KMC Forums - The Hufflepuff Slytherin-Wannabe Common Room

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Hufflepuff

Hufflepuff, founded by Helga Hufflepuff, values hard work, loyalty, tolerance, and fair play above all else. Its animal is the badger, and canary yellow and black are its colours. The Fat Friar is its ghost. According to Rowling, Hufflepuff corresponds roughly to the element of earth. The Hufflepuff dormitories and common room are located somewhere in the basement (corresponding to earth), their entrance found through a still-life painting that is somewhere near the kitchens. You must give a password to the painting to enter. The Hufflepuff common room is filled with yellow hangings and fat armchairs and it has little underground tunnels leading to the dormitories, all of which have perfectly round doors, like barrel tops (very much like a badger sett).[3] Very few Hufflepuff members are specifically mentioned, and, in general, they are not seen much in the Harry Potter books.

The current Head of Hufflepuff House is Pomona Sprout.

A few notable Hufflepuffs (for a complete list, see List of characters in the Harry Potter books):

Cedric Diggory
Nymphadora Tonks
Ernie Macmillan
Hannah Abbott
Zacharias Smith

Slytherin

Like Salazar Slytherin, its founder, Slytherin house values ambition, cunning, resourcefulness, and pure blood heritage. Most Slytherin students display a high level of Machiavellianism. The book also suggests that the hunger for power is a characteristic of Slytherins. The animal representing Slytherin is the serpent, and the house's colours are green and silver. The Bloody Baron is the house ghost. According to Rowling, Slytherin corresponds roughly to the element of water.[citation needed] The Slytherin dormitories and common room are reached through a bare stone wall in the dungeons. The Slytherin common room is a long, low, dungeon-style room, located under the Hogwarts Lake, furnished with green lamps, and carved armchairs.

Until the end of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the head of Slytherin House was Professor Severus Snape. After Professor Snape fled with the Death Eaters, Professor Horace Slughorn filled in for him. Slughorn had been Head of Slytherin for many years before retiring, and had just returned to Hogwarts.

Harry Potter has a negative view of Slytherin and asks the Sorting Hat not to place him in that house because of its sinister reputation. Hagrid told him, "There isn't a witch or wizard who went bad who wasn't in Slytherin." This seems to be an exaggeration on Hagrid's part, as at the time, he believed that Sirius Black, a Gryffindor, was a follower of Lord Voldemort (ironically the true perpetrator of Black's crimes was Peter Pettigrew, another Gryffindor). This proposition is also statistically unlikely. Still, Slytherin House seems to have produced more evil wizards than any other house, including Voldemort, the Malfoy family, Bellatrix Lestrange, Avery, and Wilkes. However, Slytherin itself is not evil, it is simply that having ambition as a core quality results in a disproportionate amount of self-important, competitive students. There are some good Slytherins such as Slughorn, Snape (after his good deeds become known in the last book), Phineas Nigellus Black (despite his use of the derogatory term "Mudblood" [HP7]), Andromeda Tonks, and Regulus Black.

The Sorting Hat claims that blood purity is a factor in selecting Slytherins, although this is not mentioned until the fifth book. This suggests that it bases its decisions more upon the ideals of its members, than directly on any accurate test of blood. There is no reason to believe that Muggle-born students are not sorted there, merely that pure-blooded students are more desirable to that house, as there are definite examples of half-bloods in the house (Snape and Voldemort). In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, a group of Snatchers claim that "not many Mudbloods" are sorted into Slytherin, which suggests that while Muggle-born Slytherins may be uncommon, they are not unknown.

According to Albus Dumbledore in Chamber of Secrets, the qualities which "Slytherin prized in his hand-picked students" include, "Parseltongue, resourcefulness, determination, [and] a certain disregard for the rules", qualities, he notes, that are possessed by Harry.

Contrary to the wishes of the other founders, Salazar Slytherin wanted a stricter policy of admittance�one limited to pure-blood students. The controversy this created apparently led to Salazar leaving the school and the Chamber of Secrets behind. A millennium later, the house's students are still considered affiliated with Salazar's reputed ideals, although some half-bloods, most notably Voldemort and Snape, have been in Slytherin. "Pureblood" lineage is certainly one of Voldemort's public goals. It is often mentioned in the novels (especially in Philosopher's Stone and The Chamber of Secrets) that most of the dark wizards were in Slytherin (though how many were from this house before Tom Marvolo Riddle began recruiting there is unstated: as his own House, it was certainly easiest for him to recruit there).

Although Harry portrays most former or current Slytherins as either bullying, haughty or downright evil, the house also contains some of the series' most striking and dramatic stories of redemption. Snape, a devoted Slytherin, spends much of his adult life as a spy for the Order of the Phoenix and in Deathly Hallows, is acknowledged by Harry as the bravest man he has ever known. Similarly, Regulus, a former Death Eater and the younger brother of Sirius Black, turns against Voldemort at the age of seventeen, ultimately giving his life and putting himself in great pain to return his old master to mortality. Even Draco Malfoy, Harry's spoiled schoolboy rival feels moral uncertainty in Books 6 and 7 and ultimately, does not commit to true evil. His mother, Narcissa, turns against Voldemort near the climax out of concern for her son, thus saving Harry's life. It is therefore important to note that the primary Slytherin qualities (resourcefulness, cunning, and a degree of self-import) are not, in and of themselves, evil attributes; they are simply attributes that are easily turned toward evil. An excellent example of a "good" Slytherin would be Slughorn, who, although very jovial and friendly to all his students, nevertheless wishes to be connected to powerful people to provide connections for his promising students (and for some of his own reasons).

When believing Harry Potter to be dead and thinking that he has final victory in his grasp, Voldemort proclaims his intention to abolish the other three houses and force all Hogwarts students into Slytherin. This design is foiled by his defeat and death, after which Slytherin becomes more diluted in its blood purity, no longer the pureblood bastion it once was. Its dark reputation, however, does linger.[4]

A few notable Slytherins (for a complete list, see List of characters in the Harry Potter books):

Lord Voldemort (as Tom Marvolo Riddle)
Draco Malfoy (Also see The Malfoy Family)
Bellatrix Lestrange
Crabbe and Goyle
Pansy Parkinson

RULES

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I just thought I would consolidate our rules so that everybody knows them...

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