Minerva McGonagall did not encourage visitors at this time of the year. It was, in fact, traditional for the staff to give the Heads of House a wide berth while they dealt with the difficulties their students inevitably brought back from the summer recess. So, while she left her office door open as a common courtesy, she expected everyone else to have the common decency not to enter.

Severus Snape, who ought to have known better, threw a scroll down onto Minerva's already burdened desk with what Minerva considered an overly dramatic gesture. Albus must have decided to let things sort themselves out, then, and Severus... was not a patient man. She sniffed, then pushed her glasses up her nose to peer at the Potions Master.

"It's Potter." Of course it was. "I want him out of my House."

"Re-sorted? Severus, I do think that's a little extreme." Minerva felt a queer sense of triumph: he had said it first, and she got to be the sensible one.

"It is not unprecedented for the Sorting Hat to be wrong. There were two cases -"

"One of those was a possession, Severus." The relevant citations in Hogwarts: A History (Unabridged) came to four sentences in all - not much of a precedent.

"You looked it up too."

"Well," Minerva gestured vaguely. "Simple curiosity."

"As you like. Harry Potter should not remain in Slytherin."

"Shut the door, Severus. Thank you. Certainly, the Sorting Hat's choice was unexpected -" One could only hope the boy had not noticed the second of utter silence before Slytherin began applauding. "But perhaps it had its reasons."

Snape gestured at the scroll. "He knows nothing about wizardry at all. Raised by Muggles, that says. And the rest of his year - the rest of Slytherin -"

"Are pureblooded?" Minerva inserted crisply.

Snape grimaced, but tried to recover his argument. "Were raised as wizards. I hope we can agree that it makes a difference."

"For the first few months, perhaps. Nearly all of them adjust. That simply isn't good enough." It was a remarkably silly argument, as any teacher with Severus's experience ought to know.

"In Slytherin, Minerva. Where nearly all the students have been learning magic for years; where most of them are pure-bloods, and not all of those raised in awe of the 'Boy Who Lived'."

Severus had, in the last week, made his opinions of Harry Potter's fame quite well-known. The students were not the only reason one might wish Harry had been placed elsewhere. "I know. Severus, I watched those - those people - we left Harry with. You've read his scroll. But the only thing to be done - then and now, Severus - is simply to hope Albus is right again, and it's for the best."

"Just the spirit of resignation that helped the Dark Lord to become a problem in the first place," Severus sneered.

"It cannot have escaped you that Albus is the Headmaster, and I am merely the Head of Gryffindor. I trust him." She met Snape's glare evenly, with a smile that would irritate him more than anything merely unpleasant. "And I do not believe that Harry Potter will lack for protectors, even in Slytherin."

True to form, the man swept out with a disgusted air - whether to his dungeons or Albus's office, Minerva couldn't say. She spelled the door locked after him.