Yes! Let’s say Hagrid got Harry a sundae and Harry, awestruck, lingered over it–- they were late to Madame Malkin’s, passing Draco on his way out.
Let’s say Harry got a little earlier to the station and didn’t meet the Weasleys there. A big blond Hufflepuff with broad shoulders and a bright future showed him how to get through the platform wall–- Cedric Diggory was on route for being a prefect, and things like this were why.
Because what if Harry had gotten his House opinions from the song, instead of age-old conflict? Slytherin, where you’ll make real friends. And this boy with nothing, this boy who latched onto the first kindnesses he’d ever seen, he thought yes that is what I want.
Slytherins–- this is a group who laughs when Neville falls off a broom and breaks his wrist. And what if we had Harry there, who had always been the one laughed at, who had a nice thirst to prove himself, who had green trim on his robes instead of red? This Harry still stepped out in front of Malfoy’s best sneer and demanded Neville’s Rememberall back–- though he got a detention from it, not a Seekership.
When kids in the Slytherin Common Room tossed jeers at the pudgy feet of Millicent Bulstrode, Harry rose up to do something about it. This Harry, now one of Snape’s own, got fewer House points lost but many more detentions– it had never been the colors on his hem that Severus hated.
He got more bruises. Harry had barely even learned Wingardium Leviosa, but he was little, years of bullying under his skin, and he knew how to get up in people’s faces, snap out insults, and kick their shins when it got bad.
This was not wishing Harry an easy path. This was not wishing the boy a warm House. This was Harry, three weeks in, sleep deprived and considering running away and going back to Privet Drive. This was Harry in the back of Potions class, blank-faced under Snape’s disdain the way he’d perfected under the Dursleys’s torments.
Slytherin was the house of cunning, of ambition–- but if you know better, the Hat will let you ask for something else. If you know better–- so Slytherin’s dungeon was filled with the kids who thought blood purist sounded like home, with the children who didn’t know better–-with children. The dungeon was filled with children.
When Quirrell shouted “troll in the dungeons, thought you ought to know,” and Harry overheard that there was a girl in the bathroom crying, he still ran off to make sure she got out okay. He hesitated first, at the back of the little pack of Slytherin first years (at the back so that no one could get behind him)– he hesitated. And Millicent Bulstrode, who could never quite keep her tummy tucked in enough, could never brush all the cat hair off her robes, never quite keep her temper in check, hesitated, too.
Harry did not ask Millicent to come with him; this was not a boy who asked for things. When he had asked for things, Dudley had laughed, Petunia had scowled, and Vernon had said, “no,” or just kept reading the newspaper like he hadn’t heard anything at all. But when Harry went, Millicent bunched up her robes in her hands and followed.
A troll got a wand up his nose. When Harry shouted for help, for the first time someone answered him. When Hermione picked her way out of the rubble, she stared at them–- the grinning messy-haired boy and the scowling fat girl who was stubbornly considering either smiling back or kicking a bit of dirty water onto the reckless little hellion’s robes.
Hermione stared–- the green on their robes. She was eleven years old. The kids at her old Muggle school had called her ugly, know-it-all, pest–- but here she had already been called Mudblood by upper years twice her size, in green-trimmed robes just like these. It rang differently, that word, than smartypants ever had. It was hissed, and it echoed out and further out, past the school yards and high castle walls.
But Harry stumbled over a troll’s ankles and through hissing streams of water from broken pipes to make sure she was okay, hands dirty, wand disgustingly snotted, his hair its normal silly mess. Millicent refused to wade any deeper through the gathering pools of cold water, but when Hermione opened her mouth to lie about hunting down the mountain troll Millicent snorted and cut her off.
McGonagall stared at the streaming pipes, Potter’s snotty wand, a Slytherin girl stopping a Gryffindor from lying to protect her–- she gave a small pinched sigh, a headache pounding in her ears that was as deep and throbbing as the one she’d gotten the first time she realized what trouble those Weasley twins were going to be. She didn’t take or give any House points, just sent them off to their respective dormitories and then went to make herself a hot cup of tea with lemon.
Hermione reached out best through books sometimes–- she snuck out of her dormitory one night, breath held tight, chin held high, and tiptoed into the Restricted Section. She owed a debt, and that was more important than even rules, even expulsion.
She read late into the night, quiet, and napped rebelliously through History of Magic (she had made her own eight-volume replacement history course with Madame Pince’s help).
When Hermione thought she knew what she needed, she stole all of Harry’s lunch hours for a week and taught him how to cast lasting shield spells that wouldn’t cave even to the top of the seventh year’s class, even in a House known for its fondness for curses. When Harry finally mastered her shield spells and a pretty handful of boobytrap jinxes, he put them up around his four poster and slept easily for the first time since he’d arrived at Hogwarts.
Slytherin was the house where you’ll make true friends. The next time Harry went after one of his housemates, who was bullying a Ravenclaw in the back aisles of the Library, Millicent dragged him up to Madame Pomfrey after, made his excuses for him, and finished up the last of his Potions essay so Snape would have nothing to tut about. When a Death Eaters’ daughter sent a curse at the back of Harry’s head, Hermione muttered the Anti-Jinx under her breath from across the Great Hall. When Millicent went home for Christmas, Harry fed her cat every morning and evening and praised every power he knew for the existence of magical catboxes.
