Dumbledore in Gryffindor? WAS Scapegoating Slytherin

[Miles]

No: HPFGUIDX 144504

potioncat wrote:
> Here's a link to the Lexicon, which says DD was in Gryffindor.
> http://www.hp-lexicon.org/wizards/dumbledore.html

Miles:
This is no canonical evidence.
I just searched the archive at Quick Quotes Quill and didn't find any
information about this question either. Actually, noone asked Rowling about
this detail. Which I find quite interesting. And I do not remember any
information about this in the entire HP series so far, apart from the quote
in PS/SS I mentioned (and will repeat in this mail).

> Bookworm wrote:
> During an interview (on the CoS DVD, maybe?), one of the things JKR
> said was that Dumbledore and Hermione speak with the voice of
> authority.  Whenever she wants to give information, they are the two
> characters who can deliver it convincingly.  So if Hermione said
> Dumbledore was in Gryffindor, it is likely fact, not rumor.

Miles:
I do not say Hermione tells anybody a lie. Quoting me:

> I only know one line in canon to support this assumption:
> "... and I hope I'm in Gryffindor, it sounds by far the best, I hear
> Dumbledore himself was one" (Hermione at her first appearance on the
> Hogwarts Express, ch 6 of PS/SS)

Hermione doesn't say Dumbledore was in Gryffindor. She says she *heard* he
was. She always tells us the source of her information. The book she get it
from, most times. But here - she heard it, she doesn't know.

Just to prevent - I do not think that this detail will become most
important. But it could be a tessara for Harry to understand things in the
final book he does not understand by now. [Is there the metaphorical meaning
of tessara in English as it is in German?]

So, we all know about Rowling's style of spreading information, and hiding
them at the same time. For example in PS/SS, at all the incidents described
concerning Harry in danger or his scar hurting, we see Snape in the
foreground and Quirrell somewhere.

Back to Dumbledore's House. We know, that people think he was in Gryffindor.
Hermione told us, so this is true ;). We do not know whether it is common
knowledge about well-known wizards which House they were in during their
schooltime. I do not think so - wizards easily live more than 100 years, why
should they be defined by their House at the beginning of their lifes rather
than what they did after schooltime? But Dumbledore is quite old, even for
wizard's standards, so there won't be any teachers or fellow students left,
who could *know* Dumbledore's House.

There is this one statement of Hermione. It is not trustworthy if we follow
her own standards. Noone questions it. Ask Harry or Ron - Dumbledore *must*
have been in Gryffindor, because Gryffindor is the best House, and
Dumbledore the best wizard of all times - strike. Ask Draco or Lucius -
Dumbledore is a friend of "mudbloods", so he must be the opposite of a
Slytherin - again, strike.
Ask the readers - there is not one single question to Rowling in many
interviews (and there are many silly details she had to answer a question
to). Ask the great organisers of the HP Lexicon - sure, Dumbledore has been
in Gryffindor.

Hey, Rowling has done her job! She never told us he was. She never let
Hermione tell a lie. But we all think, we the readers and they the
characters in the series, that Dumbledore was in Gryffindor. Great
opportunity for some Aha-moment for Harry in the final book. Not the most
important one, sure. But I like the idea, that Dumbledore was... in
Ravenclaw? Probably. In Slytherin - why not? He is a great networker, like
Slughorn is. And yes, he can be cunning if necessary.

Miles, who is aware that this ideas could be easily wiped out soon by
canonical evidence or an interview he had overseen, but who is ravenclaw-ish
enough to still like his theory afterwards