could JKR be making fun of us? / quartets & houses (WAS: Re: Clash of Heirs)

[nobodysrib <nobodysrib@yahoo.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 53136

Stacey wrote -
> Salazar was pushed out originally by Godric, Helga, and Rowena.  
> Is it possible that we may have a drawing of the three?  That is, 
> the three decendents of Godric, Helga, and Rowena?  Now, there is a 
> decent amount of evidence that Harry is the heir of Gryffindor 
<snip>   
[suggests Hermione = Ravenclaw; Ron = Hufflepuff] 
> However I would suspect that their placement in Gryffindor would 
indicate that they are not the heirs.  Though it would add a great 
nuance to the triumverate.  

> K added:
[discussing how the Heirs may not necessarily be sorted into 
the "appropriate" house]
> students have accused two different people of being the 'Heir of 
> Slytherin' - Hagrid <snip> and Harry <snip> both of whom are 
> Gryffindors.  Surely if the house was at all important as a clue to 
> who is the heir of whom then the *least* likely house for the Heir 
> of Slytherin to be in is the house of the person who reputedly 
> drove Slytherin from the school in the first place.

Me:

I love looking for the parallels between the backstory and the 
present day story... might there be an emphasis on foursomes? The 
four founders/ houses, the four Marauders, and some have paralleled 
HHR+1 to the Marauders, which could be another quartet.  

This makes me wonder if Draco will make the HHR trio into a quartet.  
(NOT that I'm inferring these four will become tight buddies or 
anything.  Instead, just Draco working with them to some greater 
good.  Or even just him being "cosmically" linked to them and playing 
some role in a larger event, just as he was directly involved with 
them having to go into the Forbidden Forest in SS, but not in a "best 
buds 4ever" way.)  Mostly, I can't think of anyone else among Harry's 
classmates, Syltherin-sorted or not, that could fill the Slytherin 
role for an HHR+1 foursome.  (or maybe we'll have to wait for the 
next book to see this possibility.)

This also makes me wonder about the marauders:  who would be 
representative of which house?  I think it's fair to say 
James=Gryffindor (feel free to dispute this, please!)  I've been 
toying around with the trying to match up the others and have 
proceded to run around in circles...  but I'll bite the bullet and 
put one set of possibilites up for debate.

1) Pettigrew: Slytherin (ambitious).  I put him here mostly because 
he definitely does not operate on the "all for one and one for all" 
Hufflepuff plane, nor does he have the mental agility for Ravenclaw.  
And there's that whole siding with the dark side thing, too.  (But I 
do think that Slytherins have gotten a bad rap - even if *all* 
wizards who have gone bad have come from Slytherin, as Hagrid has 
claimed, it's false logic to turn that claim around and avert that 
all Slytherins are fated to go bad.)

I have less in depth descriptions for the other two:

2) Lupin: Hufflepuff (nobody's left behind/ group think territory/ 
move at the speed of their weakest link, rarely get the glory).  
Definitely does not receive glory (due to werewolf-phobia), and 
willing to take risks for the group - even if they end up being taken 
at the group's expense.  (I'm referring to his forgetting to take 
Snape's potion because he was too concerned about rescuing HHR from 
the Shrieking Shack melee - or would a Hufflepuff know better than to 
forget the potion, since doing so would undoubtedly put HHR in as 
much - if not more - danger than they were already in?  Is Sirius a 
better Hufflepuff candidate, esp. considering the faithful quality of 
his dog-animagi?)

3) Sirius Black: Ravenclaw (mental quickness, determined 
individualists, competitive, everyone for themselves).  A lot of this 
comes from his role in the (1st) shrieking shack Snape incident.  
Also, it takes brains to survive on the lam.  And Sirius is a 
favorite of mine, as is the Ravenclaw house.  But I suppose that 
doesn't count as proper evidence ;)

**(and thanks to Jodel, from her post #53098 "re: 
snape/neville/trevor, whose great house descriptions I have 
paraphrased)** 

And, never one to shy away from stretching a theory beyond its 
limits, what about "the old crowd"?  I'm not about to try and sort 
them (we might not even know who some of them are!) but it's 
something I'm going to be keeping my eye out for in OoP.

K wrote: 

> there has been quite a bit of circumstantial evidence that Harry is 
> the Heir of Gryffindor - although imho it's no more convincing than 
> the circumstantial evidence that led the student body to believe 
> that he was the heir of Slytherin, so maybe JKR is paralleling the 
> way the students were fooled into believing that Harry was the Heir 
> of Slytherin by fooling her readers into jumping to the conclusion 
> that Harry is the heir of Gryffindor. 

Me:

Oh no!  This makes me wonder... Consider how JKR portrays Divination: 
mostly rubbish, with (if you actually have the gift for Divination) a 
VERY occasional on-the-mark prediction - that you don't even remember 
making once you've done it!  This can't be how JKR views *our* 
theories and discussion, can it?...

- Nobody's Rib, who is both laughing and crying