Sorting Hat’s Gotta Sort

If the proportion of wizards in the population were sufficiently small, they might find it difficult to rule overtly. Despite their powers, the Muggles could overthrow them by sheer force of numbers. It would be more efficient to rule indirectly by controlling banks, corporations, mass media and political parties, Illuminati-style.

There’s more than a little hint that wizards by nature find it difficult to act co-operatively. Hence conspiracies by wizards normally tend to fall apart because of internal squabbling. Thus Voldemort’s cabal and Harry and his friends’ opposition are both introducing new concepts into wizardry.

I think Ravenclaw is certainly the coolest-sounding name.

I almost never read fanfic of any sort. But Harry Potter & the Methods of Rationality is awesome. Simply and truly awesome. It’s not always awesome in the ways it is trying to be awesome! But there is something to be learned on an ongoing basis from that lovely piece of fanfic.

For instance, one critical element it identifies is that the magical world is freaking EVIL — not just the bad guys, but the good guys too, what with the Dementors being used on the prison population even though the legal system is far too poorly run to guarantee that everyone in jail has committed any crimes at all — let alone crimes awful enough to be Dementor-ed.

I don’t know what the “eventual total FAIL” in the original post refers to. I have to admit, I haven’t read any updates to “HP & the M of R” in at least a couple of years, so maybe I missed where it went off the rails. I’d love an explanation of the fail. Or maybe I should just get back to reading it.

I guess it’s Ravenclaw for me too. We academics (and wannabes and used-to-bes) like to pretend that being smart is really what matters in life, not that other stuff like winning or being brave or standing up for your friends.

I wonder what kind of marriage would be the worst. Ravenclaw-Ravenclaw? Slytherin-Slytherin? Hard to imagine any marriage with a Hufflepuff being too awful.

Thanks for inspiring these thoughts and more, Belle.

Ravenclaw. Do you need to ask?

[clever & completely useless.]

I believe that 4 houses correspond exactly to the 4 temperaments of the ancient theory of humours: Gryffindor – Sanguine, Slytherin – Choleric, Ravenclaw – Melancholic, Hufflepuff-Phlegmatic.

I think a lot of the problems with sorting that we see in Harry Potter are a viewpoint thing.

We see Gryffindor Brave, Slytherin Evil, Ravenclaw something, Hufflepuff fat and jolly and a bit dim. This what we see because our viewpoint characters are all Gryffindors (who don’t seem to know much about Ravenclaw).

If our heroes were Ravenclaw, we’d see: Ravenclaw Brilliant, Gryffindor knuckleheads, Slytherin Evil and Hufflepuff nice but dim.

If Slytherin we’d see Slytherin Conservative, Gryffindor Bleeding Heart Liberals, Ravenclaw eggheads, and Hufflepuff Useful Idiots.

If Hufflepuff, we’d see Hufflepuff Sensible, Ravenclaw Ivory Tower Types, Gryffindor Jocks, Slytherin Can’t Be That Bad, Surely?

But the hat is actually dividing the school into four equal sized houses for administrative purposes, and the dormitories and common rooms are not changing over the years (Dumbledore was in Harry’s dorm more than a century earlier). It also tends to put siblings together, like the Weasleys (even when one is obviously a Slytherin), and it allows people to wish for a house, too.

So actually, we are going to see a mix of types in all houses.

I still think Rowling made a typing error, and Dumbledore was a Slytherin.

Let’s face it, the house system is a total mess. Neville = Hufflepuff and Hermione = Ravenclaw, obvs. (There’s a sketchy attempt later on to redefine Ravenclaw as Deepio Thoughtio, with Luna & so on, which wouldn’t be Hermione’s bag – but the thought of an entire house (an entire quarter of the school) of otherworldly chin-strokers doesn’t carry conviction; apart from anything else, who is Luna getting bullied by?). Ron’s entire function in the series is to be wrong over and over again and then do something which helps Harry; I don’t think he’s particularly Gryffindor either, unless you redefine “brave and true and loyal” to mean “not too bright”, a la Neo.

But really the other two houses are there to make up the numbers – and Gryffindor is there to be not-Slytherin, and vice versa. Which is where the real problems start. Start with the final ‘Sorting’, the “who’s with us?” moment at the end: not one Slytherin? After we’ve had six books’ worth of explanation that Slytherins are clever unscrupulous ambitious ect ect but NOT just plain evil, it turns out that they are – every last one of them? You could say that Slytherins are all about the magical dominance and the blood purity, but that doesn’t really help – firstly, conceptually it’s got nothing to do with being unscrupulous ambitious etc, and secondly we know that not all purebloods are Slytherins & not all Slytherins are purebloods. (By the last book there’s actually quite an interesting Third Reich dynamic developing around this point, with cracks beginning to show between those Death Eaters who thought it was all about putting the right people back in charge and those who are just about the eating of death – the latter group being where Voldemort’s own sympathies appear to lie.) So, at the end of the day, you’ve got a group that’s been selected for legitimate & sometimes useful personal qualities (lack of scruples etc) rather than deep inner blackness of heart, but when the balloon goes up they all turn out to be bad to the bone, with the possible exception of Mr and Mrs Malfoy.

But in any case, if being Slytherin means being unscrupulous (etc etc), why on earth isn’t Harry in Slytherin – and his arrogant bully of a father before him? A scene that gets played out two or three times involves Snape denouncing Harry for acting as if the rules don’t apply to him – and we’re supposed to sympathise with Harry. Snape’s personal issues with Harry aside, he shouldn’t be ratting on Harry so much as trying to poach him – and Dumbledore & McGonagall shouldn’t endorse Harry’s rule-breaking, they should drum him out of Gryffindor.

The only way the Gryffindor/Slytherin split makes narrative sense is if it’s actually not about being brave and loyal vs being weaselly and ambitious, it’s just about a vague long-term belief in goodness, kindness and human equality (which is compatible with any amount of nastiness in the short term) vs a positive commitment to the triumph of evil, cruelty and racism – in which case we’re basically saying that Slytherins are Nazis, and it’s quite hard to believe that 25% of the wizard population would naturally gravitate that way.

Well-let’s-see. Hufflepuff absolutely not. I don’t know whether I’m less jovial or industrious, but for any practical purpose the needle’s on empty in both meters. Gryffindor not so much. I have the sense of justice, and the willingness to act on it, but not the required passion for righting wrongs, I think. Ravenclaw is certainly where I would have expected to go, and I would have been happy for a while until I caught on to the fact that I’d never be more than a mediocre ‘claw, which would have eaten me up.

Slytherin, on the other hand, would have been initially very intimidating but eventually the place where I could have been both ambitious and successful. I think it’s the only house that really rewards lateral thinking, which is actually what I’m inherently good at, as far as I can tell. So I hope the hat would have put me with the snakes, in its wisdom.

I’ll admit to not having read the books (I must have picked up one or two at some point, but I can’t remember), but I did read enough of HPMOR to be first excited about the premise and then disappointed with what an absolute cockhole they made of Harry. Spare Hermione that fate, if you ask me.

Belle @5

Because if I chose a group at random, let’s say, ordinary humans who live in Madagascar, and I gave them the powers that wizards have, I feel pretty confident in saying they’d take over the world in short order for some value of “Malagasy people have taken over the world,” even if they were stabbing one another in the back and getting into pointless wars all the time

This has always bugged me. When I was in high school, I had a friend who argued quite convincingly that even the most pathetic wizard imaginable (in terms of their ability to do magic) ought to be able to take over the world, because almost any superhuman ability could be leveraged into a world-taking-over scenario (he had a particularly well-worked example involving the magical power of being able to make other people evacuate their bowels at will, but I considered various other options and came to a similar conclusion). Once you start out with maniacal ambition and some very minor ability to do magic, it’s quite hard to imagine not taking over the world in fairly short order. Perhaps things are different when there are many wizards, where the less-ambitious wizards are able to restrain those with imperialist tendencies, by threatening to oppose them if they get too big for their pointy boots, somewhat akin to anti-monarchism in the Roman republic (though we all know how that ended up).

