Severus really hated the Sorting Hat's song. "Proud Slytherin the purebloods chose/ Imparting skills only to those/ Whose cunning and whose secrecy/ Was already proven legacy." Come to think of it, he had always hated the hat's songs when he bothered to pay attention to them.

Finally the Sorting itself. Severus surreptitiously took out his list, ready to make notes.

When Abbott, Thorin was sorted into Gryffindor, he thought he had misheard. When Ketsuiki, Victor ended up in Ravenclaw, he was confused. When Kidd, Wilfred and Kim, Jae somehow both ended up in Gryffindor, he started becoming frustrated. When Lee, Barnaby finally became the first Slytherin and slouched off to join his housemates looking dead inside, Severus grew furious. By the end of the night, there were only four new Slytherins. Only one of them, Merula Snyde, had he identified ahead of time. Only one of them, Elizabeth Tuttle, stood a chance of being a well-adjusted and normal youth. Was the Sorting Hat trying to end Slytherin House or something? At least with so few students, he would have plenty of time for all of them, he thought bitterly. He eyed Abbott again, smiling determinedly at the Gryffindor table while older students jostled around him. What was that boy doing there? Severus still couldn't believe it.

Albus stood up for his usual start-of-term nonsense. Mister Abbott was electrified instantly... and then sagged in obvious disappointment when the Headmaster's joking words completely failed to inspire him. Ah. Abbott's ambition was to emulate the singular Albus Dumbledore, to the extent he even went to Gryffindor House, only to have the rug pulled out from under him.

The food appeared. Severus ignored it and looked back down at his list instead, frowning. He made a note next to Abbott's name - honorary Slytherin. Then he shoved the list back in his pocket. Nothing to do about the Sorting now, but next year... He spent the feast observing the newest Snakes, and the one that got away. He exchanged only casual pleasantries with the two new professors sitting next to him. Aurora Sinistra was Petrus' replacement and former Hufflepuff. Wilbert Slinkhard had been researching a dissertation in pacifist defense on and off for the past fifteen years, admixed with joining non-violent protests in both wizarding and muggle communities all over the world. Strangely, he reported marching on behalf of both sides of the Irish muggles' conflict. Severus suspected he might be an eloquent idiot.

When the feast ended, he joined the rest of the faculty for the first staff meeting. There was little to discuss, except to note that Chiara Lobosca, the werewolf, had been sorted into Hufflepuff, so her prefects would need to be informed of her condition and a private, warded room created for her transformations. Severus and Pomona confirmed all was in order to produce the girl's Wolfsbane potion, and Pomona would be supervising personally for the first month to ensure the girl took her potion correctly and tolerated the transformation without incident. If all went well, the Hufflepuff prefects would be permitted to supervise her potion adherence for the rest of the year. All told, it was a much better plan than Remus Lupin's Shrieking Shack.

After the faculty meeting, Severus hurried downstairs to the Slytherin dormitory to check in with the prefects. All was in order. He informed them he would meet with them all individually throughout the month of September to discuss the house's goals for both quidditch and the House Cup, and to deal with any problems that may arise. This was met with considering looks, but he decided not to try to read into that at the moment. Then he swung by his office and read through the complete Slytherin roster, then pulled out the box of records Petrus had dumped on him and found the roster from seven years ago, when all the students were different and Slughorn was still head, then the one from fourteen years ago, just before his own Sorting. His suspicions were confirmed without a doubt.

Finally, with all the students settled for the night, he marched back up to Albus' office. "M and M." He did not know what the password meant and did not care. He knocked when he reached the landing at the top of the spiral staircase but did not wait for Albus to answer it. It was almost midnight; the Headmaster was unlikely to be in the outer chamber expecting guests.

Indeed, Severus had reached the shelf where the Sorting Hat rested by the time Albus hastened out of his inner chambers, wearing a vibrant orange satin bathrobe and fluffy purple slippers that clashed terribly. His beard and hair were dripping wet and soapy. He squinted in the dim candlelight, having removed his glasses and failed to retrieve them in his surprise. "Severus? What's wrong?"

