Unlikely Allies: the Problem of Sorting Harry
Oryx-leucoryx had suggested in a comment to “Too Much There” that I consider Sorting Harry into another House, maybe Hufflepuff. While I agree that it’s clichéd to put the boy in Slytherin, the more I look at Harry, the less I can see either Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw for Harry (even though either might well have been good for him). I think there’s a reason why the Sorting Hat only seriously considered Slytherin and Gryffindor for him.
I'm enjoying the AU Arsinoe de Blassenville is writing, I like her AU Harry--but I disagree that Harry could have been Sorted into Hufflepuff. Unless the Hat decided to start sorting kids into the house they needed, rather than the house that fit their existing approach to live.
First, Ravenclaw. Harry might have “not a bad mind,” but he doesn’t value “wit and learning” in themselves. Notice that the only time he voluntarily reads his texts is when he’s at the Dursleys-where studying his magic books is both an act of defiance and one of his few links to the Wizarding World he’s exiled from. When he’s actually with other witches and wizards, he’d rather talk Quidditch or play Exploding Snap. He’s capable of reading for research (c.f. Flamel), and he can do an above-average job on his homework, but for pleasure he reads (if at all) about Quidditch and brooms. Nor does he show any interest in invention, even when the Half-Blood Prince shows him what might be possible. So the Hat won’t voluntarily place him in Ravenclaw.
And Hufflepuff would be the WORST House placement for Harry, in terms of fighting against his basic personality. Harry is not a group person, and he does not have many social skills. Nor does he want them. His family-role at the Dursleys was to be obstinately different. He has never in his life WANTED to fit into a social group.
Harry chose to blame Dudley for his lack of friends at infant school, but that doesn’t really hold water. If my siblings and I had been in Harry’s shoes (dressed in a way that invited ridicule and bullied by the son of a local bigwig and his thuggish friends), I would have been a social outcast like Harry, my older brother would have set up his own gang opposed to Dudley’s, my younger brother would have been class clown, joking everyone into liking him better than the bullies, and my baby sister would have been everyone’s heroine admirably bearing up under such adversity. (In fact, it’s quite likely that any of my three siblings, in Harry's shoes, would quickly have put an end to Dudley's attempts to bully by making it too socially costly. I, on the other hand, like canon!Harry, would have continued as the bullies’ victim.)
There’s personality and social skills involved as well as circumstance.
(And even I, abused at home and bullied at school, always had SOME friends-one year, my nadir, only ones who would hang out with me when no one higher on the totem pole was around to lament their lapse in taste-but always, one or two, some! What kind of social skills did Harry have, to have no friends, ever, until he got to Hogwarts? Unless Petunia was right all along, and budding wizards never care about being friends with the like of us Muggles.)
People who WANT friends MAKE them. Even at Hogwarts, Harry makes no friends. Ever. Rather, others befriend him. Ron makes friends with him, initially for the same reason Draco tries (and Ron gets his shaky ego boosted when he was one-up on the Boy-Who-Lived about Quidditch and such, while Harry in return got to play Lord Bountiful). Then Hermione (firmly friendless otherwise) glommed on to the two pals. And other than those two Harry has fans and followers (when his star is ascending) and defenders and enemies (when it’s not). Even being a Quidditch star, even being Quidditch captain, doesn’t seem to gain him any real popularity. People like the idea of Harry, not Harry himself.
So Harry could not have been a Hufflepuff. Hufflepuffs want to belong, as Jodel put it, and Harry really never wanted that.
Comments?
Anyone want to persuade me which house the Hat should sort Harry to?