The only explanation I can come up with is that he belonged nowhere else just as much , if not more than Gryffindor . It ' s indisputable that he was a complete coward , but he was as dumb as he was weak so he had no place in Ravenclaw . He didn ' t fit the profile of a Hufflepuff at all , given how disloyal and selfserving of a person he was . Slytherin is the only house you could potentially argue for , because he would always choose to save his own skin when it came down to it Phineas Black described this as a Slytherin quality in OoP . I don ' t think he belongs there personally , because he has no ambition beyond being someone ' s footstool and he ' s only cunning when his survival depends on it , whereas Slytherins are just naturally cunning people . The Sorting Hat was just so flabbergasted at what he was being asked to sort that he himself went and picked out of a hat to decide for Peter . Sorry Gryffindor House .