Harry Potter question...

[ratcreature]

I've been wondering about the Sorting process. Specifically I've been wondering about the requisites for being sorted in the Slytherin house. Until OotP sorting seemed to be just based on character traits, the emphasis was definitely on the student's qualities. However that changed with the fifth book, at least if the Sorting Hat Song is credible. While Ravenclaw, and Gryffindor were still more or less characterized by the same criteria (that is the brave, bold, daring etc for Gryffindor, the most intelligent for Ravenclaw), Hufflepuff's founder was basically characterized as having no special character requirements, since she'd teach "the rest" when previously Hufflepuffs were characterized as just, loyal, true, patient, hard-workers etc. and the most drastic shift of emphasis was in the Slytherin description, where cunning was still mentioned, but the focus was on "pure ancestry" which the Hat never mentioned in the two other songs, IIRC. In them it was cunning, ambition, and ends over means approach, hunger for power that distinguished the Slytherin house.

I can sort of reconcile the original intentions of the Hufflepuff founder, as described by the Hat, with what the later Hufflepuff characteristics, as described by the Hat, are. However, according to the Hat in OotP, Salazar Slytherin intended his house to be "pure-blood" only. Yet we also know that the Hat does not sort only pure-blood wizards into Slytherin: Tom Riddle/Voldemort had a Muggle father after all, and it considered Harry for Slytherin, who, though not Muggle-born himself, had a Muggle-born mother, which I doubt Salazar Slytherin would have considered "purest ancestry," so the Hat doesn't seem too concerned about Salazar Slytherin's "pure-blood" agenda when considering potential candidates. And I don't see how it could be, after all since Hogwarts admits Muggle-born students, there have to be those among them who are cunning and ambitious etc and generally fit best with Slytherin, it certainly would be a problem, if in the current set-up they would be sorted into Hufflepuff, because the Hufflepuff founder intended once to accept "the rest" (as they might have been way back around Salazar Slytherin's and Helga Hufflepuff's time). Yet it can't be easy for Muggle-born Slytherins, considering the history and the founder of their house and some of its current members.

So what are the opinions on this problem? Are Muggle-born Slytherins very rare exceptions (I don't remember any besides Tom Riddle), and generally only pure-blood students are sorted into Slytherin? How much is the Sorting Hat bound by the initial founders, who created it for sorting, and their intentions for their respective houses anyway?

Now, as a caveat, I've only read the books once, and I'm not involved in the fandom or on any discussion lists, so this may be a well-trodden area for HP fans -- in that case maybe someone could point me into the direction of essays or previous discussion about this -- or I might have missed/forgotten/overlooked some further explanation in the books. But I'm interested in theories about how this works.

Comments

[amberfox.livejournal.com]

Well, they said in the first book that there aren't that many pure-blooded students left, so the hat may have started admitting anyone not Muggleborn who fit the rest of the qualifications, just to keep the House going.

[ratcreature]

Yeah, Slytherins would be opportunistic if there's no other option. The not-quite pureblooded Slytherin students can count themselves lucky though that they'll just have to deal with Salazar Slytherin's cranky portraits (I mean I guess they'll have pictures of their House Founder), who are probably sniping at them constantly, and not Salazar himself... ;)

[ardath_rekha]

Coming in on this way late, having just found the post doing the friends-of-friends thing...

I've wondered a lot of that myself, especially in light of some of the recent developments regarding character traits and the like.

1. Pete Pettigrew was about as cowardly a person as you could hope to meet, eventually betraying his closest and most loving friends... and yet he was sorted into Gryffindor.

2. Severus Snape does indeed seem to have a great deal of devotion to the House of Slytherin, but in fact, it seems to me that he would have more appropriately belonged in Ravenclaw, or even Gryffindor itself. In the flashbacks, and in his own behaviors, we see a man who is devoted to one of the most difficult sciences of all, potion-making, and has a real, intellectual love of it. He's also mad about defense against the Dark Arts, and is valiantly battling the Death Eaters from within their own organization, which has to take more courage than most Gryffindors possess. I might have accepted that these traits were ones that he acquired in an adult epiphany... but the flashback in OotP showed that he was always this way, even if he was sneery about "mudbloods."

3. Further, when you examine Sirius Black's behavior in that flashback, and consider his family's much-touted Pureblood ancestry... wouldn't he more accurately typify a Slytherin student?

I suppose that Rowling might be working towards the truth that all people are multifaceted, have layers, and don't always behave in the same ways... and that a lot of our changes of heart occur because one set of our personality traits has waned while another set has waxed.

But there's still so much stereotyping at work in the novels, and the sorting hat's new song did seem to play into it.

If all Death Eaters were Slytherins, wouldn't all Slytherins be suspect? And if there are Death Eaters from other Houses, then that means Voldemort is using some other criterion than Slytherin, apparently. Would former headmasters, who were members of the House of Slytherin, really cooperate with the school and against Voldemort if their goals were so closely allied?

I've often wondered if the Sorting Hat really picks a house for people based upon which house they think they'd fit in best... based upon what sorts of reputations each house had with their family, friends, and other influential people.

As I recall, in the first book, Draco commented that Slytherin was, in his estimation, the best of the houses, but the only one he would be mortified about ending up in seemed to be Hufflepuff. Similarly, for whatever reason, Hermione (who honestly seems to epitomize the Ravenclaw qualities) was more interested in the House of Gryffindor, and ended up there.

Then again, maybe the Sorting Hat secretly uses its collection of LJ Memes to figure out where they belong.

(Caveat... I've only read the books, too... not active in online Potterdom, either... but maybe that's a good thing, as it means that we're just dealing with my interpretation of straight-out-of-the-book canon here, rather than bits of fanon that have seeped into my subconscious until I mistakenly believe they're canon. Anyway, back to my hunt for your post about Alternate Universes.)

[ratcreature]

Is it really certain that Peter was Gryffindor or is it just conjecture because of his friendship with James, Sirius and Remus? I don't remember it being explicitly said from which house he was.

[ardath_rekha]

Interesting... I pretty much just assumed he was because it seems like the members of each House don't share secrets as earth-shaking as "our friend's a werewolf and we're studying to be Animagi so we can help him" with someone who might use what they know to dock their House points... or accidentally blab about it to someone else who would.

While there have indeed been signs along the way that cross-House friendships and romances can form (Harry and Cho, for instance, although again their romance was aborted in part because of the fact that she was not privy to a lot of the things going on in his life) it seems that House loyalties have a tendency to trump such things. Otherwise I would think Hermione would be more inclined to hang out with a lot of Ravenclaw girls, in preference to Harry and Ron.

I suppose another aspect of it, for me, is that Percy Weasley seems to be making a similar transformation to Pete's... more concerned with image and power and being seen in a favorable light by the right people, than with taking the more difficult paths that his parents are taking. He's sliding away from the traditional Gryffindor qualities, to his family's horror, and I've wondered if Rowling is setting us up to see him engage in a similar type of treachery as Pete's.