Pettigrew & Sorting Hat & Only Children

[Jamie Lipton]

No: HPFGUIDX 37950

Greg wrote:

<I think the common assumption among people is that the Sorting Hat
takes what it sees and makes a decision based on that.  Is it not at
all possible that the Sorting Hat's job for people like Peter is to
force them to grow as people.>

We do see evidence of this in Harry's struggle with the Sorting Hat.  It
wants to place him in Slytherin so that he will accomplish great things,
even though it doesn't seem like Harry is a very ambitious sort of person.

The Sorting Hat seems to have a bias when it comes to families.  Parvati and
Padma are in different houses, but generally, students are in the same house
as their other family members.  Look at the Weasleys - all in Gryffindor.
Percy Weasley (and I'm sure the Percy-lovers on the list will come running
to his defence) doesn't exactly scream "Gryffindor"...he has the
intelligence of a Ravenclaw, the work ethic of a Hufflepuff, and the
ambition of a Slytherin - and he really doesn't seem very intrepid or brave.
I'm sure the Sorting Hat had a difficult time with him.  But his brothers
(and parents?) had been in Gryffindor, and he may have consciously asked the
Hat to be placed there.  Or the hat may have drawn on his family history
because it was having difficulty placing him.

The tendency of the Sorting Hat to sort by family is also apparent with all
the Slytherin families.  And the fact that it originally wanted to put Harry
in Slytherin makes me think he had relatives in that house - possibly
Slytherin himself.  Of course, he also had relatives in Gryffindor, so that
could go either way.

My point: if family history is heavily weighted in the Sorting equation, it
may help to explain people like Peter Pettigrew and Neville Longbottom, who
aren't as good at magic as their peers, and (whether as a result of that or
some other reason) don't seem brave enough to be in Gryffindor.  My bet is
that both Peter and Neville had at least one parent in Gryffindor.
Actually, my hope is that Peter had a sibling in Gryffindor, which brings me
to another issue (meriting a new paragraph)...

Why do so many wizarding families seem to have only one child?  Granted, JKR
may just not have gotten around to mentioning siblings, but it seems
disproportionate.  We do know that there aren't very many pairs (or larger
groupings) of siblings at Hogwarts.  It looks like James Potter and Sirius
Black are only children, as well.  If this trend continues, the entire
British Wizarding World will have descended from Weasleys, who as far as I
can tell are the only family in canon to have more than two children.
(Correct me if I'm wrong.)

- Jamie