Sorting ceremony

The Sorting ceremony is a yearly ritual performed at the begining of each school year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Its purpose is to assign new students to one of the four school Houses: Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, or Slytherin. The Sorting is held in the Great Hall before the start of term feast, after all students have arrived at school via the Hogwarts Express. The Sorting Hat is placed upon a stool at the head of the Great Hall, whereupon it sings a song of its own composition about the four founders of Hogwarts and the qualities sought by their respective Houses. The Sorting Hat also can give warnings to the students whenever it detects a need. (It can be presumed that the Hat gets it's information from Albus Dumbledore's office, as it lives there.) New students are then summoned to the stool one by one in alphabetical order by last name, where they sit upon the stool and don the Hat. Whilst the Deputy Head reads names from a piece of parchment from there they are sorted into the Houses just like Harry Potter in the picture below:



The decision of the Sorting Hat is generally considered to be final, although its decision can be influenced somewhat by the desires of the wearer. This last is not widely known. When Harry Potter was being sorted in his first year, the hat told him he would do well in Slytherin, but Harry asked to be placed elsewhere. Harry also told his son Albus Potter about the hat's ability to take the wearers request into consideration.

The Sorting Hat's introductory song changes every year, presumably because the Hat has nothing to do between Sortings except compose a new one. Most of the time it explains the qualities of each house in it's song, but some times it warns Hogwart's students.