Calvinism - SB & SS - 3rd task - Playwizard - What's scary - Halloween

[Milz]

No: HPFGUIDX 23710

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Amy Z" <aiz24 at h...> wrote:
> Milz wrote:
> 
> >I think it's because the wizarding community was dismayed that 
Sirius 
> > not only managed to fool James, Lily and Dumbledore, but he was 
> enough 
> > of a sociopath at age 11 to fool the Sorting Hat (something even 
> > Voldemort wasn't able to do).  
> 
> So in your view, the wizarding world does take a completely 
> predestinarian view of the Houses.  Couldn't they be dismayed 
because 
> he went bad *since* 11, despite being in a "good guy" house?  I'm 
> thinking of the response you see in the papers when a supposedly 
> stable, happy person commits murder.
> 

I think the wizarding world uses the House System as a way to 
categorize individuals. Hagrid's comments that all dark wizards came 
from Slytherin. The various disparaging comments about Hufflepuffs. 
The Sorting Hat looks into a person and places that person into the 
house that most closely matches his characteristics. Harry is an 
exception because he persuaded the Sorting Hat to do otherwise. But 
the Sorting Hat picked up on Harry's Slytherin-like qualities first.
In the 'real' world, I've seen people categorize an individual's 
abilities according to which university they attended. Ivy League 
grads are held in higher esteem than someone from Spongecake 
University, even if the Spongecake grad had higher scores and job 
performance ratings than the Ivy Leaguer. 

> I don't think anything about Houses has to be supposed, myself.  
> Sirius was shocking because he murdered 13 people, and for those who 
> knew more of the story, even more shocking because he betrayed his 
> best friend.  Does surprise that a Gryffindor would behave this way 
> even need to come into it?
> 

The murder of 13 people is horrific, but that doesn't explain why 
Sirius was treated differently. He was sent to Azkaban without the 
benefit of a trial, while known Death Eaters were given trials. 
(Except for Rozier, IIRC, who killed himself rather than being taken 
in alive.) Furthermore, Sirius' betrayal of his best friend is 
horrible, but what about the other Death Eaters? I assume they, too, 
betrayed friends and family. For some reason, Sirius was held to a 
different standard than the real Death Eaters. I think it's because 
the wizarding community uses the House System as a way to determine 
individual character and to anticipate/stereotype individual behavior. 
A Ravenclaw is in Ravenclaw because he is intelligent. A Gryffindor is 
in Gryffindor because he is brave. So a cowardly Gryffindor or a dumb 
Ravenclaw is unknown (or uncommon). Presumably the House System has 
been a part of the British wizarding community since the founding of 
Hogwarts when the founders sorted the students themselves. 
Dumbledore's comments to Harry in CoS and to Fudge in GoF about it's 
what a person chooses to do with their life intimates to me that 
Dumbledore's philosophy is contrary to popular wizarding thought.
 
> > However, I would only be 
> > disappointed if good doesn't triumph completely over evil. There's 
> too 
> > much leaving the door open for a sequel these days.
> 
> The end of PS/SS suggests very strongly to me that while Voldemort 
may 
> be killed (I'm betting he will), Good is not going to triumph over 
> Evil.  There is always evil and good people always have to rise up 
who 
> will challenge it.
> 

That's true that evil exists and good people must battle it. But for 
the sake of the Potter books, I hope evil (Voldemort and the Death 
Eater cult) will be terminated. The appeal of fairy tales and some 
folk tales to me is that they do "live happily ever after". I hope the 
Potterverse will end like that. I find the touch of cynicism that 
"they lived happily ever after...for now" to be over-used and tiresome 
for a 'fantasy' story.

Milz (who thinks Harry IS predestined because J.K. Rowling has mapped 
out the remaining books. <grin>)