Pensieve

"I have a theory that the valued quality of each of the four Houses isn’t really about the personality of its students.

The valued quality of each of the four Houses has to do with how they perceive magic.

Stick with me a second: Hogwarts is a school to study magic. Magic as Hogwarts teaches it can be seen as many things: a natural talent, a gift, a weapon, etc.

So how you believe magic should be used will both reflect your personality and change how you handle that power.

“Their daring, nerve, and chivalry set Gryffindors apart,” Gryffindors perceive magic as a weapon. Gryffindors tend to excel in aggressive forms of magic, like offensive and defensive spells, and they are good at dueling. But a true Gryffindor knows that the power is a responsibility, and so they must always use their powers to stand up for what’s right. They are the sword of the righteous, which makes them as good at Defense Against the Dark Arts as they are at combat magic.

Hufflepuffs believe that magic is a gift and that the best gifts are to be given away. Hufflepuffs, “loyal and just,” would naturally abhor the idea of jealously guarding magic or using it to hurt someone else. So Hufflepuffs share their magic to benefit of Muggles, like the Fat Friar, to protect the overlooked, like Newt Scamander with his creatures, or to oppose those who would use magic to torment and bully, like the Hufflepuffs who stood with the DA and the battle of Hogwarts.

Slytherins are the opposite: they believe their magic is a treasure that they have been entrusted to protect. The Slytherin fascination with purity, with advantage, with cunning and secrecy–all of which were perverted by the Death Eaters–comes from the idea that people with magic in their veins have been given something special that it is their duty to protect at all costs. And perhaps they aren’t entirely wrong: power in the wrong hands can be dangerous. And power interfering at will with Muggle affairs is a gross presumption that could turn the course of history. Though the series shows some of the worst that Slytherin can be, “evil,” is not a natural Slytherin tendency. “Cautious,” is.

Ravenclaws believe that magic is an art form, one that is beautiful and should be appreciated and studied for its own sake. If “wit beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure,” then asking what magic is for is useless. It’s more important to immerse oneself in magic for its own sake. Ravenclaws push the boundaries of magic to see if they can, hence Hermione’s spell experiment on the DA coins being dubbed a Ravenclaw quality, but like Luna Lovegood in the pursuit of extraordinary creatures: they can also be content to plumb the depths of what already exists.

So while you can see where personalities will overlap over Houses, perhaps in Sorting we should be asking ourselves less what we think we are and more what we think we believe.

The world of Harry Potter holds that the Sorting Hat sorts a child based on what traits they possess. The brave go to Gryffindor, the intellectual to Ravenclaw, the cunning to Slytherin and the hardworking to Hufflepuff (or, if you believe the Sorting Hat in The Prisoner of Azkaban, Hufflepuff just gets the leftovers). However, as I was rereading the series, I came across a lot of holes in that line of thinking.

First of all, many of the kids sorted don’t actually have the traits espoused by their heads. 11-year-old Neville isn’t brave at all; he’s even scared of his own shadow. 11-year-old Draco isn’t anywhere near cunning (basically alienating Harry Potter, the wizarding world’s biggest celebrity). And don’t get me started on Crabbe and Goyle.

Now Neville definitely becomes brave, and you could argue that Draco develops cunning down the line. But the point is, they didn’t have those traits the moment they were sorted. So perhaps the Sorting Hat can somehow predict their future? Or read into their minds to see which traits they’ll develop if nurtured. That’s certainly possible, but how can you possibly tell which traits an 11-year-old will have? They’re basically the age of a 5th grader. And let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that in the wizarding world personalities are somehow fixed at the age of 11 (unlike in the real world). Then shouldn’t the data the Sorting Hat collects be extraordinarily valuable to help ensure your students grow up to be healthy individuals? You wouldn’t use it to assign a student their dormitory and then never touch that info again.

And that’s clearly also not true. Peter Pettigrew was sorted into Gryffindor and he never became brave. In fact his character is literately defined by its cowardice. Similarly, Marcus Flint gets held back a year. What’s cunning about that?

And that’s not even addressing the biggest issue with the above theory (and the biggest thing in favor of my alternate explanation): students’ choice matters. Probably the biggest insight into how the Sorting Hat works is what Harry tells his son Albus – “The Sorting Hat takes your choice into account.”

And we see this not only with Harry (who chose Gryffindor over Slytherin) but also I’d wager Hermione (who chose Gryffindor over Ravenclaw), as well as anyone who’s family traditionally gets sorted into a house. It’s hard to imagine every single Weasley being a Gryffindor or every single Malfoy a Slytherin, if your choice was determined by your personality (and not your choice).

So clearly there’s an issue with the standard idea of how the Sorting Hat sorts. But then, if it doesn’t sort based on inner traits, how does it decide who goes where? I’d argue is sorts a child based on their values. Specifically, a child who believes Bravery and Courage are the most important traits would go to Gryffindor, where as a child who values Intellectualism and Love of Learning above all else would go to Ravenclaw. The key difference is that a child need not possess that trait, but merely value it.

This explains how Draco, completely inept at becoming cunning (but growing up in a family where it is prized), can be sorted into Slytherin while Hermione (who is an intellectual, but wishes to become like her heroes in Gryffindor) can choose to become a Gryffindor. Additionally, this neatly explains how polarized the houses are towards one another. If you take all the kids that value bravery and stick them into one house (an environment where everyone else also values bravery above all else), you’ll start to see them all become brave (and, in some cases, to the exclusion of the other traits).

If this theory is true, it also shows how badly the house system needs to be revamped (to stress inter-house friendships and development of all 4 major traits). But that’s a whole ‘nother discussion."