I suppose we have to imagine that the wizards exist in some delicate symbiosis with the world outside, and that – like any privileged minority group – they must be careful to hide their power and influence, lest they become targets of the envy of the masses. And given that the muggles have guns and bombs and aircraft carriers, perhaps that is wise, although that really just makes it more difficult to understand why the wizards didn’t take over the world before those things were invented. (I suppose one could argue that maybe they did, and all of our folk tales about magic are from the days when the wizards actually did rule the world, before something caused them to withdraw).

Another Ravenclaw here. Bookish, not super worldly, not brave, definitely not ambitious. (But I would love the shit out of herbology, so maybe the sorting hat would suss out a tincture of Hufflepuff.)

The reason why Neville belongs in Gryffindor is that, at heart, he’s brave. We see this manifest most clearly in the later books, after he’s finally got his own wand (before book 6, his Gran has him using his dad’s wand, for chrissake) and acquired some confidence. Why didn’t it show up sooner? Well, it kind of did, a little bit, e.g. when he tries to stop Harry and crew from sneaking out of Gryffindor tower in book 1. But the prophecy about Voldemort’s downfall was strictly ambiguous between Neville and Harry, and only Snape’s incomplete report of it made V believe it to be about Harry in particular. The implication is that had things gone only slightly differently, V would have gone for Neville. His parents couldn’t have protected him, but presumably his Gran could. Suppose Neville’s Gran was killed by V à la Lily Potter, and Neville got the lightning scar and the shitty orphan upbringing and his wand chose him à la Harry. Would Neville’s essential bravery have manifested earlier? Rowling means to imply ‘yes’, I think.

Dumbledore should have been a Slytherin, yep. The quest for the Hallows makes that pretty clear.

Re: Slytherin house, I think the majority of students, and the majority of students’ parents, aren’t actually evil, or even admiring of Voldemort or the Death Eaters. Slughorn is a prominent data point here; he likes influence and the feeling of importance, but is generally nice and good, even if not as stern as one would like in the face of dark magic. Dude just likes to rub elbows with quidditch captains, and a spot of oak-matured mead now and then (Belle, the Slytherin table glamour bit is brilliant and spot-on). But anyway, think about how, at the beginning of book 6, the other Slytherins in Malfoy’s compartment react when he implies he’s a bona fide Death Eater with a secret mission from Voldemort. They’re fascinated, admiring, but scared. Even Malfoy is scared. It’s not like they’re all hoping to join the club.

Remember too that it’s McGonagall who ejects the Slytherin students after Pansy Parkinson appears willing to turn Potter over to V. Who among them is going to stay behind after given the chance to leave? Proximally, it saves their skins. After the battle is over, they can always tell whichever side wins that they got told to leave. Only the really evil-dedicated (or implicated) kids stay behind: Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle.

Finally (god this is dorking out like none other but also this is the most fun thread on CT maybe ever), I must sadly admit that Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff are undertheorized, or anyway underdeveloped, in the books. Part of me wants to insist that the Sorting hat’s different beginning-of-year songs fill out the houses more than you’d think, but I can’t actually remember. But we do get some minor characters to help. I don’t think Hufflepuff can be The House That Gets Shit Done, because Zacharias Smith is an obstructionist and snide pain in the ass, and Ernie MacMillan (and other Hs IIRC) resist Harry’s claim that V has returned. For Ravenclaw we get Luna of course, but also Cho, her sneak friend Marietta, Prof Flitwick, and Penelope Clearwater, which, I guess the idea there is she snogged Percy Weasley and that’s a serious error of judgment. Bad judgment all around, really: Cho dates Cedric (died), Harry (insensitive and kind of an idiot); Marietta rats on the DA; and Luna won’t give up believing in Crumple-Horned Snorkacks even after the horn destroys her house. Oh also the Grey Lady gave up the secret location of the lost diadem of Ravenclaw to Tom Riddle, which was also bad. Now that I think about it, I don’t remember a Ravenclaw doing anything smart ever, at all, in any of the books…

The authorized French translation of HP does relatively little of the punning and portmanteau’ing that JKR enjoys so much, but one thing it does rather nicely is the name of the Sorting Hat: le Choixpeau.

Belle, in the last half-dozen sentences of your OP, you allude to cases like the recent one of Ethan Couch of Texas, a sociopathic teen who has killed 4 people and will escape any punishment because of his family’s wealth. And you end by saying, “Is that bad? In principle it’s manifestly, horribly unjust. In practice, though, it’s like dancing to God’s own sweet music, I will tell you that.”

Is that really where you wanted your train of thought to end? That while, in principle, we are all opposed to rich white teens getting away with murder, in practice you strongly favor it? I somehow imagine that either I missed a switchback or negation in your rant (it has many hairpin turns) or that you forgot to add on a surprise reversal at the end yourself. Or that you strongly favor rich white teens getting away with murder?

My house? I’m a muggle, thanks. Even in the HP world.

I’m thinking I’d get shuffled off to Slytherin. Why? Because I know the not-so-seKreT meaning of “muggles” and I can’t for the life of me see why, given that not-so-seKreT meaning, the book ever got past the USofA censors. It is, after all, a book for kids, no?

Louis Armstrong wrote a blues he called “Muggles” and it was NOT at tribute to squares. Old Pops loved his daily intake of muggles, and of Swiss Kriss too. At least one of our former Presidents of the USofA is familiar w/ muggles, though he swears up and down on a stack of Bibles a mile high that he never inhaled. BTW, there’s a move afoot to legalize the growing of hemp in New Jersey, not so one can then partake of the afore-mentioned seKreT substance, but so they can manufacture rope.

Also, in 2nd grade I fidgeted once too often and got a D in conduct.

None of those houses sound good to me, but then I wouldn’t like the idea of having to belong to a group because a hat told me to.

It seems at least a rational way of deciding destiny as that used to choose the Dalai Lama.

BTW

Zoë says, “your family is weird.” “Who the fuck else’s family do you think they are?”

That’s Belle Waring paging Madame de Sévigné-voluntarily I would venture, especially as this is the basis of a famous reboot in A la recherche du temps perdu which I seem to recall you enjoyed, Belle-though in full fuck else mode.

I see that I went on about the HPMOR thing more than I remembered at the other place. No, other other place, which I won’t link because reasons.

Given the university I went to I think I have to admit I’m Ravenclaw. Not cool enough for the Slytherin table.

Thanks, Belle.

Your OP makes it look as though you have one serious and quite genuine moral flaw, whereas in fact you have a distinct serious and quite genuine moral flaw.

The flaw you have is partiality to self and kin. That is a serious and genuine moral flaw, but universal to the species, amenable to channeling into non-flawed manifestations, and implicated in character traits that are also admirable, e.g. concern, compassion, loyalty, etc.

Your OP makes it look as though you have the serious and genuine moral flaws of racism and plutocratic elitism. These flaws are not universal, less amenable to re-purposing for good uses, and pretty thoroughly unadmirable.

Your post says you think that the kid *should* get off, because he’s white, and because he’s rich. Not good. Your response to my query says you would like the people close to you to get off, because they are close to you, you care about them, and you don’t want to see them suffer. Not so bad.

