Housism (Amy's sermon) (and a little bit of Snape)

Tue Mar 5 23:52:39 UTC 2002

No: HPFGUIDX 36092

Amy wrote:

>BTW, I was too shy to mention it besides the automatic notification, but <blushes, looks down at toe, tracing carpet patterns> I posted an HP sermon I gave recently to the Files (HPService.doc).  Despite being [over]simplified for kids, it does pose a debatable theory, namely that JKR is going to get with the program and stop stereotyping Houses.  I'm probably wrong, but I hope not.  I use the term "Potterologist" in the intro, too.

Pausing only to note that e-Potterologist is an anagram of poltergeist too, here's my take on this question.

I think the stereotyping is done by Harry and his friends.  Some of these, such as Hagrid, are adult.

However, when it counts, the houses are set on an equal footing:

Professor McGonagall: Each house has its own distinguished history.

Dumbledore to Harry: you have many of the characteristics Salazar Slytherin valued in his hand-picked students.

The sorting hat itself stands by its assertion that Harry would have done *well* in Slytherin - the natural meaning of this is that, well, he would have done well.  The founders of Hogwarts continued to accept the hat after Slytherin himself left, suggesting a disagreement, not a battle between good and evil, and that they trusted its Slytherin element.  I don't believe this is an oversight by JKR as I believe she has mentioned the hat's role is not over.

Furthermore, house allegiance, while not forgotten, seems not to play a very great role in adult wizard life.  It's important to Draco because it's a family thing - but the Malfoys' approach to categorising sentient life is not commended to us.  The Weasleys all were, as far as we know, in Gryffindor, but we don't see Arthur or Molly setting any store by where their children are.

Crucially, Snape as a (at some level) penitent Death Eater is entrusted with Slytherin by Dumbledore.  This suggests to me that house allegiance is unrelated to dark or light wizardry: we don't get Dumbledore saying to Snape: 'Severus, please prove the genuineness of your conversion by renouncing Slytherin and all its works.'  (Nobody AFAIK has yet put forward the theory that Snape is genuinely *not* penitent but genuinely working with Dumbledore against Voldemort.  This *is* possible if Snape supports wizarding purebloodedness and other elements of V's ideology, but considers his hamfisted evil-overlord approach to be counterproductive and sees Dumbledore as the best hope for stopping him.  I don't believe it myself but I sense that as a theory it is just about worth a silly name - I suggest Yurgles.)

I think somebody has already pointed out that when Dumbledore commends Harry for his choices, it doesn't mean choosing Gryffindor over Slytherin - all he's saying is that our choices make us, and that Harry can be confident that his own choice of Gryffindor is normative for himself, whatever the hat thinks might have been.

A number of things combine to obscure this:

there is intense inter-house rivalry between Gryffindor and Slytherin, which colours Harry's view; Salazar Slytherin disapproved of accepting Muggle-borns; Voldemort was in Slytherin and is Slytherin's heir; a generation of prominent dark wizards initially bonded in Slytherin; Draco, a nasty character, is in Slytherin.

The thing that makes me think that JKR is intending that this give an impression, and that that impression is false, is the bit in COS where somebody (Lee? books not to hand as literature well-known to be incompatible with the internet) says something like 'That's two Gryffindors, a Gryffindor ghost, a Hufflepuff and a Ravenclaw.  Nobody in Slytherin has been harmed.  Can't they see where this is coming from? The *heir* of Slytherin.  The *monster* of Slytherin.  Why don't they just get rid of all the Slytherins and have done with it!' (Cheers)

This passage crystallises nearly all the above circumstantial factors, and so by implication opens the way for their eventual dismissal.

David
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