The Choice Is Yours

If you're anything like us, you've taken half a dozen different online quizzes to find out what Hogwarts house you belong in. (Ravenclaw all the way, baby.)

And if you're anything like us—i.e. massive Harry Potter fans—you know the profile of each house. The characteristics of a Ravenclaw (woohoo!) are intelligence, wit, and knowledge. Hufflepuffs are patient, loyal, and hard-working. Slytherins are ambitious and crafty. And Gryffindors are brave, brave, and brave.

The job of the Sorting Hat is to match each Hogwarts noob with an appropriate house. This most nosy of hats perches on top of each eleven-year-old's head and gives them as house assignment.

But the Sorting Hat doesn't just make an executive decision. It looks for compatibility, sure, but it also looks for desire.

Check out what happens when it's Harry's turn:

SORTING HAT: Hmm...difficult, very difficult. Plenty of courage I see, not a bad mind, either. There's talent, oh yes, and a thirst to prove yourself. But where to put you?

HARRY: Not Slytherin. Not Slytherin.

SORTING HAT: Not Slytherin, eh? Are you sure? You could be great, you know. It's all here in your head. And Slytherin will help you on your way to greatness! There's no doubt about that! No? Well, if you're sure...better be...Gryffindor!

If you're anything like us, you got through many a multiple-choice quiz thanks to the following guideline: out of four possible answers, there are only two that are really viable candidates. The Sorting Hat does this as well—it rules out Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff immediately. (Harry's strong suits just aren't wit or hard work.)

Having eliminated these two choices, the hat then looks to Harry—does Harry value ambition, or does he value bravery? We know the answer, of course: Harry is Team Gryffindor all the way.

This shows us the real symbolic value of the Hat—it's not there to choose for you as much as its there to force you to choose for yourself. This speaks to the ethics at play in the Potterverse: choice is more important than fate. You can choose to be a good wizard, a bad wizard, or a morally ambiguous wizard.

House Pride

But let's get back to those pesky houses. Why do there have to be houses in the first place? Why can't Hogwarts be totally egalitarian and let kids come up with their own defining characteristics…instead of sticking them with house labels, colors, and animal mascots?

A few reasons.

On the most basic level, the house affiliations make it easy for us to keep score: Gryffindors are virtuous, Slytherins are evil and the other two Houses more or less back the good guys' play.

That helps the movie (and Rowling, who created the whole thing in the first place) get us into the action quickly without too much exposition. Ron helps out in that first night at Hogwarts by letting Harry know exactly where Slytherin House stands in the grand scheme of things:

RON: There isn't a witch or wizard who went bad who wasn't in Slytherin.

Ron's being simplistic—and so is Rowling—but there's some truth here. We know that Big Bads like Voldemort marched behind the banner of the snake.

But what Rowling (and Ron) is saying at a deeper level has to do with the concept of morality in the Potterverse. Slytherin is bad because Slytherin is the house most affiliated with blind ambition. In wizarding circles, money isn't the root of all evil—ambition is.

This makes sense. When you're a wizard, power isn't something you can buy; it's something you can practice. If you want power, you just need to be single-minded enough to control others using nefarious means. By that same token, the greatest act of good is to fight against the siren song of the Dark Arts. That takes some serious bravery…and "bravery," of course, is the name of the Gryffindor game.

But the Potterverse would be dull, dull, dull if all Slytherins were bad, all Hufflepuffs were docile, and all Gryffindors were brave as lions. By setting up these expectations, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone can go about defying them, giving us a chance to be surprised.

Look at Longbottom, for example. He's a paradoxical Gryffindor—he's a wimpy, nervous Nelly. But this actually gives him more of a chance to be brave than someone who's a natural-born risk taker, like Harry. This adds an element of suspense to the film—who's going to act against type next?

Smart move, J.K.