"The Sorting. I need a word with this." He gestured distastefully at the worn hat.

Albus cocked his head to the side. Amusingly, a rubber duck slipped out of his beard and fell to the floor. "I take it you feel this is urgent?" he asked. He started running his hands over his hair and beard, drying them wandlessly.

"For me, yes. Feel free to go back to your bath."

So saying, Severus snatched the Sorting Hat off the high shelf and rammed it on his head. After a moment, that familiar, smug little voice said, "Well, this is interesting. Bit late for the Sorting, aren't you? There's a mind here, surely, and a displeased one. Did you miss the train? You'll need to open up a bit if you expect me to make heads or tails of you." Severus was confused for only a moment before dropping his Occlumency shields. The hat's Legilimency was impressive, but it was made for untrained eleven-year-olds. "Oh... how irate you are, young master Snape."

Professor Snape, Severus corrected mentally. Head of Slytherin House.

"It's always the ones with traits from multiple houses that end up as Heads," the hat mused.

Traits. That's what I wish to discuss with you, Severus thought venomously.

"Are you threatening a hat?" the hat asked. Severus pictured it buried in Rubeus' chicken coop, forced to sit on a student's head during every one of Professor Binn's lectures, sliced up and fed to the giant squid, and finally burning up with Fiendfyre. "Oh my," was the hat's amused response. Moving on, Severus recalled the hat's choice words for Slytherin House at this evening's Sorting, then recalled in exquisite detail the worst parts of his own experience as a halfblood in Slytherin, followed by the most gruesome terrorist attacks from the war perpetuated by blood purists.

He snapped his Occlumency shields back into place for a moment, giving both himself and the hat a moment to process and recover their poise.

"Oh my," the hat finally said. It no longer sounded amused. Then, "I cannot change my nature, Professor Snape. I am a Sorting Hat."

You don't have to sort on blood purity! Severus thought at it. Ambition. Achievement. Cunning. Resourcefulness. Those are Slytherin's traits too. And they were the more important ones, that could actually be cultivated, nurtured, and matured in school.

"They are," the hat agreed sadly. "But so many children turn away from those traits. They all want to be brave and smart and popular." Popular? Severus did not ask the question intentionally, but the hat answered it regardless. "Yes, they want to have lots of friends, like Helga Hufflepuff."

Severus snorted in mirth when he realized what the hat meant.

"Hmm... when did Gryffindor become equated with popularity?" the hat asked, sounding mightily confused. "Most students hated Godric; he was admirable, yes, but too driven, too driving. They had to be brave to take up with him. Everyone wanted Helga though."

Severus mentally listed off all of Albus Dumbledore's greatest accomplishments, starting with his sterling academic record, moving on to his sensational defeat of Grindelwald, culminating with his current list of honorifics.

"I'll be having a word with that boy when we're done here. Should have put him in Slytherin," the hat fair grumbled.

Why don't you know all this already? Severus thought at it.

"My only cognitive functions are memory, Legilimency and musical composition. I only have a fully functioning mind when I'm using someone else's. No one puts me on anymore besides first years," the hat answered matter-of-factly.

That is going to change. Did you mean to imply earlier that you have been sorting potential Slytherins into other houses because of the student's preference?

"When there is doubt, and their choice is clear, and the numbers are not too uneven, then yes."

That's ridiculous. Knowing what he did now, Severus would definitely have chosen Hufflepuff.

"Oh my," the hat said for the third time. "Yes, I can see why you feel this way. You wouldn't have reached your same potential in Hufflepuff, but my goodness would you have been happier." Severus thought about burning the thing with Fiendfyre again. "I see your point, Professor Snape, but I still cannot change my nature. Either you will have to modify my enchantments, or you will have to modify perception of your house and make students willing to enter it."

Change your damn song.

"I can do that. And remember, you are the face of Slytherin, now. Let's see, ambition, achievement, and resourcefulness..." It started humming.

Severus swiped the hat off his head and tossed it to Albus. What did the hat mean, he was the face of Slytherin? A question for later. "It would like a word with you. The Sorting is an abomination, Albus. We have to fix it."