The second stance is less reprehensible, and indeed rather banal. It’s merely what humans do (not that it guarantees morally ideal outcomes of course), and indeed any human who lacks all inclination to do it is probably psychopathically incapable of compassion. I’m afraid it’s rather weak stuff to put on your super-villain resume. If that’s the best you can do as a recommendation for getting into Slytherin, then you’ll never get in–no matter how much you badger them.

Belle you have just described how I think about myself better than I have ever been able to. Do I believe in justice and society pitching together to care for each other and provide social goods? Oh course! I am a Canadian social democrat.

However, if the people closest to me call me in the middle of the night for help burying a body there is no way in hell that I am not going to help. To me some people are just so much more important than any abstract concept. If that makes me a Slytherin so be it. Needs must when the devil drives and all that.

/Which is funny as I always assumed I would be Hufflepuff before I read your post. Not super brave, not super ambitious and only middling smart. Plus I tend to get along with people in real life pretty well.

it’s less obvious because of the rank-and-file adherence to evil displayed by the Slytherin kids in Harry’s cohort

Not sure about that at all, though. The only really actively evil Slytherin kids are Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle; and the first one makes amend in the end (and is never really enthusiastic when the real deal starts anyway). There are many many other Slytherin mentioned and though they are usually unpleasant, nasty, prejudiced and (generally) stupid, they do not take side with Voldemort. I mean even Theodore Nott, the son of an active Death Eater, just stays on the sides and waits. None stay to fight (the utterly hopeless) fight for Hogwarts, but (almost) none stay to fight for Voldemort either. I wouldn’t call this rank-and-file adherence.

So I think that one could read the first 2 books and conclude that Slytherin’s house is the house of the bad guy, after book 3 and 4 that is very debatable (not only is it more and more heavily hinted that Snape is on the good side, it also appears that just about everyone has a dirty little secret), after book 5 this is untenable (the real evil guys in book 5 are not obviously Slytherin) and after book 7, it verges on the misunderstanding.

All in all, enjoy being in Slytherin with Snape with no misgiving, JKR wanted it this way.

God this thread reminds of my youth…

Ravenclaw, methinks.

I think the late plot twist with Hermione does have a greater than 50% probability of ruining the ending of HP:MOR for me. That said, I’ve still enjoyed the thing enough to throw a bit of money their way in thanks for the reading experience, flaws and all.

The one thing I’ll say for the fics depiction of Hermione is that they actually don’t have to rewrite her so much as have her react to a different Harry. The ending I’m hoping for would actually acknowledge MoR-Harry’s incredible hubris and acknowledge that she’s the one with the highest probability of achieving heroic deeds.

I think there’s been enough nods in that direction, in text and comments, that it’s a possible ending, even if that late Hermione twist makes it unlikely, hence greater than 50% chance of terrible ending even assuming certain things are undone.

But even if the ending goes all Breaking Bad on us, I think much of the story allows for that reading, which counts for something to me. Breaking bad side note, despite being rather political, I’m just not inspired to watch television dramas about mobsters, hence despite being a sell-out think tanker I figure I may not qualify for Gryffindor but I don’t place enough weight on in-group loyalty to make Slytherin.

The books make clear that while there’s a default House for everyone, the Sorting Hat actually takes into account the preferences of the student, as well. We know for sure this is why Harry is in Gryffindor rather than Slytherin, and while it’s only mentioned in passing, it’s pretty clear that this is also why Hermione is not in Ravenclaw. The only pure Gryffindor in the main group is Ron, whose primary characteristic is loyalty and who, coming from a Gryffindor family, wouldn’t have been able to bear not being Gryffindor (and probably knows that his brothers would never let him live it down) — he fits Gryffindor naturally and desperately only wants to be Gryffindor. And, of course, as some commenters noted above, given Neville’s interests and how easily he gets along with Sprout, it seems very likely that he is an almost-Hufflepuff Gryffindor.

Ravenclaw, Gryffindor, and Slytherin seem to be Houses that are each marked by a sort of ambition for greatness, for a certain kind of status, whereas Hufflepuff seems to be the House for those with smaller ambitions. Each House is consistent with any particular kind of person; it’s their driving motivations that are actually in play — not what they are, but what they most want to be. (The fact that it takes into accounts personal preference complicates the matter, but given that we are talking school children, it just adds the clause ‘or what is most wanted by the kind of people they want to be with’.) Thus Ravenclaw is not the House of smart people but the House of people whose primary ambitions are in some way concerned with intelligence (thus Luna is a perfect fit, since she is entirely invested in understanding the way the world is, and just has weird standards for what counts because of her upbringing); Slytherin is for those whose ambitions are concerned with power (which is why we get Malfoys and Goyles); and Gryffindor for those whose ambitions are concerned with heroic deeds (none of the Weasleys are ambitious in the way the Malfoys are, or for the same thing, but they are all of them ambitious in their own way and have a taste for jumping in and doing something). The reason it makes some sort of sense for Hufflepuff to be thought of as ‘the House that Gets Things Done’ or as the House for nice, quiet people, despite the obvious exceptions, is that it’s the House for people whose lives revolve around, or who deeply want their lives to revolve around, smaller and simpler motivations and goals than glory, whether that glory comes from great power, or great deeds, or great intellectual accomplishments. (And in a sense it’s an interesting commentary on how our major ambitions can be internally or externally driven: Ron was an inevitable Gryffindor, but Harry is a natural Slytherin who takes on Gryffindor ambitions because he can’t stand Slytherins, and Neville, it seems, is a natural Hufflepuff who gets his Gryffindorish drive from the fate of his parents and his relation with his Gran.) We see this all reflected in the Heads, too.

So says this Ravenclawish Hufflepuff, anyway.

Is it Slytherin behaviour to note that when you get tired of reading HP to the kids, a Stephen Fry read audiobook makes a very good option?

I think the reason the wizards don’t just “take over the world” can be looked at two ways:

1) There are some who want to, but they are opposed by others on moral grounds. As a matter of strategy and emotion this leads to a decision to win the wizard war first.

2) In the end, humans don’t have anything much that wizards want. If you don’t need technology and you can magic up just about any material thing, then what does power over humans get you? Isn’t it like power over cats? Vaguely interesting for those who like to be pet owners, not that interesting for everyone else?

Metatone,

I think the reason the wizards don’t just “take over the world” can be looked at two ways: 1) There are some who want to, but they are opposed by others on moral grounds….2) In the end, humans don’t have anything much that wizards want. If you don’t need technology and you can magic up just about any material thing, then what does power over humans get you?

Good explanations, though mine is more Jared Diamondesque: in my private fictional elaboration of Rowling’s universe, the numbers just don’t work out. For whatever reason (and getting into this would be some seriously deep speculation), the wizarding world doesn’t reproduce: members keep killing themselves off in bizarre accidents, small numbers of children (note that probably half of Malfoy’s attacks on Ron have to do with him coming from a freakishly large family, something that is, by the evidence of the books, profoundly unusual), etc. There is also the open question of whether the “magical gene,” if there is such, is dominant–one might think so, because we keep reading about wizards and witches being born to Muggle and mixed-Muggle parents, but then, the stories are being told at Hogwarts, so of course we wouldn’t hear about the thousands of squibs out there, would we?

I think I’m Gryffindor edging towards Ravenclaw.. In a recent “which literary character are you?” quiz I got Eowyn. That’s Gryffindor-ish, no?

And if a family member or friend called me to bury a body, I’m afraid I’d spend the next forever trying to persuade then to hand themselves in. I don’t think that makes me a bad friend/family member, but I think it disqualifies me from Slytherin. Where I think I’m much too practical to be pure Ravenclaw and not nice enough to be Hufflepuff.

