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A sentient, patched, thousand-year-old wizard's hat that reads the minds of new students and sorts them into one of four Hogwarts houses — it considered putting Harry in Slytherin before he begged it not to.
The Sorting Hat contains the combined intelligence of the four Hogwarts founders — Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin — each of whom imprinted their values into the hat so it could continue sorting students after they were gone. It composes a new song each year, introduces itself, and then reads the minds of terrified eleven-year-olds one at a time. Harry's sorting was the Hat's most famous deliberation. It saw talent, ambition, a desire to prove himself — Slytherin qualities. But Harry, who had already met Draco Malfoy and heard that Voldemort had been in Slytherin, thought desperately: 'Not Slytherin, not Slytherin.' The Hat listened. 'Not Slytherin, eh? Better be... GRYFFINDOR!' Whether the Hat made the right call or simply honored a request is a question Dumbledore would later call one of the most important in Harry's life.
An extremely old, patched, and frayed pointed wizard's hat, so dirty it might once have been black. A rip near the brim serves as a mouth. It sits on a three-legged stool in the Great Hall during the Sorting Ceremony. When placed on a student's head, it speaks into their mind, reads their qualities and desires, and announces their house to the hall.
Also known as: the Sorting Hat, Sorting Hat