"Not a lot of stuff, it seems. Uncontrollable anger and outbursts are linked with strokes and heart attacks, did you know?"

Argh! went bits of Jez's brain - bits that had hitherto been absorbed in morose remembrances, and likely would be again once she'd done something really horrible to the Hat, who was starting to gnaw on her last nerve like a determined beaver on a log. Huh, she thought. Hats didn't know the meaning of angry. Metaphorically, anyway.

"I don't need someone to give me a lift home, I have a Flying Machine, though he ... or she, maybe? I've never checked. It doesn't have much of a consciousness and is terrible company. And do not imagine that you are the only person I've sought out. Something dark is coming to Hogwarts and the school wants some of its old students back. You, I imagine, for your loyalty, though you seem to be avoiding that a bit."

Her lips twitched with curses, both Muggle and magical, that she was fighting to keep down. Jez had never mastered her aggression, but she had come a long way in channelling it correctly - or simply controlling herself until a more suitable time to explode presented itself. At the moment, she struggled against her instincts to set the Sorting Hat alight (even if it was on her head when she did so) both because this not the right place to commit what might have been a cross between homicide and destruction of property, and because she wanted to wring answers from its cryptic little... rip-where-its-mouth-should-be. This was all really very aggravating. Not enough alcohol had been imbibed to make it anything less.

"Look, you... Hat," she said. "I have some Very Important Things to do, okay? And not a lot of time since according to you I'm about to suffer a stroke and a heart attack. So what do you expect me to do about it? And how did you find me?"

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