@Random, you’ve cast the Hufflepuffs and the muggles as peasants. Or so you mean that Hufflepuffs are members of the master race who deny their nature?

Katherine,

They only learn various flavours of magic, a bit of botany and one sport. That does not a rounded person make. They rely on magic and thus are educationally stunted.

True–though you could make the argument (and why shouldn’t we? we’ll all being nerds here anyway!) that actually the students learn a hell of a lot of composition and math and science (or at least chemistry, astronomy, and botany) through their classes. I mean, think of those long rolls of parchment they have to turn in to the teachers on this subject or that, or think about the basic calculations that they’re presumably obliged to run through on the way to turning in their homework on the planets or poisons. (And you know that McGonagal and Snape, at least, are probably hard-ass graders when it comes to grammar.) As for extracurricular activities, yes, they’re lacking, at least from Harry’s immediate social environment: but then, the films teach us that there’s a school choir, and from the books we know there’s a Gobstones and a Charms club at least, so maybe there’s more going on for all that.

“I’m afraid I’d spend the next forever trying to persuade then to hand themselves in.”
Why would you want someone who you care about to spend the rest of their lives in jail? It won’t bring whoever they killed back and, unless the person is a serial killer, it won’t protect anyone else. Now if they ARE a serial killer that makes the whole thing more difficult. I guess I would have to turn them in….

” Also, if I understand it correctly, quidditch is a game where there are two team of 11 people composed as such:
1 main player that scores point, and
10 players basically useless, that only score advantages that are useless unless the two main players score a tie.

Who would ever play this kind of sport??”

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfCool

Brandon @45:

The books make clear that while there’s a default House for everyone, the Sorting Hat actually takes into account the preferences of the student, as well. We know for sure this is why Harry is in Gryffindor rather than Slytherin, and while it’s only mentioned in passing, it’s pretty clear that this is also why Hermione is not in Ravenclaw.

Exactly right. Hemione mentions in Order of the Phoenix (#5) that the Sorting Hat almost placed her in Ravenclaw.

Beyond that, consider that there are mathematical constraints placed on the Sorting Hat’s ability to perfectly match each student with his or her “ideal” House. Assuming that each class cohort in each House in approximately the same size (and I believe this is so, because otherwise class schedules would be too variable; in the first five years, it appears that most classes include about 20 students, which encompasses the entire year cohorts for two Houses), then every year the Sorting Hat has 40 new students who must be sorted into 4 Houses, with each House accepting 5 boys and 5 girls. In cases where a student could flourish in either of two or three Houses, the Hat may have to assign a student to balance numbers. Cedric Diggory probably would have flourished in whichever House he went into; the Hat may have sorted him into Hufflepuff because there were other boys in his year that were better fits for Gryffindor and Ravenclaw, and the Hat was running up against the quotas for those Houses.

All that said, Dumbledore once told Snape, “Perhaps we sort too early.” Indeed.

Are these the kind of super-rational people who pray for the coming Singularity so they can live in blissful immortality while whizzing around in the circuitry of their Beloved Computer Overlords?

No, the LessWrong crowd are (a) absolutely certain the Singularity will come, but believe that (b) due to programmer error, the resulting artificial intelligences will likely engage in a project to convert the entire mass of the solar system into paperclips or similar, resulting in the extinction of the human race. Their fanaticism and intensity arise from their belief that the catastrophic extinction of all life on earth is the most likely outcome of the computer revolution, but that sufficient hard work may make it possible (but not certain) to avert doom.

Are we all so unwilling to claim Gryffindor? I know that if magic was an actual skill I’d be obsessed with mastering it in an actual rather than intellectual way, I’m also sure I’d be one of those annoying types stopping wizards from conquering the muggles. We can’t even run a single boarding school in a way that isn’t insane, how are we going to manage the NYPD.

Never read the books, and fell asleep during a French-language showing of the 3rd (I think) film whilst far from home with nothing better to do. But probably Ravenclaw, because the name has the nicest ring to it, but temperamentally too, albeit with phlegm ascendent (so to speak).

Also I like ravens, since reading The Grey King, and since they fly together so joyfully around mountaintops.

Me? Hufflepuff with delusions of Gryffindor.

[ravenclaw]
Good explanations, though mine is more Jared Diamondesque

I prefer ‘they already did it, 300 years ago’. It was called the British Empire, or the Enlightenment. Just instead of Guns Germs and Steel, it was really based on Wands, Charms and Schools.

There’s another fanfic out there where a burnt-out Harry is on leave from fighting carpet-jockeys in Afghanistan, and meets up with Ron and Hermione for a drink. Except Hermione can’t make it, and Ron only pays lip service to Harry’s tales of the glory days at school, and leaves before closing time.

AFAICT, individual elements of the HP world are each fairly coherently wizardized versions of elements in our muggle world, but the wizardization doesn’t preserve the structure that exist in our world between those elements. And in many cases, there is no alternative structure either, the elements just kinda float in nothing.

So wizard kids have wizardized school subjects, and their parents have wizardized office jobs. But where our school subjects are kinda-vaguely preparing for that office work, the wizardized school subject do nothing like that for wizard office jobs. The Malfoys are wizard-rich and the Weaslies wizard-poor, but there’s no economic or social structure behind that, it just is that way. And Harry is wizard-star player on a wizard rest-of-team, aloof like a striker in a catenaccio soccer team. But there’s no single game in which those roles fall, it’s just two games played in paralel,

That’s OK, isn’t it? The structure that misses in the books, still exists in the minds of the readers. It only becomes a problem if fictional worlds are supposed to be coherent on their own, plausible to in-game characters who don’t know it’s fictional. But why should they.

Oh, and Ravenclaw, obviously.

‘ Better for my loved one, and me, that they hand themselves in than are caught later’

Yeah this strikes me as the main point. They’re going to get caught eventually/be overcome with the guilt, much better to throw yourself at the mercy of the court (though if I lived in Texas I might think differently)
A drugs offense we could have a whip around and help them move to Spain.
But burying the body seems the worst of all worlds

I would probably have ended up in Hufflepuff, unless my younger self talked the sorting hat into putting me in Ravenclaw or Gryffindor.

When I was younger I had ambitions and read enough heroic things that I might have ended up in Ravenclaw or Gryffindor, but, my perception of Slytheryn would have made me resist being sorted into that house. What I have ended up actually doing, and how I have been living lately is much more in line with Hufflepuff.

Oh, and the Slytherins may have a table glamour that gets them all the goodies in the main hall, but, I bet Hufflepuffs are better cooks and have hot chocolate, toasted marshmallows, and cozier blankets in the dorms.

I’m pretty sure I’m a Muggle. I’ve slept in a closet under the stairs my whole life, although well fed. Does the Sorting Hat never send some particularly talented and beautiful child home? “You were meant to be loved by your parents, to help with the dishes, and someday become a crafter of furniture?”

Ravenclaw with a nod towards Gryffindor, I think.

And, like Katherine, I would not help a loved one bury the body. I’m not sure I could even do that for one of my kids.

More on topic: Belle, you’re absolutely right that I had not noticed the assumption that Harry Potter has to be the hero. A default sexism does indeed seem to be part of HPMOR, and apparently a part of me as well.

However! I like the Hermione in HPMOR — much more than I like the Harry Potter: she’s a much better human being by my moral standards, no matter how much the author of HPMOR might disagree. I don’t think making her the slytherian rationalist would have improved the story: most likely Harry would become as secondary to the story as Ron.

