Warning: This post contains Pottermore spoilers.
You heard/read me right. I overheard from a student from my Charms class that hatstalls in Pottermore are actually possible! What's more is that, the lucky few who gets to be hatstalls have the privilege to choose which house they prefer. Who's jealous?
Here's a screenshot of how hatstalls look like in Pottermore:
If you're wondering what a hatstall is, it's because the term was never introduced in the books. But Pottermore included it in one of the "New from JK Rowling" exclusive content. Put it simply, a hatstall is someone who takes a very longtime to get sorted by the Sorting Hat.
To be more precise, this is how Pottermore explains it:
An archaic Hogwarts term for any new student whose Sorting takes longer than five minutes. This is an exceptionally long time for the Sorting Hat to deliberate, and occurs rarely, perhaps once every fifty years.
Of Harry Potter’s contemporaries, Hermione Granger and Neville Longbottom came closest to being Hatstalls. The Sorting Hat spent nearly four minutes trying to decide whether it should place Hermione in Ravenclaw or Gryffindor. In Neville's case, the Hat was determined to place him in Gryffindor: Neville, intimidated by that house’s reputation for bravery, requested a placing in Hufflepuff. Their silent wrangling resulted in triumph for the Hat.
