Sorting Hat Decisions (WAS: Harry as the Heir of Gryffindor?)

[erisedstraeh2002 <erisedstraeh2002@yahoo.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 48840

"silveroak_us" wrote:

> However, I am troubled by something. I don't know how to integrate 
> the Sorting Hat's willingness to put Harry into Slytherin at the 
> beginning of the first book, and the Sorting Hat's reiteration 
> later that Harry would have been appropriate to be placed into 
> Slytherin. <snip> One wonders at the propriety of the "Heir of 
> Gryffindor" being sorted into Slytherin House. 

Now me:

I think Dumbledore explains this at the end of CoS when he says to 
Harry:  "'You happen to have many qualities Salazar Slytherin prized 
in his hand-picked students.  His own very rare gift, 
Parseltongue ... resourcefulness...determination...a certain 
disregard for rules...Yet the Sorting Hat placed you in Griffindor.  
You know why that was.  Think.'

'It only put me in Gryffindor,' said Harry in a defeated 
voice, 'because I asked not to go in Slytherin...'

'*Exactly*,' said Dumbledore, beaming once more.  'Which makes you 
very *different* from Tom Riddle.  It is our choices, Harry, that 
show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.'"
 
A person can be born to be his/her ancestor's heir, but can chose to 
live a different life than that ancestor.  Harry has qualities that 
Slytherin would have prized, and Tom Riddle had qualities that 
Gryffindor would have prized.  So each of them could have gone the 
other way.  Riddle wasn't forced to go bad because he was the Heir of 
Slytherin - he chose to go bad (IMO, he must have had the potential 
to choose to do good if a wand with Fawkes' tail feather chose him 
when he was a young wizard).  As Mr. Ollivander told Harry in the 
wand shop when Fawkes' wand chose him, "I think we must expect great 
things from you, Mr. Potter...After all, He Who Must Not Be Named did 
great things - terrible, yes, but great."  Riddle chose to use his 
potential for greatness to do terrible things, while Harry is chosing 
to use his potential for greatness to do good things.  In this way, 
Riddle is living out his destiny as the Heir of Slytherin, and Harry 
is living out his destiny as the Heir of Gryffindor (under my 
interpretation of this theory, anyway!).  

In PS/SS, the Sorting Hat tells Harry "Slytherin will help you on the 
way to greatness" and in CoS, the Hat tells Harry "you *would* have 
done well in Slytherin."  However, note that in PS/SS, Harry was the 
one who told the Sorting Hat not to put him in Slytherin - before 
Harry brought it up, the Hat had not yet suggested an appropriate 
house for Harry.  If Harry had not opposed being placed in Slytherin, 
the issue might not have come up at all. JKR has said that she will 
be further developing the character of the Sorting Hat in future 
books.  It could be that the Hat is playing mind games with Harry to 
test his strength of conviction.  Since the Hat, which was once 
Gryffindor's hat, brings Harry a sword that once belonged to 
Gryffindor in order to help Harry kill Slytherin's basilisk, it's 
fairly clear that the Hat thinks it made the right decision regarding 
Harry's house placement.

~Phyllis