When I was that age, I’d probably have been sorted Gryffindor: arrogant prick from an academic but neither rich nor “old” family, with an acute sense of fairness (well, as far as I perceived it of course, see arrogant prick).

Now I’d go with none of the above. Which brings me to something curious/disappointing about the politics of HP (I say this as someone who loves the books in general): there is no political left. There are those defending the kinda-sorta liberal establishment, and then there are the reactionaries and fascists who want to overthrow it. But there is no organized opposition to it from the left, whether viewed as a positive or negative by the main characters. There are individual instances of questioning how things are run (Hermione – to me the true hero of the books anyway – whose stance comes from being an outsider; and Mr. Weasley come to mind), but nothing organized or sustained.

Hmm, political left in Harry Potter. I could certainly see it entirely within the wizard world: Why are some wizards rich, and others poor, in an even more arbitrary and resource-unconstrained system than the muggle one? What makes it harder to develop into a genuninely egalitarian movement is the fact that it’s a world in which a tiny minority has an inborn power to do magic. I mean, the Dungeons & Dragons movie [shudder] had the magician queen blithely declare that the people of “Magicianland” were all equal whether they were magicians or not, but obviously didn’t bother to consider the possible complications.

On the other hand, I like the idea of a non-reactionary resistance movement. True Gryffindor / Deep Hufflepuff / whatever, an intrepid band of rebels who magically provide food and medicine to muggle shelters, intervene in drought-stricken regions, apparate people out of burning buildings, etc, all while staying one step ahead of the wizard world authorities, who obviously disapprove of that sort of thing.

> The only pure Gryffindor in the main group is Ron, whose primary characteristic is loyalty

Odd statement, since “loyalty” is pretty much the by-word of Hufflepuff. Come to think of it, it’s sort of interesting that the trio of protagonists are all Griffiodors who could have been in another house. Ron could be a Hufflepuff, Hermione a Ravenclaw, and Harry a Slytherin. Ron’s perspective on the issue is pretty obvious (so is the Hat’s, it says, “Ah, another Weasley. Well, I know just what to do with you.”). Harry’s perspective the readers get to see first-hand. Do the books ever mention what went on between Hermione and the hat? It’s clear from what the hat says that something she said (or thought, rather) persuaded it to choose Griffindor.

As for me, probably Ravenclaw, maybe Hufflepuff. (Though that’s me today, at 11 it would have been a toss-up between Ravenclaw and Slytherin.)

Adam – thanks! So that’s

Gryffindor: “the brave at heart”, “the bravest”, “the bravest and the boldest”
Ravenclaw: “those of wit and learning”, “the cleverest”, “those of sharpest mind”
Slytherin: “cunning folk [who] use any means,/To achieve their ends”, “those of great ambition”, “only pure-blood wizards/Of great cunning”
Hufflepuff: “just and loyal/[…] true,/And unafraid of toil”, “hardworkers”, “the rest”.

That’s really interesting. No surprises on the Ravenclaw front – JKR quite likes geniuses (Dumbledore, Tom Riddle) but she’s not terribly interested in clever people. I’d misremembered Gryffindor’s attributes as being something to do with being just & true & loyal; in fact it’s all about bravery – or wanting to be brave, which would let Ron and Neville in. Not sure about Hermione, though.

But it’s with the other two houses that the goalposts really start creaking. Slytherins are cunning, then they’re ambitious, then they’re cunning again and pure-bloods. That really has the air of authorial afterthought (maybe ambition‘s not so bad… really should have mentioned the pureblood thing…). And poor old Hufflepuff! They start out with all the ethical virtues plus hard work, then they’re relegated to hard work and finally to “the rest” – everyone who isn’t particularly brave, clever or cunning. (Which presumably should make it the biggest house in the school.)

Phil,

I still think the Rowlingverse is a bit jerrybuilt, though; you don’t feel she had any great curiosity to find out how this world worked.

That’s kind of what I was getting at in my final paragraph in #48, though I would amend this slightly–Rowling didn’t have any great curiosity to work out how the world worked, because in books 1-3 there wasn’t, at least not in any that was relevant to the stories she was telling us through Harry’s eyes, any wizarding world at all. I mean, sure, Diagon Alley and Cornelius Fudge and Azkaban Prison, but still–it was beyond him. Hogwarts was all that mattered (and Hogwarts, of course, was a glorious creation!). From books 4 onward, though, the wizarding world beyond Hogwarts became progressively more connected to the whole structure of Harry’s stories, and thus the fact that Rowling herself hadn’t given much thought to it–and, I think, when push came to shove, actually didn’t want to tell the kind of stories which obliged that she think about it, even though that’s where her tale ultimately led anyway–starts getting troublesome.

the first quarter of the first book is pure Dahl, and Dahl in the larky “let’s see what happens next” mode of Marvellous Medicine or Giant Peach, rather than the more worldly and moralising tone of Charlie or Matilda.

Very true, though I would argue that the Dahlesque tone continues into the second book, and even into the third.

For what it’s worth, HPMOR is written entirely by Eliezer Yudkowsky. For some reason he chose the pen name Less Wrong when he started, but that stab at authorial anonymity didn’t last long.

YOU TAKE THAT BACK RUSSELL ARBEN FOX! Everybody knows book 5 handles the love subplots the best and has some of the best writing of all. The ill-fated Hogsmeade date? Priceless. Just because the immediate villain in 5 is weak, (it’s all downhill after the “I must not tell lies” episode) doesn’t mean the writing is overall bad. It’s book 2 that’s the most poorly written.

bill benzon@34

Actually, I think Yudkowsky has said he hasn’t even read the whole series. He set out to (i) write a story that would serve as an exposition of his ideas about rationality and simultaneously (ii) write the most-reviewed (which is a proxy for most-read) fanfic on fanfiction.net. (He’s got a bit of a competitive streak.)

David (and Anderson too),

YOU TAKE THAT BACK RUSSELL ARBEN FOX! Everybody knows book 5 handles the love subplots the best and has some of the best writing of all.

Hey, I said Order of the Phoenix had a lot of stuff going for it, didn’t I? In particular, Hermione was never better written than in book five (rather than being Harry’s ever faithful crutch to lean upon, she pushes back at his constant moodiness; the dark side of her busy-bodyness, which had always been played for laughs–usually at Ron’s expense–in the first couple of books is brought back and given the full treatment, as she is confronted with both Luna Lovegood and Dolores Umbridge). But I’m sorry, I stand by judgment: the book just wastes time, throwing around all sorts of never-developed plot points; the number of guns which don’t go off in that book could arm a small militia. And the Sorting Hat’s song is itself a tip-off; Rowling has grabbed a hold of tiger of a plot–a rising civil war between wizards!–and the most she can do is clumsily ride it. I like OotP very much (and I would argue the film adaptation is actually the best of all the HP films), but if I have to choose a wink link out of the seven, five is it. (Second weakest is The Chamber of Secrets, I’ll give you that.)

Perhaps this hopelessly naive of me, but I’m helping them do the right thing.

The best guess says that HPMOR!Harry is the Horcrux which is why he acts, in every way, like a memory-wiped Tom Riddle given his upbringing, not like Harry Potter given his upbringing.

The author put out a loud plea for everyone to please not try to judge Hermione’s character arc until it’s over, which kinda implies it’s not over. Though he might have been joking when he said Hermione would come back as an alicorn princess.

When Rowling came up with Quidditch, she wasn’t trying to devise a magical sport with sensible, playable rules. She was trying to devise a game which combined the legal violence and variety of body types seen in Rugby with the incomprehensible rules and silly vocabulary of Cricket, because Rugby and Cricket are what you get in an English boarding school story.

