Selkies are said to live as seals in the sea
but shed their skin to become human on land. The stories frequently
revolve around female selkies being coerced into relationships with
humans by someone stealing and hiding their sealskin, often not
regaining the skin until years later upon which they commonly return to
the sea, forsaking their human family. The legend is apparently most
common in the Northern Isles of Scotland and is very similar to those of swan maidens.
I have a theory that the valued quality of each of the four Houses isn’t really about the personality of its students.
The valued quality of each of the four Houses has to do with how they perceive magic.
Stick with me a second: Hogwarts is a school to study magic. Magic as Hogwarts teaches it can be seen as many things: a natural talent, a gift, a weapon, etc.
So how you believe magic should be used will both reflect your personality and change how you handle that power.
“Their daring, nerve, and chivalry set Gryffindors apart,” Gryffindors perceive magic as a weapon. Gryffindors tend to excel in aggressive forms of magic, like offensive and defensive spells, and they are good at dueling. But a true Gryffindor knows that the power is a responsibility, and so they must always use their powers to stand up for what’s right. They are the sword of the righteous, which makes them as good at Defense Against the Dark Arts as they are at combat magic.
Hufflepuffs believe that magic is a gift and that the best gifts are to be given away. Hufflepuffs, “loyal and just,” would naturally abhor the idea of jealously guarding magic or using it to hurt someone else. So Hufflepuffs share their magic to benefit of Muggles, like the Fat Friar, to protect the overlooked, like Newt Scamander with his creatures, or to oppose those who would use magic to torment and bully, like the Hufflepuffs who stood with the DA and the battle of Hogwarts.
Slytherins are the opposite: they believe their magic is a treasure that they have been entrusted to protect. The Slytherin fascination with purity, with advantage, with cunning and secrecy–all of which were perverted by the Death Eaters–comes from the idea that people with magic in their veins have been given something special that it is their duty to protect at all costs. And perhaps they aren’t entirely wrong: power in the wrong hands can be dangerous. And power interfering at will with Muggle affairs is a gross presumption that could turn the course of history. Though the series shows some of the worst that Slytherin can be, “evil,” is not a natural Slytherin tendency. “Cautious,” is.
Ravenclaws believe that magic is an art form, one that is beautiful and should be appreciated and studied for its own sake. If “wit beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure,” then asking what magic is for is useless. It’s more important to immerse oneself in magic for its own sake. Ravenclaws push the boundaries of magic to see if they can, hence Hermione’s spell experiment on the DA coins being dubbed a Ravenclaw quality, but like Luna Lovegood in the pursuit of extraordinary creatures: they can also be content to plumb the depths of what already exists.
So while you can see where personalities will overlap over Houses, perhaps in Sorting we should be asking ourselves less what we think we are and more what we think we believe.
that’s much more interesting and substantive than “brave, smart, evil, miscellaneous”
No URL because this post came from actual Hogwarts via digital owl.
Huh. Solarpunk Notre Dame. I know people feel that this one building in Europe is getting Way Too Much Attention, but I have to say this is a cool redesign.
“The panels would store solar power in hydrogen fuel cells, the Paris based firm said. As more than enough energy would be stored to power the Cathedral, the excess could be channelled to nearby buildings.”
“The roof would also house a garden which would provide fruit and vegetables for the city’s poor and homeless. “
“It is one of a number of designs submitted after the French government announced an international competition to design a new roof after the old, timber roof was burnt down in the devastating fire earlier this year.“
well hold on now……these bitches might just do summ if they go through with this…………….
fred and george weasley on the top floor in hogwarts trying to get slinkies all the way down by predicting the pattern the stairs are gonna shift in
they actually figure it out, they calculate the exact pattern, and start distributing it
suddenly, students are barely ever late to classes any more and there are significantly fewer incidents of getting lost around the castle
everything goes wonderfully for a week, all the professors are baffled but pleased
until the end of the week when the true purpose for the pattern’s distribution becomes clear. schoolwide slinky race. a thousand conjured slinkies all let loose at the same time. the rustling of the swarm of springs echoes through the halls of hogwarts. the house elves refer to the dreaded Slinky Sunday for centuries
