Harry Potter: Start Again System.

So that's what it was. The four Founders…Harry almost drooled at the thought of the amount of knowledge that the hat held. Ten minutes with it would probably boost his own intelligence by a metric ton.

Professor McGonagall now stepped forward holding a long roll of parchment.

"When I call your name, you will put on the hat and sit on the stool to be sorted," she said. "Abbott, Hannah!"

A pink-faced girl with blonde pigtails stumbled out of line, put on the hat, which fell right down over her eyes, and sat down. A moment's pause -

"HUFFLEPUFF!" shouted the hat.

The table on the right cheered and clapped as Hannah went to sit down at the Hufflepuff table. Harry saw the ghost of the Fat Friar waving merrily at her.

"Bones, Susan!"

"HUFFLEPUFF!" shouted the hat again, and Susan scuttled off to sit next to Hannah.

"Boot, Terry!"

"RAVENCLAW!"

And so it went. Sometimes, Harry noticed, the hat shouted out the house at once, but at other times it took a little while to decide. 'Finnigan, Seamus,' the sandy-haired boy who had stood next to Harry sat on the stool for almost a whole minute before the hat declared him a Gryffindor.

"Granger, Hermione!"

Hermione almost ran to the stool and jammed the hat on her head. Harry winced in sympathy for the hat when he saw a new tear appear on the brim.

"RAVENCLAW!" shouted the hat.

When Neville was called, he fell over on his way to the stool. The hat took a long time to decide with him. When it finally shouted, "GRYFFINDOR," Neville ran off still wearing it, and had to jog back amid gales of laughter to hand it over to "MacDougal, Morag."

Malfoy swaggered forward when his name was called and got his wish at once; the hat had barely touched his head when it screamed, "SLYTHERIN!"

Malfoy went to join his friends Crabbe and Goyle, looking quite pleased with himself. Harry still was a bit disturbed by the boy's description, but he hoped he could find out more as the school year went along.

There weren't many people left now. "Moon" "Nott" "Parkinson" then a pair of twin girls, "Patil" and "Patil" then "Perks, Sally-Anne" and then, at last - "Potter, Harry!"

As Harry stepped forward, whispers suddenly broke out like a pit full of snakes all over the hall.

"Potter, did she say?"

"The Harry Potter?"

The last thing Harry saw before the hat dropped over his head was the hall full of people craning to get a good look at him. Next second, the hall in front of him disappeared as he landed with a thud on what was looking like an entirely white surface. From in front of him, a dry voice spoke.

"Well. This is unexpected."

Harry Potter knew he wasn't good at a lot of things. He wasn't any good at cooking, despite his aunt's unending attempts at forcing him to be so. His steaks were so chewy they could have been mistaken for a Star Wars character and he had once put enough ginger into a macaroni to turn it into a Weasley. He also knew that he was rubbish at writing, mostly due to his terrible handwriting and his god awful glasses. But one thing Harry knew for sure that he was quite good at was keeping his cool when he was thrown into random as all heavens situations.

So when he was somehow transported out of the Great Hall and into a massive white room with four very dead people in it, Harry stayed firm and didn't panic.

There was no shrill screaming or tossing fireballs in the general direction of those people…none at all.

"What the bloody hell am I doing in this place?" Harry asked after he had finally calmed down and taken a seat in one of the all-white chairs in the room. The chairs mirrored nearly everything in the room. White walls, white furnishing, white chandelier, white table, white everything.

Even the four people sitting in front of him were white.

"Language!" The plump lady in yellow said.

Harry flatly stared at the woman, before ignoring her remark. He'd had more than enough weird situations being thrown at him to warrant a few curse words. "Now please tell me what I am doing with…you all…I can't even believe this. The Founders! Didn't you all die a million and a half years ago?"

"A thousand," the man in green corrected him. "And how did you know who we are?"

Harry raised an eyebrow. "You are quite literally wearing red, yellow, green and blue, the House colors of Hogwarts, and I was transported here when I put on the sorting hat said to be imbued with the founder's intelligence. Not exactly a Sherlockian deduction to make…"

"I suppose not...not for a Ravenclaw at least," Rowena Ravenclaw, the lady in blue spoke with a smirk on her face before answering his question, "The Sorting hat uses Legilimency, more specifically Salazar's skill of Legilimency, to show us the to-be-sorted child's thoughts for us to assess and sort them into our houses. His skill at the arts is so great that most children don't even notice the probe. Yet for some reason…it just bounced off your consciousness, reflecting itself back and turning it on its own user."

Harry's eyes widened with shock, "Wait a minute, are you saying what I think you're saying?"

Godric Gryffindor nodded, "You're in the consciousness of the Sorting Hat. Its very mind, if you will imagine it so."

Harry quickly remembered what he was thinking about this magical artifact holding so much knowledge before one of his earlier thoughts flew back into his head.

"Bloody Hell! You guys have to teach me everything! There is so much I have to ask about magic. And Hogwarts! I mean, you're the founders!" he rambled nervously, hoping to all the heavens above that he hadn't alienated these people.

"Calm down child," Helga Hufflepuff stopped his ramblings, sharing an amused look with Ravenclaw, "I'm afraid we can't give you any knowledge, nor can we teach you our arts. The only reason our souls were allowed to return to this school was that we agreed to bind ourselves to the ancient rules of non-interference. We can't interact directly with any living person, nor can we influence the living in any way at all. You coming here is an… anomaly." She said before she turned and smirked at Salazar Slytherin, "Now why don't you tell us how you have such powerful shields on your minds. Salazar has been trying to break through them since you got here. I do think he'll pop a vein if he doesn't figure it out soon."

"No."

Slytherin raised an eye, "Excuse me?"

"I said no. I won't explain how I do it," Harry replied, getting more and more confident with every word, "I have read of the ancient laws you speak of. They are prominent features of Greek mythology. They mention a barter system. A give or take of sorts between those bound by the laws and those not. A reward system...So I will tell you what I'm doing, but in exchange I want you to give me a reward. Your knowledge."

They were all silenced for a bit, and then Gryffindor let out a full-bellied guffaw. "Looks like this one is headed for your house Salazar," He spoke between bouts of choking laughter.

Helga Hufflepuff spoke, ignoring the chortling bearded man beside him, "Yes. There is such a system Mr. Potter. And yes. We will grant you a reward for telling us how you blocked us. Now please, do reveal your secret."

And Harry, after extracting a promise of confidence, told them about his powers.

"Extraordinary" muttered Slytherin, stroking his goatee while Gryffindor had Harry describe all the mechanics of his video game. Hufflepuff almost had an aneurysm when he told them of the werewolf, and Ravenclaw only watched with glinting eyes.

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