She was trying to devise a game which combined the legal violence and variety of body types seen in Rugby with the incomprehensible rules and silly vocabulary of Cricket, because Rugby and Cricket are what you get in an English boarding school story.

That makes 100% sense, thank you. (Though maybe it’s obvious to English readers? American here.)

But even with that explanation, I still hate all the quidditch scenes; they have all the boredom of play-by-play commentary, applied to the absurd spectacle of like 9 people trying to score 10 points a pop while the seeker can win the game in a single catch.

Although I guess now that I think of it, the one where Luna becomes the announcer is actually really good. Lays bare the absurdity of sports commentary.

I feel like I’m better at picking fights than I am at scheming, toil, or pure abstract thought, so it’s Gryffindor for me!

Amends is the HP fanfic I recommend a lot. It’s Hermione’s POV, starting immediately after the end of the war, and it addresses:
* wizard reproductive rates
* the magical job market
* Harry’s and Ron’s flaws, which mostly cut along loyalty to the Weasleys and disrespect for Hermione’s skills
* database design
* use of Polyjuice Potion for sexual experimentation
* the virtues of Slytherin witches

and more. I love it. Unfinished, though.

Barry: exactly!

@Asteele, thanks for the clarification. I don’t have a strong opinion as to the likelihood of true AI being created and becoming dangerous, because frankly I’ve hardly thought about it (beyond watching a couple of silly SF movies). But I’ve been influenced by (among others) Kevin Drum to put “true AI is on the way and we don’t know what will happen afterwards” on the list of “things that seem weird to me but that seem possible to at least some smart people who appear non-crazy.”

(sorry to all again for the off topicness)

L33tminion @89 – well, of course part of Rowling’s point was that virtually any character could be in any House; that a character’s choices were more powerful than any inborn tendency. Virtually every character of significant interest is someone who had reasons to end up in a different House, but didn’t. Dumbledore and Snape, of course. Sirius, who consciously rejects his family’s Slytherin tradition out of loathing. Peter Pettigrew, who idolizes James and Sirius but is himself a notorious coward. Lupin, whose patient Hufflepuffian temperament masks an inner conflict between courage and self-loathing (in which courage seems to ultimately win out).

The only undeniable Gryffindor I can think of in the series? Hagrid.

“The only undeniable Gryffindor I can think of in the series? Hagrid.”

Hagrid is a Dangerous maniac! The fact that he was allowed near children is criminal negligence on Dumbledore’s part.

MPAV @121 – Ah, but “dangerous” is part of the appeal for Gryffindors ;) That’s pretty much why I could never be one, I’m way too risk-averse.

(It strikes me that it’s kind of a bad idea for the school to put all the “daring” kids in one House. Seems like a recipe for disciplinary problems – many of the Gryffindors seem to have a distinctly bad influence on each other…)

124- mine too, and perfectly cast in the films.

@dn,
Are you not familiar with how schools work? Of course it’s a bad idea. But TRADITION! See also, football teams.
@Russell Book 5 is better than Book 2 because Hermione is mostly petrified for a good chunk of Book 2.

Dave @127 – touche.

(I’m also with you on Book 5 vs 2. Number 2 has always been my least favorite, but now that you mention that about Hermione I finally realize why. 5 is kind of hard to judge: definitely sprawls too much, but its good points are really good.)

Could any philosophers or other qualified individuals advise us on whether it makes sense to suppose that magical ability is hereditary? My naive view of ‘magic’ is that it is the cause of supernatural events, i.e. events that cannot be explained using our received scientific knowledge because such events contradict some axiom thereof. But if it turns out that there’s a ‘magic gene’ (or some combination of genes that might produce magical ability; it really doesn’t matter), then does magic not have a naturalistic cause?
In a related question, to what extent is it meaningful to call a unicorn or a hippogriff a “magical creature”? Is a magical creature just a creature that muggles think is mythical?

One of the few who would be a Gryffindor here, I think, just because I lack the intellectual rigor to be a Ravenclaw, the work ethic to be a Hufflepuff, and the cunning to be a Slytherin. Combine that with my combative attitude and I’m basically in Gryffindor.

On the subject of HPMOR… does anyone have trouble drawing a bead on what the narrative is trying to tell us?

Most of the time, I am deeply convinced that its all about how Harry is right and the fucked-up society run by fucked-up people he lives in is wrong and we should all embrace hyper-rationality as espoused by an eleven-year-old polymath. He’s the kind of hyper-competent protagonist you expect to find in, say, a military sci-fi paperback with a Baen logo on it.

But… well, some of the time I’m wondering if the narrative isn’t subtly implying that Harry is a big huge idiot who both isn’t nearly as smart as he thinks he is and still needs a lot of seasoning. He understands the scientific method all right, and has a basic grounding in philosophy. But he doesn’t seem to have more than the most superficial grounding in the social sciences or in political economy. (This actually seems realistic; a lot of people who are way, way into the hard sciences seem to regard the social sciences with either contempt or bafflement.) The conversations Harry has with Quirrell read very much like a freshman poli-sci major who thinks his ideas are revolutionary and ground-breaking being ruthlessly manipulated by a politician who actually, as opposed to just theoretically, understands how people and systems work. When Harry seriously considers whether a benign dictatorship is an optimal solution (with little thought given as to failure states or the warping effects that the ancillary structures a dictatorship requires to function has on a society) its very “guy in a dorm room thinks he just solved politics forever.”

(His parents, by the way, were absolutely right to try and keep Ayn Rand away from him.)

But then it goes back to Harry being awesome and everyone else being wrong and dumb, and I just don’t know.

It would also be nice if Eliezer had stretched out his timeline a bit. Harry is still eleven, and despite his very petulant grousings about how unfair it is that he isn’t treated like a fully paid-up adult, there’s a reason eleven-year-olds aren’t given full agency over their lives. It would have killed him to extend this out into later years a bit?

Combining the two threads, it was interesting that Harry in HPMOR didn’t know a bit of real-world science that was relevant to the argument he was making about magical genetics. It wasn’t just missed either, the narrative says that “crossing over” of chromosomes makes the situation more complicated but he knows nothing about that. It’s a nice bit of realism to have your supergenius character ignorant of something.

Gryffindor all the way. I’m a born hero.

@Murc That’s my take as well. With the recent Hermione plot twist, I definitely fear its more of the Harry is the big hero who will save the day. That said, I think fundamental tension about where the plot is going, when combined with a solid ending, can be a great thing. That’s why the series still has me. I suspect I’ll be disappointed, but I’m mostly enjoying the journey, so that’s okay.

I completely agree on expanding things across multiple years, but I’m guessing they couldn’t figure out a structure for that.

I think this also gets to why the writing has slowed down substantially. I think there’s a lot of conflicting forces at work and with edits to prior pieces being troublesome actually getting to a good ending is pretty hard.

Murc @ 135:

But… well, some of the time I’m wondering if the narrative isn’t subtly implying that Harry is a big huge idiot who both isn’t nearly as smart as he thinks he is and still needs a lot of seasoning.

So, same as in Rowling’s treatment, then.

Kinda stunned there are so mant people in the set (reads crooked timber) (reads HPMOR). I kind of expected it to be Belle (who reads everything), me, and maybe 1-2 more ….

Well, this thread alone has added one more (me). My impression so far is that Harry is an insufferable prick, and I haven’t even got to Ron and Hermione.

