My Opinions: Hogwarts Houses

A lot of people have very strong ideas about what they think each of the Hogwarts houses is like and a lot of people feel very strongly about whichever Hogwarts house they are in. But I think that a lot of people have the wrong idea about how the house system works. I think that many people take what is written in the Harry Potter books too literally. You have to remember that what we hear in the Harry Potter books is seen through the perspective of a certain character (Harry Potter). Characters do not always see things correctly.

In the books we are told that Gryffindors are brave, Ravenclaws are smart, Slytherins are cunning and Hufflepuffs are kind. Many people take this to be the absolute truth about the Hogwarts houses. The thing is, we know that these descriptions are not always so accurate. I'll give you some examples:

• Hermione Granger was sorted into Gryffindor, but she is so smart. Shouldn't she have been in Ravenclaw?
• Peter Pettigrew was sorted into Gryffindor, but he doesn't seem very brave to me.
• Gilderoy Lockhart was sorted into Ravenclaw, but I don't think that anyone would consider him to be smart.

These are just a few examples. There are many characters who don't seem to fit into their Hogwarts houses. Some people have said that the words brave, intelligent, kind and cunning are not necessarily the traits the people in each of the houses have, but they are the traits that those characters find most important. Hermione may be very smart, but she said herself in the first book that she thinks bravery is more important that brains. Peter may not be very brave, but he admires people who are brave. Gilderoy Lockhart may not have been smart, but he values intelligence.

I think that this idea makes a lot of sense. It explains why Harry could choose to be in Gryffindor rather than Slytherin. Even if he had some qualities that were Slytherin-ish, he chose to be in Gryffindor because bravery was more important to him than cunning. It also explains why even though Neville wanted to be in Hufflepuff, he was sorted into Gryffindor. The sorting hat saw that bravery was more important to Neville than kindness. This idea also explains why relatives tend to have the same Hogwarts houses. Most families find the same traits important. Children tend to have the same opinions as their parents.

I do love this idea that the sorting hat sorts based on the traits you admire rather than the traits you possess. But, the thing is, the house system isn't perfect. The sorting hat does it's best, but it does have a few limitations. Mainly, the sorting hat cannot put Muggleborns in Slytherin (or at least it couldn't during the time Harry was at Hogwarts). This means that there are many Muggleborns who should have been in Slytherin but were instead put in another house. There is also the problem that some people fit into multiple houses equally or don't really fit into any of the houses at all. The sorting hat sorts these people as well as it can, but it can be wrong sometimes.

And there is one more problem. This problem is that different people define things differently. "Bravery" probably doesn't mean to you exactly what it means to me. Different people have different ideas about what makes a person intelligent. So my question is this. How does the sorting hat determine which traits are most important to a person when every person defines words like "kind" and "cunning" differently?

There are two possible answers to this question that I can think of. The first is that the sorting hat uses the same definitions of bravery, kindness, cunning and intelligence for every person it sorts. These very specific definitions of the four house traits would probably have been determined by the house founders. For example, the sorting hat sorts people into Gryffindor if they fit Godric Gryffindor's definition of bravery. I don't really think this is true, however. I don't really have a specific reason for disliking this theory, it just feels wrong to me. The house founders lived a long time ago. Are their old ideas really relevant to the characters in Harry Potter's era or to us today?

The second solution to the problem of different definitions is that the sorting hat does not use the same definitions of the house traits for every single person it sorts. Instead, it uses the definitions inside each person's head. The way an individual student defines bravery or intelligence will be used to determine which house that individual student fits into best. I like this theory a lot. It means that our Hogwarts houses don't really define us. We define our houses.

Of course, this is just the way I see the Hogwarts houses. There are many, many different interpretations, and yours is really just as good as mine.