Sorting Neville/working House Elves/Greek Mythology/Half-blood in Slytherin

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 55210

"Briony Coote" wrote:

<< Since herbology is his best subject, he would be more suited for 
Hufflepuff. >>

Andrea Ra replied:

<< I personally don't subscribe to the idea that certain subjects are 
traits of any particular House. Just because the head of house is the 
professor of a certain subject at this point in time doesn't mean 
that that's *always* been the case or that there's any particular 
House-wide affinity for the subject. So just because Sprout teaches 
Herbology doesn't mean it's "the Hufflepuff subject" any more than 
Transfiguration is necessarily the Gryffindor subject or Potions the 
Slytherin subject. That's a fanon construction. >>

And I quote Andrea's reply so that I could make a forbidden "I agree" 
post.

Faith wrote:

<< I always assumed [Neville and the Sorting Hat] had a discussion 
about where he wanted, and Neville was adamant about Gryffindor. >>

I've always assumed that they had a discussion and THE HAT was 
adamant about Neville, while Neville kept protesting that he wasn't 
good enough for anything but Hufflepuff.  

"Lindy Brett" wrote:

<< The food. Do the house-elves cook it? Or magic it up? The wizzes 
and witches put no effort in. >>

Most wizards and witches don't have any House Elves. CoS says:
"Well, whoever owns him will be an old wizarding family, and they'll 
be rich," said Fred.

"Yeah, Mum's always wishing we had a house-elf to do the ironing," 
said George. "But all we've got is a lousy old ghoul in the attic and 
gnomes all over the garden. House-elves come with big old manors and 
castles and places like that; you wouldn't catch one in our house..."

MaggieB wrote:

<< Hermione, the goddess of the Harmony, was one of Mars' 
daughters. >>

I'm sorry that you're the victim of my compulsion to nit-pick, but
 --- the goddess of Harmony, who was the daughter of Ares, was named 
Harmonia, not Hermione. The name 'Hermione' is related to Hermes 
(Mercury), the messenger and trickster god. 

abbeycarter wrote:

<< The two suitors dueled over Hermione and Neoptolemus was 
killed. >>

And IIRC Hermione was executed on Neoptolemus's tomb (by Achilles?) 
as a burial sacrifice. 

Tom Wall wrote:

<< Well, we know of one very famous Mudblood that was sorted into 
Slytherin -- Tom Riddle. As for whether or not there are others, 
well, I agree that it would be an uncomfortable situation for them. 
In CoS, we learn that the password to the Slytherin common room was
actually 'pureblood' for a while, so that doesn't seem to pleasant a 
state of affairs for a half-blood student. But it doesn't discount 
the possibility. After all, a half-blood, like Tom Riddle, could 
still turn out to be bigoted enough to join up with the pure-blood 
cause. >>

As you mention, Tom Riddle was half-and-half aka Half-blood (note: 
the other week I was searching for JKR interviews and ran into some 
old article that said that the original title of CoS, previously 
known to me as HP & the Half-blood Prince, was HP & the Half Loved 
Prince). In my opinion, the wizarding bigots, even the Malfoys, draw 
a big distinction between Muggle-born and half-and-half, and only use 
the slur "Mudblood" for the former. I believe that Half-bloods could 
be Sorted into Slytherin without major suffering, as long as they 
didn't get angry or defensive at rude remarks about their Muggle 
parent ... 

Remember Draco' snide remark at Madam Malkin's shop about "they've 
never been brought up to know our ways. Some of them have never even 
heard of Hogwarts until they get the letter, imagine"? Under normal 
circumstances (not those of TMR nor of Harry nor of the hypothetical 
result of some wizard's one-night-stand with a Muggle woman), the 
half-and-half child would be brought up exposed to each parent's 
world, and (especially if heesh made strange things happen) be told 
about magic and even Hogwarts.

Remember Salazar's original reason for objecting to Muggle-born 
students? He was afraid that knowledge of wizarding folk would 
get from them to their Muggle relatives. If the  Muggle relatives 
already had wizarding in-laws, the knowledge would have already 
leaked to them. If I were Rowena Ravenclaw or Helga Hufflepuff and 
Salazar objected to a Half-blood student, I would point out that his 
objection is locking the barn door after the horse was stolen.

So those originally rational generalizations could have led to a 
situation in which the purebloodists accept a Tom or Harry, a 
Half-blood with no prior knowledge of the wizarding world, while 
rejecting some hypothetical Muggle-born magic child who had been 
raised by a witch babysitter (who may have sought out the job after 
she noticed that a Muggle baby in her neighborhood was changing 
teddybears into spiders).