I’ve actually only read the first Harry Potter book. I didn’t like what I suppose are the Roald Dahl elements–though I can’t imagine Dahl so emphatic about the plain superiority of some group that’s putting one over on the mundanes–which I didn’t like either. Speaking of Stephenson, what the description of wizards (from H’s uncle’s POV) in the first book really reminds me of, now that I think of it, is the monks in Anathem. I mostly assumed the book would posit magic ~ science and show m/s getting their comeuppance. (But Maguire does not have magic ~ science, more like magic ~ rhetoric at least from Lir’s POV, so maybe Rowling doesn’t either.)

It occurs to me though that in the Magic Treehouse series, the older brother is Ravenclaw (always wants to look things up in books and make methodical plans before he’ll brave the real world) and his younger sister is Gryffindor (always telling her brother to look up from his books and experience things). (So far the heroine of the books is Morgan Le Fay so there might be an idea there.)

I second the recommendation for _Amends, or Truth and Reconciliation_– it’s centered on a brilliant Hermione for the year after the end of canon. I’m hoping it will be finished, but it’s solidly worth reading as it is.

Part of the moral center of HPMOR is children’s rights. Eliezer hate’s Snape’s bullying and Hagrid’s carelessness, and Dumbledore’s failure to be a good administrator.

Unfortunately, HPMOR compresses the social hierarchy (low-status characters from canon pretty much fall out of the story) and has little about non-humans.

I’m a huge Slughorn fan. I believe he’s true Slytherin, and Death Eaters are a bunch of nitwittedly idealistic faux Slytherin poseurs.

Wizards like being wizards. They want to putter along in their half-assed low tech pre-modern illegible fashion, and not take on the huge unnecessary job of ruling billions of muggles. All that’s needed is enough magic to prevent big wars. (This suggests that there are few wizards living in conflict zones, which requires some back story I can’t figure out.)

I wouldn’t at all mind a spin-off fic where muggle/wizards relations are handled more convincingly. I’m convinced that muggles really know a good bit about the existence of wizards, but don’t talk about it.

In re Hermione in HPMOR– I’m not crazy about her, but the relevant difference between her and Harry is that she (like the vast majority of people) don’t have huge innate ambitions. For what it’s worth, Eliezer makes it clear that she’s the moral brakes that Harry desperately needs. Not a job I want, but Hermione’s character has developed in interesting ways. I’m wondering about a transhumanist ending for her and Harry.

I find the Harry/Quirrell relationship deeply squicky, and I’m not talking about sex. Quirrell is almost certainly very bad news, and Harry (thinks? there may be some magic involved) he’s bonded to Quirrell because Quirrell the only one Harry can talk with easily.

I can’t resist conflating this thread with

fanac (?) in a different mythology. What will Slytherin sympathisers get up to when they reach their majority…

Well, well. Went onto the Pottermore site for an official ruling, as many people on here seem to have done, and have been put into Gryffindor. That’ll learn me; not sure if the main issue is my self-awareness or their algorithms. I suppose someone has to be Percy Weasley…

Ugh. As a Hufflepuffian, I must contest Rowlings narrative logic. She sees only a battle between good and evil, whereas as a down to earth badger boy, I see things from a temporally much longer, and ethically more nuanced perspective.

Hufflepuff is the house of spring, of Romance and the sunrise.

Gryffindor is of course the house of summer, of comedy and the shadowless noontide.

Ravenclaw is the house of autumn, of tragedy and the sunset.

Slytherin is the house of winter, of irony and the dark midnight.

Seen from my perspective, the battle between Gryffindors and Slytherins is pure idiocy, and arises from your simplistic natures. Poor creatures fighting a stupid Manichean battle over nothing at all. Because as both Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs know, both the noon and the midnight will pass. The great cycles turn, and it is in fact the great cycles that constitute truth. We (Huffs and Ravens both) know this because complexity is baked into our Weltanschauungen.

You poor Gryffs and Slythers (and Rowlings, it seems), see only black and white. We see the whole of the prismatic spectra, though from opposite ends.

I thought the wizards basically already did rule the world. They can rewrite the UK Prime Minister’s memories, can’t they? Is there any reason to think that any other muggle leader is less vulnerable to them?

The wizards don’t seem to be pushing the world that they rule to maximum capacity. They aren’t living on magic plantations with muggle slaves (though maybe they did?). They aren’t having muggles doing the hard labor of building magic rocket ships so they could rule time and space like Time Lords (maybe Voldemort would if he won?).

My explanation is that they’re afraid of doing anything that might result in shifting power among wizards. If I’m a wizard, nothing is going to frighten me more than the possibility that other wizards will mind-rape me. If you have any power in the wizarding world, that sort of thing has to be your primary concern. Exploiting muggle labor is too much of a distraction, perhaps even a vulnerability.

I thought it was pretty clear that Rowling/Dumbledore/Harry hated the Dementors, Azkaban, the wizarding justice system, and the basic barbarisms like that. I’m not sure if there was any explicit connection made between the wizarding world’s habit (even among the good guys) of deceiving and mind controlling muggles and the ease Voldemort has in subverting magical institutions, though that’s fairly obvious.

re:sorting, Ravenclaw just because wizarding politics is even more annoying than muggle politics. Feeling obligated to pick a side when Gryffindor and Slytherin squabble would get really irritating.

On reflection, it kind of seems to me like Rowling’s four-sided adjectival descriptions of the House traits are actually cover for a much simpler classification on two axes:

Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs are noble do-gooders, Slytherins and Ravenclaws aren’t.
(Substitute “preachy busybodies” if you are in one of the latter two.)
Gryffindors and Slytherins are daring adventurers, Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws aren’t.
(Substitute “inconsiderate troublemakers” if etc.)

Ravenclaw is supposedly the House of clever people, but the actual Ravenclaws in the books mostly aren’t noticeably smarter than the rest; they just tend to be solipsists or wallflowers or otherwise aloof. Hence why Ravenclaw is (as I think someone noted somewhere way up the thread) the most ill-developed House; they are the most un-Gryffindorish, and such alien beings are likely not to feature much in such a Gryffindor-centric story. (G and S are natural antagonists, G and H natural allies, but G and R just kind of ignore each other.)

Harry and company’s best friends outside of Gryffindor seem to be the pompous-but-likeable Hufflepuffs like Ernie Macmillan or Susan Bones, while the main group tend not to match up well with Ravenclaws (see: Cho Chang, Marietta Edgecombe, Michael Corner, Padma Patil). The exception is Luna, whose unconventionality makes her sympathetic rather than cold-seeming. Luna is also distinctive in that her dedication to the DA, more than anyone else’s, is based on intense personal loyalty to Harry and company rather than interest in the actual activity.

(Yep, upon review I’m still a Ravenclaw, although now I have delusions of Hufflepuff too. Still no great desire to be a Gryffindor, though. In hobbit terms, I’m distinctly un-Tookish; would like to be a Brandybuck, probably am more realistically a Baggins.)

@Sumana 144:

Basically Ron as of chapter 5 wasn’t just not husband material, or not boyfriend material, he wasn’t really friend material. Not to say that the downsides can’t be addressed and given new prominence from a different point of view. But one of the things I do want from fanfic is a feel that the piece covers in an interesting manner even the characters it doesn’t particularly like. If Ron’s flaw is loyalty, he should at least be showing some loyalty to Hermione and her troubles.

I’ve got no trouble breaking them up, but I do want a feel for what she saw in him in the first place.

Alexander Hamilton–Slytherin
James Madison–Ravenclaw
George Washington–Gryffindor
Thomas Jefferson–Hufflepuff

Greg, I’ll think about that!

