a/n: First Harry Potter fanfic, minor DH spoilers. Written at one am under the heavy unfluence of Faulkner. I am sorry. (Feedback on ending muchly desired.)

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"Potter, James!"

Sorting is one of the things, along with teaching, that Minerva McGonagall refused to give up when she was made Acting Headmistress. It isn't that she feels as though it requires a certain skill level to perform; after all, one simply reads names and places a hat on the heads of a several dozen children. She feels it is her place, here, at the front of the Great Hall, guiding those children to the people who will become their family. She never attaches any import to those decisions, though she always hopes for another Gryffindor; no matter how much she complains about them, she loves them.

Only the Sorting of Harry Potter held any sort of anxiety for her; Minerva can recall with blinding intensity the tension in her muscles, the fine lines drawn around her mouth as she waited for the Hat to announce its decision. It was only years later, when Harry casually informed her, over tea, that he had almost been a Slytherin, that she understood the length of the wait. Others, too, have gained importance in reverse; Tom Riddle's her seventh year, Severus Snape and Peter Pettigrew, two traitors in different colors, of those golden years before the wars.

And now she is placing the Hat on the head of a boy the spitting image of his grandfather, the poster child of those halcyon days, with his unruly hair and crooked glass and his unabashed brilliance. She doesn't hold her breath at this one, because she can tell by looking at him, James Potter, (again, reborn, given the chances he should have had first time around now stop this train of thought at once) that he is a Gryffindor to the core.

"Gryffindor!" the Hat concurs.

Minerva scans the Gryffindor table as the applause erupts, her eyes scanning over a mob of Weasleys and Teddy's color-shifting hair, but she cannot find what she is looking for. She knows this is because she is looking for what isn't there.

She is looking for Sirius Black, waving and cheering with all of his pureblood elegance despite the tension running through him, looking for Remus Lupin smiling and clapping politely from Sirius' shadow, even for Peter Pettigrew, as loud as any of them but not yet realizing that James hasn't noticed him, only Sirius and, beyond him, a redheaded girl with wide, green eyes.

As a quick shake of her head clears away the memory-fog, she feels a tap on her shoulder. Twisting around, Minerva readies her most pointed teacher glare only to find empty air and the sound of young men's laughter.

"I'm sorry, Professor" a third voice says, trying to wrap his mirth in apology, "I tried to dissuade them, but you know how they are."

Her glare gives way to an honest smile, and the laughter fades to a warm silence stretching between her and beyond. "Yes, I do." She turns back towards the current students, as she feels behind her the slowly fading chuckles and whispers of half-remembered exploits and, above all, home and Minerva knows why she is here, still, after everything, will always be here when it is said and done. Hogwarts is her home, too.

"Quigley, Ewan!"