If Harry Potter fans love anything, it’s a good debate about which of the magical houses they’d be sorted into if they ever got the chance to spend a year at Hogwarts. After one Twitter user claimed that proudly being sorted into Slytherin, a house full of conniving overachievers, actually makes someone more of a Hufflepuff, a house of far less boorish, but less ambitious students, the Potterverse rallied around the discourse.
Being sorted into a magical house at Hogwarts is a lot like having an astrological sign. You don’t have a choice when it comes to which one you get — you are simply placed there by a magical hat. Moving forward, others will often attempt to dissect your persona using only that piece of information. And, no matter what other traits you display, admirable or otherwise, once there’s a house attached to your name, the house is why you’re like that.
Every single person who calls themself a “Proud Slytherin” is a fucking Hufflepuff.
— kate bond (@LadyKateBond) May 14, 2018
But the thing that had the Internet in a stir is linked to the specific brand of hate that both houses Hufflepuff and Slytherin get. Slytherin House is often criticized for being ruthless in their ambition. They’d gladly find some hapless crony to throw under the bus or a complete stranger to murder if it got them closer to their goal. Hufflepuff’s are inversely characterized as hardworking yet unremarkable, some even joke that they’re the stoner house. So essentially the dig is that while a Slytherin is somewhere proudly droning on about what a jerk they actually are, in all likelihood they’re just posturing because, in reality, they’re a Hufflepuff who’s doing all that hard work to still suck.
Twitter users nodded in agreement as they called out Slytherin’s for not actually being that smart or interesting, but rather, for being banally tethered to the idea of preserving their own pretentious cool.
That’s the people I’m talking about. There’s, like, a Sandy at the end of Grease quality to them.
— kate bond (@LadyKateBond) May 15, 2018
Omg it was always my unpopular opinion that people only think they’re in Slytherin because it’s the “cool” and “badass” house, thank you for voicing the truth
Still, there are a million ways to skin this cat. Harry Potter was almost a Slytherin and one could argue that he only got sorted into Gryffindor house because A) that’s what he wanted and B) he’s so brave that it’s actually kind of thoughtless and lacking in depth.
Still, if you have no patience for the online chatter and need a dose of Potter in real life, you can now stream all eight of the movies on HBO. Late 2018 will bring the stateside arrival of a new Harry Potter history exhibit and the highly anticipated sequel to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
