Equality in sorting

[ravenclawlady]

Original Yahoo! HPFG Header:
No: HPFGUIDX C7115
From: ravenclawlady
Subject: Equality in sorting
Reply To: [Yahoo! #7098] Number of students, again
Date: 8/17/00 7:10 pm  (ET)

> I think the hat might just take the 5 most
> Gryffindor-like boys in a year and put them in
> Gryffindor, take the 5 most Slytherin-like
> girls and put them in Slytherin, etc. This
> is a plausible way to account for the students
> being equally divided by house and gender.

I have only one arguement against that, and that's the fact that they're
"scanned" and sorted one at a time.

Someone with the last name of Anderson, for example, may have
qualifications for two, three or all four houses, but the hat would have
no way of knowing how he compares to his classmates. Is he one of the
most Gryffindorish? Ravenclawish?

Someone with the last name of Young, on the other hand, may have strong
leanings toward Gryffindor. But what if, by his turn, Gryffindor has
long since been filled? Will he just end up wherever there is space,
even if it's Slytherin?

Now, if the hat scanned all of the new students' heads, and began the
Sorting AFTER they've all been scanned (i.e, "Now that I've seen all your
heads, the Gryffindors are..."), I'd find that argument more plausible.


Since reading GOF, I've often wondered exactly how the founders sorted
students in the days before the Sorting Hat. Did they pick them like
picking teams? Did the four of them lay hands on the students, and read
their minds, probably fighting over some?

In either case, that sounds much more disconcerting than being sorted
by the hat. Also, the hat did not sort Harry into Slytherin, because
he was thinking (privately, he thought), "Not Slytherin." The hat took
that as asking not to be in Slytherin, and put him in Gryffindor. Would
he have been so lucky if the founders had been alive?

If he'd attended at that time, would he have had the nerve to tell
Salazar Slytherin, to his face, "I don't want to be in your House."? The
Harry at the end of GOF would, but what about that 11-year-old, nervous,
new-to-wizarding Harry at the beginning of SS/PS? Would Godric Gryffindor
have stepped in and claimed Harry for his House, or would he have ended
up in Slytherin's?

My two Galleons,

Melanie