"Pardon?"

"Did you know it lets students pick their houses?"

"In a way, yes, else families would not cluster quite so strikingly," Albus said. "I think it's more of a veto power, really. The hat doesn't want our first years to be miserable, after all. Why, do you think it's a problem?"

"They're 'vetoing' Slytherin disproportionately, which makes my House a concentration of blood purists by default in our current climate. Anyone who is willing to be sorted into Slytherin is sorted into Slytherin."

Albus frowned and stroked his beard. "You're sure?"

"Do you really think Felix Rosier belongs in Slytherin? Or Jane Court in Hufflepuff?" The fifth-year Rosier was the most stereotypical Raven Severus had ever met. He was determinedly academic but lacked ambition or subtlety of any kind. Meanwhile Court effectively ran the students' black market of banned items, something even her head of house Pomona was unaware of until Petrus had complimented her on it admiringly at the end-of-year faculty party. "Do you think it's a coincidence that other than the prolific Black, Bulstrode, and Flint families, the vast majority of Slytherins come from the second half of the alphabet for the past fifteen years?" If Severus himself had entered Hogwarts just a year or two earlier, before the start of the war, perhaps he would have had a chance at a different sorting... probably not, though. His mother had left him with stupid notions about the Houses. "There are only four Slytherin first years this year. Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw have six each, Gryffindor seven." It was the smallest and most lopsided Sorting he had ever seen.

"You may have a point," Albus conceded.

"Even besides creating a haven for extremism, it's a disservice to the students if they're not getting the guidance and supportive peer groups they deserve," Severus railed.

"What do you suggest?"

"I told the hat it needs to change its songs, for a start. Albus, it doesn't understand the way this school works anymore. We've drifted away from where we started, and the hat's only modern perspective is from first day first years. It had no idea blood purity had become such an intensely political issue. It's no wonder it can't sort appropriately. At the minimum, we should have the Heads of Houses wear the thing now and then so it has a better working knowledge of the houses as they are now. We should also look into the possibility of updating its enchantments, to make it harder for students to refuse appropriate placement."

Albus looked at the old hat thoughtfully. "You know, I'm surprised Petrus did not come to me about this."

Severus shrugged. Petrus was Albus' generation. "When Petrus was a student, Slytherin was still a functioning and respectable place to be. He might even have been happy in school. Horace would have been the same. No, worse, Horace was willfully blind."

"I know you're a pessimist, Severus, but surely you don't mean to imply all your students are miserable?" Albus said, with a hint of his typical merriment.

"The only Snakes who were truly happy when I was a student were the mentally challenged and the insane," Severus said flatly. "I have no reason to believe it's changed based on Petrus' files and what I have seen of them in class."

"You make me question the wisdom of sending more students there who don't know what they're getting into."

Severus glared at him. "My house. My problem. Don't you dare consent to turn the House of Slytherin into the waste-heap of Hogwarts, my students' only prospects Knockturn or Azkaban. So help me, Albus, I am fixing this, and you will not impede me."

Albus raised his eyebrows. He offered a small smile. "No, I will not. If there's one thing I have learned it is not to underestimate the power of a true Slytherin with a vision for the future. In fact, I cannot wait to see where you take this."

Severus studied him suspiciously for a moment, but the headmaster seemed perfectly genuine with his praise. "Don't forget to talk to the hat. Good night."

Author's Note: student names mostly taken from some Harry Potter video game I've never actually played. Any similarity between my characterizations and those in the game are most likely accidental. I've obviously made up the alphabet thing, but that is the pattern to expect if the hat really were Sorting inappropriately, and honestly, it must be. Sure, Salazar Slytherin could have been an arrogant, bigoted prick, but he must have some redeeming factors for the other three Founders to be friends with him in the first place, and literally no one besides insane psychopaths like Voldemort who only wanted biddable minions would deliberately select students like Crabbe and Goyle, neither of whom seem to have any of the official Slytherin traits besides blood purity.

Edited: corrected continuity error with regards to Defense professor