"I didn't realize it was so unusual, I didn't kick up much of a fuss. Can one go talk to the hat after being sorted?"

"You'd have to ask Twimble and people don't but I'm not sure that you couldn't in principle."

"Maybe if I don't notice a dramatic ambition in a couple years I will ask the Hat what it was thinking. Though, I mean, Slytherin does mostly suit. If I want something I am much more inclined to figure out who can get it for me than to study hard or charge ahead or - whatever a Hufflepuff would do -"

"...work diligently?"

"That either."

"Sometimes I think Miranda should've been a Ravenclaw. She's a culture fit."

"Why do you think she's a Slytherin?"

"She says the hat considered Ravenclaw but as a core features thing and not a culture thing she's really a Slytherin. She's not a natural to the networky smoothtalking - thing - though."

"I mean, is anybody when they're eleven? You learn."

"Okay, but there's Miranda and then there's, like, Timothy - you don't even know Timothy - when he was, I forget exactly, like five, he heard that most Ministers of Magic were Hufflepuffs, and started pretending to be Hufflepuffy."

"- okay, that's pretty Slytheriny. This is your boyfriend? He wants to be Minister of Magic?"

"Yeah. Or possibly take over the world."

"Is this a selling point or a drawback? On the boyfriend front, I mean."

"- I don't really have a pros and cons list."

"It just seems like it'd be hard to be indifferent about whether your boyfriend conquers the planet!"

"...I don't think he is going to conquer it. I think that would be bad. Right now he's mostly working on limiting the Statute of Secrecy."

"And he wouldn't mind if you and Swan got a flat in London for a couple years?"

"Yeah, like I said Timothy's not in a hurry, but Minor is so Miranda's not gonna be doing that."

"And you wouldn't want to with anyone else?"

Shrug. "Who else?"

"I don't know the girls in your year! I should probably go, this duel looks nearly finished and I'm up next."

"Have fun!"

Timothy has enough Swedish to try to get a feel for their politics. It seems like the conservative wing would have won out. It's not obvious who would have been upset enough to commit a mass homicide over it. 

It's also not obvious who would have been that confident of the outcome.

Nor are other motives presenting themselves. He writes Elio periodically.