Choice is a big part of life that sends us down one road or another based on which way we choose to go, and tends to shape our lives in a manner that we fully expected or might hope will justify the decisions we make. This sorting hat theory has been making the rounds for a while now since it’s something that had a huge impact on the Harry Potter books and movies considering that without the choices that were made, the story would have been very different. Consider the three friends that drove the story for eight movies and were the main characters the entire time. What if Harry, Hermione, and Ron had gone into different houses? Keep in mind that the sorting hat wanted to send Harry to Slytherin, but sent him to Gryffindor instead. What if he hadn’t asked the hat to do this? That makes sense for the other two as well, as Hermione is definitely better suited for the academic-driven Ravenclaw while Ron might have initially thrived in Hufflepuff. It sounds odd to say, but Harry’s decision to ask the hat to put him in Gryffindor with his friends sounds a little less special in light of this theory.
Instead, it sounds as though the hat would take suggestions from just about anyone since Ron was terrified just to sit with the hat on his head, as the hat had seen plenty of Ron’s siblings come and go over the years. The request from Ron could have been a knee-jerk reaction since he didn’t want to be set in a house where he didn’t know anyone. For Hermione, it could have been that she enjoyed Harry and Ron’s company, more the former than the latter, but still, her request wouldn’t have made as much sense considering her strict adherence to her academic career. It could have been that the hat took the qualities of the individual as was said and made the best guess, which means it saw something in Hermione that even she hadn’t realized was there.
The entirety of the Harry Potter franchise is a great exercise in what choice can bring about since even Tom Riddle had a choice, though he decided to strike back at the world in general and tried to erase the idea that muggles could coexist with magical folk. One has to wonder how the sorting hat reacted when it was sat atop Riddle’s head since the idea that it couldn’t sense something dark in Tom would have been hard to believe. But the choice is very easy to believe. Choice can be used in so many different ways that it’s hard to list them all, and there are so many different pathways that each choice we make can take us down that trying to map them all out is impossible since once people choose, the other pathways that might have existed become less important and are no longer the focus that people are given to deal with. The choice made with the sorting hat in The Philosopher’s Stone was advantageous since it was one of the only real ways that the story could have gone forward without seriously derailing things and thereby making it easier for Voldemort to have his way.
It’s interesting to think of what might have happened had Harry NOT made the choice for Gryffindor. Would the hat have selected Slytherin? Or would it have sensed Harry’s true nature and not the Horcrux? One has to remember that Dumbledore knew about the Horcrux, and had likely known for a very long time. Whether he knew about it before Harry came to Hogwarts is hard to say, but it’s very easy to think that he could have influenced the sorting hat to look past the Horcrux in order to seek out Harry’s actual worth rather than what the piece of Voldemort’s soul would have likely revealed. There are so many different factors to take into account with this story that it’s tough to think about where one choice or another would have taken each character and what would have become of them. But the fun thing about it is that fans are more than welcome to draw their own conclusions and make up their own stories.
Harry Potter has been a fan favorite franchise for many years now and between the books and the movies, there have been many upon many theories that only J.K. Rowling can really confirm or debunk. The choices that Harry, Hermione, and Ron made throughout the course of their adventures and time at Hogwarts helped shape them into the people they would become, and in time, Harry passed that idea down to his son. Whether the legacy will ever continue is hard to say, but it’s easy to say that the choices made will go a long way towards determining how the story will go.
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