytherins were Deatheaters but that didn't mean that some of them were. And he couldn't really count on Snape to make sure he was safe.

"Harry mate, you with us?" Ron jostled him in the side and Harry felt as if he had been punched. What if, since he was a Slytherin, Ron and Hermione hated him? He was pretty sure that Hermione wouldn't mind, but he didn't want to make her choose between him and Ron again. And Ron had always made his distaste for Slytherins clear.

"Yeah, just thinking," Harry answered, getting the feeling that he was a second too late by the looks they gave him. He turned and watched as the third years went through, sitting down on the same stool and accepting the hat on their heads with much more grace than they did the first time around, his stomach a mess of nerves that made it impossible to consider speaking to his friends, even if it was the last time they would talk to him.

Finally after a torturous eternity Harry was called up. On the walk up he could almost convince himself that he was just getting himself worked up for nothing, that the hat would announce that he was a Gryffindor through and through. Almost.

As McGonagall placed the hat on his head it slid down his forehead, covering his eyes and making him wonder who exactly the hat was designed for if it still didn't fit him.

Ah, you again? The hat whispered in his ear. It felt eerily similar to the way Voldemort looked through his head and he suppressed a shiver as a chill ran up and down his spine.

"Just get it over with," Harry whispered. The hat sighed, the sound resounding through Harry's skull and he felt the cloth shift as the hat opened its mouth. Harry closed his eyes and mouthed the words with the hat.

"SLYTHERIN!"