A VERY IMPORTANT QUESTION

[custardpringle]

hhertzof and I have been debating in circles around this question for at least half an hour now; we both have opinions on it and perfectly good arguments for 'em, so I am solving this sensibly by making a poll. (I will still probably go with my answer, because it's my damn story, but I can see arguments for the other three Houses well enough to wonder what

Comments

[custardpringle]

I laughed pretty hard at the Noble and Most Ancient House of Denver, and would like to humbly suggest that if Nineveh is writing crossover fic where the Wimseys are still all Muggles (to my knowledge of it), and I am writing crossover fic where some are and some aren't, clearly someone needs to write the other end of the spectrum where they are an old wizarding family. Anyway, though a lot of his values are more modern and permissive than Helen's and Gerald's, I wouldn't go so far as to say he doesn't care all that much about the family honor; a lot of aspects of tradition and the Wimsey ancestry clearly mean a lot to him, and one of the things that impresses him so much about Hilary is her determination to hang onto the family property and keep it going despite more practical concerns.

Overall, though, I think you and Lily are tipping me towards Ravenclaw :/

Hilariously, this discussion originally started because I couldn't decide where to put Mary, and then like five seconds after I mentioned it to HH I realized she was a really obvious Gryffindor and we got stuck on Peter instead, as I guess was inevitable.

[the_antichris]

OK, yeah, he does care about the family and tradition and honour in the sense of behaving well, but that's not the same sense in which Slytherins mean it. Slytherins say 'honour' and mean something more like 'face', which Peter is not bothered by.

[custardpringle]

Slytherins and Gerald I mean, fair enough!

[the_antichris]

Pity Gerald's a Muggle. I was about to say he's too nice to be a Slytherin and should be a Hufflepuff, but then I thought maybe I was giving him too much credit for niceness based on his proximity to Peter and Jerry. He does have a sense of noblesse oblige, so I suppose it depends whether or not noblesse oblige comes into ancient wizarding families' ideas of high position, and/or whether he'd tell the hat at the age of 11 that he was ambitious.

FYI SCOTT THERE ARE SPOILERS IN HERE

[custardpringle]

There's a sort of solidness to Gerald that suggests Hufflepuff, if that makes any sense, so I can see where that comes from? But he's just . . . he's flat-out not very bright, which may be partly to blame, but every time I read Clouds of Witness I find it a little harder to resign myself to the way he chooses to act in that book. It's very difficult to decide whether he really is just dumb enough to believe he's protecting this woman by not telling anyone she's in danger, in which case that is too much dumb for me to discuss intelligently, or whether he just honest-to-God values her ~reputation~ above her life, his own, and the well-being of his wife and children. Which would very much fall under the "saving face" definition of honor rather than the "actually behaving well" definition.

ANYWAY: social standing for its own sake and all traditional trappings thereof, clearly very important to him.

Re: FYI SCOTT THERE ARE SPOILERS IN HERE

[the_antichris]

Augh Clouds of Witness he is SO DENSE. Wizards benefit from having a society that is exactly as sexist as 1990s Britain, and it's hard to say if it was exactly as sexist as 1930s Britain in the 1930s or if it was just static 1990s attitudes all along (logic suggests the first, JKR's slightly illogical worldbuilding the second), but whatever, you are quite right that a Hufflepuff would Do the Right Thing and not worry about anyone's ~reputation.

Re: FYI SCOTT THERE ARE SPOILERS IN HERE

[the_antichris]

Also, on reflection, it's the solidness and not-very-brightness that suggest Hufflepuff to me, but that's doing a disservice to Hufflepuff.

Re: FYI SCOTT THERE ARE SPOILERS IN HERE

[custardpringle]

Haha, yeah, the idea of putting Gerald in the same House as Cedric (or Parker, for that matter) makes me weep a little.

There are certain technological advances wizards would probably have gotten waaaaaayyy before Muggles that I think would make some anti-bigotry movements progress at different rates in wizarding society than in Muggle society. For example, it seems pretty plausible to me that free, easy, reliable birth control was available to witches much earlier than to Muggle women (I am writing about this currently, actually). But even in the 1990s the wizarding attitude towards sentient nonhumans-- or, hell, most nonmagical humans-- is horrible.

[nineveh_uk]

Your knowledge is right. I am looking forward to Peter finding out that being regarded as inferior by the people with power is not in fact something unimportant that you can get over with the right mindset.