Hogwarts Cemetery and Hogwarts: A History

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 105420

Pandrea (I think) wrote:> 
<snip> Incidentally, another question I'd like answered is why the three 
> remaining Founders carried on having a Slytherin House.  Since they 
> didn't believe in its precepts, why not disband it and divide up 
> students between the three of them from then on?  Either the school 
> was created in such a way that it was not possible, or it truly 
> served a good purpose to have a Slytherin House - if so, what?

Carol:

I think the ambitious, cunning pureblood types (and a few half bloods
brought up in the Slytherin tradition) would *want* their own house.
Draco makes it plain in SS/PS that he'd be humiliated if he were
sorted into Hufflepuff (not that he would be). He certainly lacks the
courage to be sorted into Gryffindor, so that leaves only Ravenclaw,
where the reasonably intelligent but not very bookish Draco would
definitely not feel at home. And Crabbe and Goyle would have to go
into Hufflepuff even though they're neither loyal nor hardworking
simply out of the Hufflepuff tradition of teaching "the rest." Pansy
Parkinson, as well.

It's even possible that the other teachers wouldn't really want
ambitious, cunning, any-means-to-an-end Slytherin types in their
houses, but it would be suicidal for the school to deny them
admission. It might even create enmity between Hogwarts and
Durmstrang, which would become the default school for those students.

No, better to take them all and reduce the enmity to interhouse
rivalry, hoping (perhaps futilely) to create intraschool unity at the
same time.

Carol, who wonders what Theo Nott or Severus Snape would have thought
of being placed in Ravenclaw