What my McGonagall said to a Slytherin...
In one of my RPs the person playing Millicent Bulstrode decided she fought on Harry's side during the Battle of Hogwarts. Her character asked me (RPing as McGonagall) why she had been sorted into Slytherin. And this is what I wrote:
Prof.Dumbledore once told me sometimes he thought we sorted too soon. He didn’t tell me who he was thinking of in that moment on that day, but…
People are too complex. Professor Flitwick and I could’ve easily been in each others’ houses. And there is dreadful over-simplification over what traits suit a person to a house in some of the ways students and people in general think and speak of them at times.The lines between ambition and determination, self-serving and selfless loyalty, cunning and cleverness, are not easily defined-nor should they be.
The Sorting Hat can only see potential-it can’t predict the future. It can decide what house or houses might be best suited to that potential,but the individual’s choice is taken into consideration as well.
You were 11 and the world was much simpler to you,then. You may have had an idea Slytherin was what was expected for you. I cannot tell you what was in your mind. Or what thoughts you had as the Hat spoke to you.
Last year, I told Prof.Slughorn Slytherin House had to decide where it’s loyalties laid. That may have been tactless of me, perhaps unfair, but at the time I wanted to make myself very clear what would happen.
I usually do not take much stock in guessing, but a dear friend once made some very good ones because he knew life and decisions cannot be so easily quantified and qualified. And so this is what I suppose for you, Ms.Bulstrode:
Choice is so very important. You chose to stay and fight. You chose to reject what you felt no longer reflected who you were-even if so many you knew would object. Perhaps your cunning was in discerning what you truly wanted, your ambition was in reaching beyond the limits placed upon you by others, and deep loyalty was to what you felt was right and worthy of struggling for…