The Fourth Deathly Hallows -- Deconstructing the Sorting Hat (LONG)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 175290

Like the cloak, the stone and the deathstick, the Sorting Hat is
both legend and reality in the WW. In the course of DH, Harry and 
Dumbledore deconstruct the legends around the three Deathly Hallows. 
It turns out the wand needn't pass by murder, the stone may be a comfort
instead of a curse, and the legend of the cloak does not relate its
most useful property. I believe canon invites us to apply a similar
process to understanding the Sorting Hat and the nature of Slytherin
House. 

The Sorting Hat does not seem to be a matter of legend. Every student
knows it exists. But the legend of the deathstick as a wand that must 
pass by murder arises though the deathstick itself has left a visible 
(and supposedly blood-spattered) trail through wizarding history.  The
truth, like the origin of the wand itself, is less macabre. It is, says 
Dumbledore, not the gift of Death but  instead the creation of wizards,
gifted, dangerous wizards but merely mortal all the same. Its powers, 
though impressive, are sinister only in the hands of the wicked, 
though it is dangerous indeed to all who are unwise.

 Hagrid relates what turns out to be a legend of the Sorting Hat in PS/SS:
"There's not a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn't
in Slytherin." According to this story, the sorting process can infallibly
identify, at the age of eleven, which Hogwarts students have
the potential to go bad, and which do not. 

Canon partially contradicts the legend. We learn that Sirius Black, 
a Gryffindor, was thought, even at the time Hagrid was speaking, 
to be a dark wizard. We learn that Peter Pettigrew, Gryffindor, actually
became a dark wizard. Still, by  the time all this has been revealed to
the reader, the legend of Slytherin as the dark wizard's house seems
to have become firmly fixed in Harry's mind and there it stays for a
long time.  

Yet, mysteriously, by the epilogue Harry's attitude has altered. He has 
named his son after a once hated Slytherin, and seems phlegmatic, if not
entirely sanguine, about the possibility that said son might become a 
Slytherin himself. 

Does canon offer a solution to this mystery? If the Sorting Hat truly
recognizes people as potential Dark Wizards, why do Rowling and Harry 
seem to think its a good thing that it's been preserved? Why is it Voldemort 
who tries to destroy it, while mouthing a fascist-style  slogan about the house,
emblem and colors of his ancestors being suitable for 
everybody? 

Has Rowling, despite all she's said about the importance
of choices  and her belief that most people are basically good, 
written a story where one quarter of the populace  will be  evil no 
matter what?  Is it just a good thing the Hat knows who they are?

But what does it know?

The Hat, mighty though its powers may be, cannot within the scheme
of canon, possess divine wisdom.  Like the three Deathly Hallows, and 
the Marauders Map, the Hat  is  the product of human intelligence, 
another creation of those dangerously gifted wizards who crop up 
now and then.


We know little of the Founders, but one thing we do know about
them is that at the time the hat was created they, like the Marauders,
were friends and trusted one another.  We can assume then, that at 
least three of them had no idea that Salazar Slytherin was later to 
become a dark wizard or, as Ron put it, a twisted old loony. 

The Hat, like the Map, is surely imprinted with the personalities of the 
wizards who created it. Now, while Harry is a bit 
dubious about the Map,  he never fears that it is full of dark 
magic, even after he's learned that it was created in part by one 
who later became a Death Eater. The Map preserves the Marauders 
as they were at a more innocent  time. None of them, not even 
Pettigrew himself, knew what he would become.

Salazar is a bit more of a question mark than Peter, but it seems
that in the beginning no one had reason to doubt him, nor should
they have, if the Hat itself is any guide... "and never did they dream
that they/Might someday be divided."

Now, if the Founders of Hogwarts couldn't  even predict that one of their
own number was going to go bad, how could they possibly have
given this power to the Sorting Hat? Maybe it is historically true
that there are more dark wizards coming out of Slytherin than the
other houses. But is this because Slytherins are evil, and the
Hat knows it as soon as it lands on their heads, or does the Hat
merely recognize those who,  even at the age of eleven, are bent 
on realizing their ambitions, which few in their innocence can
yet tell are good or bad?

After all, the WW puts a reasonable number of obstacles  in
the path of someone who wants to be a dark wizard. People with
less drive than Slytherins might  get discouraged before they've done 
too much damage. Fred and George, the Marauders and  the Trio
all experiment with dangerous magic. Mostly they give it up as not
worth the price before they've succeeded in doing anything really
bad. But  those who grow powerful quickly enough to elude the 
WW's strictures on dark magic, or those who fall under the spell
of one such as Lord Voldemort, may not realize their mistake in time.

But Slytherins want power. Isn't that bad? Doesn't power corrupt?

Well, that's the conventional wisdom, certainly. But Rowling
contradicts it. Love, she says, is the greatest power. And love,
though it may tempt one to great folly, is not a wicked thing. It can't
be bad to want power *if*  the power you want is love, can it?

We learn that  Dumbledore worked hard to persuade Tom Riddle that the 
supreme power he sought was  love. Tom chose not to believe him. But 
we see that other Slytherins, even those who support Voldemort, were more 
able to recognize the power of love than Tom was. 

Tom sees the Slytherins as his natural allies, and chooses them as his
recruits. But canon shows us that though it's easy for him to win their 
confidence, he has the devil's own time keeping it, and must constantly
risk their betrayal. It also shows us that when he does turn his attention 
to recruiting members of the other Houses, they too fall easy prey, 
whether to his charm or to his ability to instill fear.

What of Salazar Slytherin's pureblood ideology? The fear of Muggles
and Muggleborns that it fostered in him seems to have led to his fall.
And that ideology remains a legacy of his house. But other houses also
have their exclusivist ideologies. Gryffindor would have taught only
those with brave deeds to their name, Ravenclaw just those whose
intelligence was surest. Only Hufflepuff was willing to teach the lot
and treat them just the same. But she could only teach "all *she *
knew" (emphasis mine.) 

Hogwarts seems the poorer when the faculty are chosen for political 
correctness, if Umbridge's regime is any guide. The shadow of the
Holocaust makes Slytherin's form of discrimination seem categorically
worse. But history tells us that the mentally incompetent and those
who refused to fight  have also faced  extermination en masse.

In any case, the  Founders compromised. Each would create a house 
where those of like kind could congregate, and each would teach 
the students of all. And all was well, for several happy years.

Was it wrong to create Houses? The Hat worries about it. But some social
scientists say that people who cannot  trust those within their 
social group are not likely to learn to trust  those outside it, and
homogeneity within the group makes it easier to  trust.  The Weasleys,
trusting and socially secure, are more  tolerant than the  Dursleys or
the Malfoys, who both have to fear being thought of as different by
the neighbors.

 It is disenheartening to see the extent to which the Founders
dream has disintegrated, when all the young Slytherins choose to 
leave Hogwarts rather than defend it. Would Hogwarts be better off 
without them? Harry thought so once. "And it wants all the Houses to be 
friends? Fat chance!"

Yet in the end it's Harry who brings them back. He keeps faith with
Narcissa and leads her and her slippery spouse back to Hogwarts 
to reunite them with their son. 

Still, the Malfoys, sitting huddled together and no part of the
celebration around them, aren't a great advertisement for the
future of House Unity, and neither is the curt nod that
the Malfoys offer nineteen years later. 

 Is there another? Could it be, that as with  the cloak, the really
important power of the Sorting Hat is in the part of the legend that
everyone ignores? 

I think so. Somewhere in its battered shabby innards resides
the essence united of the Founders Four, working in harmony as they have
for a thousand years. House Unity indeed.

Pippin