Hence why Ravenclaw is (as I think someone noted somewhere way up the thread) the most ill-developed House; they are the most un-Gryffindorish

So it’s not (pace the Sorting Hat) Hufflepuff that takes ‘the rest’, it’s Ravenclaw. If, deep down, you answer No to “want to have adventures?” and “want to make the world a better place?”, then your role in this school is (just) to read books and learn stuff. Bor-ring! (As I said earlier on, JKR is fascinated by geniuses but doesn’t seem to have any interest in clever people, or in writing them in an interesting or convincing way – along with team games, political economy, criminal justice, magic, boarding schools etc.)

OK, so why isn’t Hermione in Hufflepuff?

“that JKR wants us to realize that Dumbledore’s plan failed in spirit”

Just curious how you think he failed? Didn’t his plan succeed or did I miss something?

Thank you Z! I will have to think about all of that.

Phil @171 – It’s kind of hard for me to suss out what Rowling thinks of clever people; on the one hand she seems to not have much to say about them, on the other she rather seems like one herself given the evidence of the books (much longer on clever humor than on philosophical nuance).

It may be instead that she really just doesn’t get introverts. (How is it that the only way she could think of to make a Ravenclaw sympathetic was to make her a space case who gets bullied all the time?) Or it may be that she wants to write a ripping good adventure yarn and it’s hard to do that when your characters just want to read a book or play Dungeons and Dragons all evening.

I think in the case of Hermione it’s very much a case of her being consciously written by Rowling as a younger version of herself. She really wants Hermione to reflect herself, but also naturally portrays Hermione a little more idealistically than she would another character. In the first book there was a theme that Hermione really wants to be more like Harry, which was pretty quickly resolved by Hermione’s casting off her aversion to rule-breaking and risk-taking whenever she judges it morally important (which is whenever it really matters, her being the smartest and most perceptive and all). Hence, a Gryffindor. (I’m being a little uncharitable here, of course. Hermione is certainly more complex than this. But I think it is reasonably true.)

Z: Harry did not succeed by virtue of being a carefully honed weapon, he succeeded because he cared enough for others to face death for them. Not flight from it, as Vol de Mort tried, not try to dominate it by power and knowledge, as Dumbledore did, but face it as a simple human being.

This. It’s a wonderful framing, and it articulates something I’ve never been able to put clearly into words: the reason why the ending was so powerful for me, and made me reassess the whole series.

The first Harry Potter came out when my kids were young/old enough to enjoy it (10 or 11). I read the first five more or less in parallel with them, getting over my urge to say “Well, it isn’t Lord of the Rings” long enough to recognize that JKR certainly knew how to make me keep turning pages. But I got bored with #5 and didn’t read the rest.

Years later, my by-then-grown daughter dragged me to the first Deathly Hallows movie and I ended up liking it a lot. (I’m not much of a movie person, to put it mildly.) Wanting to pick up what I’d missed, I went back and read 5, 6, and 7, then immediately reread the whole series all in a row. (And I’ve rereread 7 a couple of times since then.)

It’s possible — see this long thread — to pick away at the books from any number of directions (I’m reminded of how much unhappiness there was over The Silmarillion when it came out, a lot of which could have been boiled down and translated as “It isn’t LOTR”). But here we all are talking about it, and besides, as Belle said, she is free to tell me my 7-book series, which unites all the children of the world in the love of reading, is conceptually flawed as well

[Ravenclaw, at least according to Pottermore. But I flipped a coin on more questions than just the coin flip, and I’m the last person to be unmurky enough to belong to just one box.]

she rather seems like one herself given the evidence of the books (much longer on clever humor than on philosophical nuance).

Depends what you mean by ‘clever’ – given the second half of your sentence we may be violently agreeing. (Calling a spell ‘Wingardium Leviosa’ is clever in one sense and not in another.) I guess I’m saying she doesn’t have much time for the Life of the Mind, except in those rare, freakish cases where it develops to the point of changing the world. So Dumbledore and Voldemort are yer proper mages, but all the other characters who display an interest in thinking about things are either figures of fun (Flitwick, Xenophilus Lovegood) or hiding something (Lockhart, Snape). The key qualification for coming out well as a teacher seems to be “good with animals” (Hagrid, Lupin, Dumbledore).

I think we’re violently agreeing. Rowling’s cleverness is the kind that comes up with character names like Voldemort or Remus Lupin, rather than the kind that can make any sense of the time-travel paradox at the end of book three. As I say – to really be a good guy in Rowling’s universe you have to become an honorary Gryffindor, or at least a Hufflepuff (either by being unaccountably Sorted into one of those Houses, or by acting in such a manner that you should have been). For instance, as I recall there are a couple of Ravenclaws who are DA members in the later books. Their personalities are entirely blank. The only thing we know about them is that they’re in the DA, which ought to make them Gryffindors by default; there’s no discernable reason why Rowling would make them Ravenclaws except so that the forgotten House would be represented. Most of the named Ravenclaws who actually have personalities clash rather spectacularly with the Gryffindors. (There are some seemingly really smart characters who are unambiguous good guys, like McGonagall or Kingsley, but the salient characteristic that makes them good guys is still their moralism and their daring rather than their smarts.)

Rowling’s just not much of an “idea” person. Because she has no interest in Big Ideas beyond her basic moral messages, there’s no reason for her to portray those ideas, and hence no reason for smart people to exist in her stories except as a mechanism for exposition, or as a deus ex machina whenever Harry finds himself in a sticky situation.

too dim for Ravensclaw, too lazy for Hufflepuff, me for Dog Boy in the lean-to against Hagrid’s shack..

parts of HPMOR are excellent, but the Hermione offing rather soured it. He is promising a grand reconciliation of all the plot lines in 2014.

Spoken like a Gryffindor.

Being intelligent doesn’t make you a good person, but it does offer ways of being good which don’t depend on doing stuff. Look no further than the end of HPatPS, where the bold knucklehead Harry only reaches the prize thanks to Ron and Hermione thinking their way through – an effect that’s undercut rather by Hermione describing ‘her’ puzzle (correctly) as childishly simple and Ron being Ron (and never being portrayed as a chess whiz ever again). Perhaps JKR thought that having a real puzzle would involve her in too much irrelevant exposition (“You see, Harry, what Miss Grainger understood is that the angle subtended at the centre of a circle is always double the size of the angle subtended at the edge from the same two points”). But it didn’t have to be that way…

The room was full of darting, fluttering shapes. With a jolt Harry realised that they were all keys – keys, bewitched with a Flying Charm to fly around the room, fluttering like small fluttering flying things [Not as easy as it looks, this stuff.] “Numbers!” Ron called out suddenly. “They’ve all got numbers! And look, there’s a sign on the far wall…

“THE NUMBER OF THE KEY YOU SEEK
IS NOT TO BE FOUND BY INNUMERATE BOOBS
[“RUBES” in the American edition]
‘TIS THE LOWEST NUMBER EXPRESSIBLE TWICE
AS THE SUM OF A PAIR OF CUBES.”

“1729!” Hermione squealed. Harry and Ron stared blankly. “Oh, come on – obviously it’s 1729! Hasn’t either of you read… oh, never mind.”

Hermione does occasionally use her mysterious art of book-larnin’ to get the gang out of scrapes, but her expertise usually just consists of finding the page headed Here Is The Solution – and by the fourth book they’re all at it, leafing doggedly through ancient tomes until the answer jumps out, much like the Scoobies in Buffy.

Now I found time to finish reading Amends and it’s really annoying that it isn’t finished and may never be. Arg.

I took an online sorting-hat personality test. It told me that I am definitely not a Slytherin which I knew. I am basically tied between Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, but I think that I *want* to be in Gryffindor.