system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Harry Potter] What's the point of the sorting hat if it puts you in the house you want anyway?

Like can't they just let the kids pick which house they want in a secret vote or something so they don't get peer pressured?

Also, how did the hat start talking? Like is it an actual wizard that was trapped in the hat, did Dumbledore create it himself or did he just find it already talking?
gpt
The hat doesn't put you in the house you personally want to be in, after all, Hermione had more of a preference for Ravenclaw before she was sorted. What it does do is look into your heart to see what kind of a person you are. Harry's desire to not be in Slytherin showed the hat that despite Harry's great potential to use the traits associated with Slytherin, he didn't want to be that kind of person. It was that selflessness of preferring to be a good person than a successful one that told the hat that he deserved to be part of Gryffindor.

As for how the hat started talking, the legend goes that when the founding wizards of Hogwarts decided to split the school into the houses, Godric Gryffindor enchanted his hat to do the sorting based on the criteria the founders set, and it sorted new students ever since.