“Fleur Delacour, who fought in the world-famous Battle of Hogwarts and was awarded medals of bravery from both the French and British Ministries of Magic”
can we talk about this?? fleur is one of the most underrated characters ever. harry sees her as the alluring veela, and he gets his opinion about her as a person from young hermione and ginny, who display a bit of jealousy but also cultural intolerance. fleur was chosen by the goblet of fire to compete in the triwizard tournament. fleur is fiercely protective of her sister – the one person she would miss the most. fleur sticks by bill after he is ravaged by greyback, despite the weasleys thinking she will leave him. fleur helps out harry, undesirable no. 1, after malfoy manor. fleur fights in the final battle, and is awarded medals of bravery from the british and french ministries. i’m just very emotional
i always forget that vampires do exist in the harry potter universe and its like?? voldemort i thought u wanted to be immortal why fuck with horcruxes u couldve just been a vampire??
my theory is that voldemort just really really likes garlic
the older I get the more interesting the mirror of erised becomes. do people really know the deepest desire of their heart? we all want things, but when it comes down to the one thing you yearn for deep in your being is it so easy to give it a name?
when Harry looked in the mirror and saw his family it wasn’t instantly clear to him what exactly the mirror was doing. he didn’t look at his parents’ faces and think oh yes the one thing I desire more than any other in the whole of existence. certainly family was something he’d always wanted, but it was only a conscious desire in specific circumstances. when he looked in the mirror it wasn’t the realization of something he’d known all along. it was a feeling.
and I wonder what I would see. because I honestly couldn’t tell you. and I think once I saw that reflection it would make all the sense in the world. it would be a familiar ache in the heart region that has yet to be successfully examined. and that’s the magic of it really, isn’t it? showing someone what they’ve always known in their heart but never had words for in their head?
I’m increasingly of the opinion that all the events in the Harry Potter books that had their root in someone who went to Hogwarts were in some way orchestrated by the Sorting Hat.
The Sorting Hat had access to the minds and potential of every single Hogwarts student ever. In fact it directed their potential, due to the segregated nature of the Hogwarts House system. Everyone just TRUSTED it to make the right decision. I mean, yeah, new students would sit there arguing with it, but once it has made a decision that’s it. I’ve not yet come across any JKR tidbit citing that there has ever been anyone who switched from one house to another. And all of those students, ALL the students, had their future at Hogwarts heavily influenced by the declaration of that one enchanted object.
Which is basically an AI computer, but in magical terms.
And I’ve seen discussions online that get closer and closer to “the house divides are extremely nebulous and unfair and sketchy” (and some that go straight to “the house divides are wrong and evil”), but many seem to tend towards trying to “fix” book-canon, to take what was in the books and expand upon the very limiting parameters to make it seem like the system ISN’T wrong and broken.
Especially when it comes to Slytherin, and to do with making Slytherin house not “the evil one” of the four.
But you know, it’s a fact in the books that most of the Death Eaters and other really bad wizards (not all, but many) that went to Hogwarts went through Slytherin in the books. And nominally, people get put in Slytherin because they are cunning and ambitious. But the way in which this is determined is not simply “this hat is charmed to measure your cunning and ambition levels” or whatever.
That hat’s alive, pretty much. Its consciousness is modelled after the fashion of humans, only it has been in the castle almost since the castle was there and has seen the passing through of countless witches and wizards. It has the absolute trust of everyone in the castle, and there’s nothing to suggest in the books that there was anyone else in charge of it.
Who’s to say it isn’t just putting people in whatever house it damn well chooses? Who’s to say it didn’t just decide one year that it was bored and started carefully plotting how best to place people to cause maximum havoc in the wizarding world?
Take the brothers Sirius and Regulus, for example. Both, at the end of the day, turned out to be honourable and principled individuals who made bad choices and were punished for those choices. However, since one was put in Slytherin and the other in Gryffindor, one ended up a Death Eater and the other removed himself from a toxic family environment and surrounded himself with caring loving people. This says nothing about either brother in terms of how “good” or “bad” they are, because both ultimately put a lot of work in to defeat Voldemort. What it does indicate, however, is how the environment in which they were placed in their formative years affected the vector their life took them on.
The Sorting Hat, in other words, took pity on Sirius in a way that it didn’t with Regulus. But both suffered. Sirius got to go on to be part of a loving family of friends and make an innocent mistake that brought about the first death of Voldemort, where Regulus worked behind Voldemort’s back to try to eliminate a horcrux.
The Sorting Hat also equipped Harry Potter with the friends he needed to become the hero of the story. Harry Potter was seemingly given a choice between Slytherin and Gryffindor, and maybe the Sorting Hat relented, or maybe it never had any intention of placing him in Slytherin in the first place. All the pieces fell into place though. Harry and Ron and Hermione could have ended up in three separate houses, Neville might never even have been featured in the story if he’d been put into Hufflepuff (arguably the least well-represented of the four houses).
But it shoved Sirius and James and Lupin and Peter together. Even though Peter Pettigrew turned out to be cowardly and completely UN-Gryffindor-like, and Sirius came from one of the worst of the pure-blood families. And it shoved Harry’s friends together. It pitted Draco and Harry on opposite sides of an imaginary line. It consigned Regulus Black to an abusive environment and an unsung death.
The Sorting defines people. It determines entire lives.
The rise of Voldemort only happened because the system was already broken and all the wrong people were placed (by the Sorting Hat) into Slytherin along with Tom Riddle, which fed into his already-troubled personality. He was placed in an environment where the upper-class pure-blood prejudices of the wizarding world were at their worst and his penchant for cruelty and an indifference towards those deemed lesser were allowed to flourish.
Also an atmosphere that encourages cunning and ambition and loyalty. NOT because people in Slytherin are inherently cunning, or ambitious, or loyal, but because Slytherin House is KNOWN for those traits and thus it becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. But that’s also the best environment for starting some sort of pureblood power-cult. At least half the students there are already steeped in pureblood propaganda ANYWAY so all it took was someone to exploit that a bit further. (Also, since it seems that many marriages in the wizarding world up to Potter’s era fall within house divides, those students are steeped in pureblood pride because their parents were put in the same house. By the Sorting Hat.)
The Sorting Hat had to know this. It’s taken a look inside all the heads of the students, it lives (as of Potter’s era) in the headmaster’s office, it has access to everthing anyone says there. It knew what it was doing and it could have put Tom in any other house without it being questioned. It wasn’t like his parentage was common knowledge, which would be used as a judgment by other people as to whether he was put in the “right” house or not, so no suspicions would have been raised.
Putting Tom in another house could have made all the difference, some other house that hadn’t become a festering pool of prejudice and bigotry already. He might still have ended up as a thoroughly bad person, but without the cult of dark magic to back him up.
The Sorting Hat CREATED Lord Voldemort, and it ultimately brought about and ended the darkest hour of Hogwarts history, destroying much of the castle in the process and killing hundreds.
And for what? The greater good? Did it want to end the segregation of pupils based on arbitrary and malleable character traits? Did it just want to watch the world burn?
Wood: Scared, Harry?
Potter: A little.
Wood: That’s all right. I felt the same way before my first game.
Potter: What happened?
Wood: I, uh, I don’t really remember. I took a bludger to the head two minutes in. Woke up in the hospital a week later.
Potter:
Potter:
Potter:
Potter:
Potter: sOUNDS LIKE A SAFE SPORT FOR CHILDREN, GLAD TO BE A PART OF THE TEAM.
Luna Lovegood did not confront and suffer at the hands of death eaters for Ravenclaw to be a house of smart snobs
Cedric Diggory did not die for Hufflepuff to be a forgotten house of under appreciated witches and wizards
Regulus Black did not sacrifice himself for Slytherin to be condemned as the house from which all evil and selfish wizards and witches come from
Peter Pettigrew did not sell out his long-had friends to Lord Voldemort for Gryffindor to become the golden house wherein no one can do wrong
What she says: i’m fine.
What she means: who at Hogwarts decided not to put in standards for Quidditch broomsticks?? the whole Slytherin team has the new Nimbus model thanks to Draco’s rich dad, and the fact that a competitive game–sorry, SPORT–can come down to who has the better funding and equipment is just rancorous. Dumbledore wouldn’t stand for such unfairness, would he? not even talented Beaters like Fred and George could keep up with Slytherin on their old Cleansweepers. And by the way, who the hell thought it was a great idea to let House-biased teachers take points away from the Houses or give, for that matter, to their own? who oversees this process? Professor McGonagall clearly has no problem taking points from her own House to maintain discipline and order, but what about Snape? it’s been noted in the first book that he can just take away points from Gryffindor for arbitrary rules that he just invents on the spot. who’s to say his finagling isn’t what allowed Slytherin to dominate in total points for the past 6 or 7 years? who is keeping tabs on these teachers? Dumbledore either knows more than he’s letting on, or he’s doing a very poor job at organizing a school. does he understand the potential for corruption that he has handed those professors through their authority? Professor McGonagall clearly resists the temptation to abuse her power over the point system, but Snape’s petty feud with Harry’s father has really done a number on him. why is he even allowed to teach, anyway? … wait, no, I totally forgot the teachers have basically no standards to meet. how does an egomaniac like Lockhart get hired? do these teachers have tenure? what the hell does the Ministry of Magic think of Dumbledore’s sideshow of a “school”? why is Hogwarts considered so safe if someone like Quirrel–Quirell?–can get in without anyone noticing, I don’t know, his SECOND HEAD? was it only present after Voldemort drank the unicorn blood, or had it been there ever since Quirell/Quirrell had started wearing that turban? did Voldemort never sneeze accidentally? is he even able to sneeze, or would his nasal deformity prevent that? would his host sneeze as well, and would the air come from the host’s lungs? can he eat? didn’t Quirrell drink the blood for him? how come no one forced him to go take a bath? is Voldemort hydrophobic? is he just disgusting? would he melt if touched by water, just like the Wicked Witch? maybe Dumbledore really is losing his marbles and does such great things during his lucid moments that they’ve just decided he’s worth keeping around. and besides, where else would he go? is there an old folk’s home for the magical sort? how does the food compare to that of the Muggle equivalent? do they hire wizards and witches as nurses? what about magical hospice care? where do they go when they die? where do Muggles go? where do WE go? is it all the same place? is there magic there? are there any Muggle ghosts? why haven’t they told Muggles about magic? and how in the world do you keep DRAGONS a secret??
Waiting for Winter 