By Gryffindor, the bravest were
Prized far beyond the rest;
For Ravenclaw, the cleverest
Would always be the best;
For Hufflepuff, hard wokers were
Most worthy of admission;
And power-hungry Slytherin
Loved those of great ambition.

So who has it right? Would you rather be loyal, courageous, cunning or intelligent? What do you think would bring you furthest in life? We know from the books that it doesn't mean if you are from a specific house that you only have those exclusive traits from that house. As we see in Luna from Ravenclaw who is also very brave and with Hermione in Gryffindor who is very smart. Also Neville in Gryffindor who has many typical Hufflepuff qualities.

All of the houses certainly have amiable virtues, only which is most important?

It's not about being right. No complex society can exist without all of them, each fulfilling their roles according to their natures. And I don't think one really chooses which one to be. As a kid I may have wanted to be more of a Gryffindor, as an adult I wish I could be more of a Slytherin, but my brain doesn't work that way. I'm a Ravenclaw and that's it. What I need to do is find where my Ravenclawish self is relatively at an advantage and where it is likely to find the most satisfying use.

Exactly. None of them are "right." You need all of them in the world to function and have a good society. You need the Gryffindors to go out there and take chances and save the world. And you need the Ravenclaws to think things through and help the Gryffindors to not just go jumping into things that could disastrous. You need the Hufflepuffs to stay calm and friendly and sweet no matter what happens. And you need the Slytherins to use their unique smarts, and, yes, to do anything to meet their ends. Each house compliments the other three in some way, and nothing would get done if one was in power or was "right."

They present the Unity of the world- the four Elements that at their most powerful when they're working together -
Gryffindor Fire,
Hufflepuff Earth,
Slytherin Water and
Ravenclaw Air
= Hogwarts

You put that very well, Oryx! A House full of nothing but Gryffindors/Hufflepuffs/etc. may have a familiarity that's comforting to young students. But even first-year Hogwarts students share classes with pupils from other houses, and as adults finding their ways through the Wizarding world, they must realize very quickly that, as the saying goes, "It takes all kinds to make the world." If someone doesn't, exaggerated loyalty to his or her house is a sign of deeper problems.

I see your point but what I meant is, which is most important (in a complex society) as you said. I realize that they are all important but I wish for us to only explore and try to discover why each and every house, believes themselves to be superior (with maybe the exemption of humble Hufflepuff.)

Also there is something that I STRONGLY disagree with you about. [See above text in bold]. One of the most crucial things Dumbledore taught Harry is that it is our choices that show who we truly are. Harry only became a Gryffindor because he asked the sorting-hat to be in Gryffindor. It's about choice not about settling for what you have or think you have.

Choices show, reveal, what we already are, they don't make what we are. Harry did not want to be a Slytherin because he wasn't one. He already was a Gryffindor before putting the Hat on, but his chat with the Hat revealed this information to him. Rowling said Voldemort could not have chosen to feel remorse when it was offered to him by Harry because he was Voldemort. Anyone else might have chosen remorse in his place but Voldemort was incapable of making such a choice. Similarly Harry was incapable of choosing Slytherin.
"You can do what you will, but in any given moment of your life you can will only one definite thing and absolutely nothing other than that one thing." - Schopenhauer.

But surely we choose what we become. Voldemort was not born evil and Harry was not born brave or heroic. They became that way through the choices they made. For example Harry wasn't in essence, the Chosen One but he choose to be. The prophecy would only become true if Harry wanted it too.

QUOTE

HBP p.478
[Dumbledore] 'Imagine, please, just for a moment, that you had never heard that prophecy! How would you feel about Voldemort now? Think!'
[...]
I'd want want him finished,' said Harry quetly. 'And I'd want to do it''

Voldemort was born with more potential to become evil than not, and Harry the other way around. But the fact that our adult personality isn't completely present in our childhood does not mean we have much of an option as to what we become. And having a choice does not mean we could choose otherwise than we actually did. A computer has a choice of what the answer to 2+2 is, but it will always choose 4. Adult personality has higher heritability than childhood personality - probably because as adults we have more control of our environment and therefore we make choices that are more compatible with the way our brains work. When we are free to choose we try to make choices that make us happy, choices that mesh well with our personalities. IOW it is a self-enhancing process that makes us what we were 'meant' to be all along.

I don't believe there is anything that is meant to be. You cannot be meant to be a Gryffindor or a Slytherin, or good or evil, or have a certain personality or not. Just because Voldemort had more potential, to be bad, does not make it destiny or fate. Harry could easily have been tempted into the Dark Arts. But he choose not too. If you believe that Voldemort had no choice then, what you are saying is that we can sympathize with him. That he was not responsible for all those terrible things? I think not.


But a computer does not have a personality. It's not alive. It follows orders, it works in the way it was programmed to, therefore it does not have a choice. Just like a spell or enchanted object. There is a big difference.

In the books (and this is something I've learned to believe too) we see that we are the creators of out destinies. We write the story, that can hold endless possibilities and endings and we do this through our choices.

So don't you think it's obvious that we make/choose are houses then as well?

A naturally introverted person cannot become extroverted. A naturally neurotical person cannot become otherwise by shear will. And so forth. That behavioral sciences produce any results at all is evidence that our choices have more predictability to them than we would care to admit.

Having a choice when we cannot chose but one is no choice at all.



Except for foster children, this is unlikely.

The stuff that is heritable in children comes from parents (setting aside samsara). Parents set the parameters of choice, early, so choices, if children can be said to make any, are set within a congruent arena. Once children are in the world, parameters of choice broaden, or parameters for choice-givers. Choices do not reveal what we are; they reveal what we (very recently) were. Any consequential choice informs what we get next, what we then, errrr....were. And on...

In answer to the OP:

I agree with Oryx, that one set of characteristics isn't better or worse than the others. However, if i had to choose: then courage. However smart, fair-minded or network-worthy one may be, none of that can avail absent courage. Of course, Bellatrix represents the downside of courage unabated. None in the series were braver, and none more rabid.

It's not either/or. Harry had aspects of Sly and of Gryf; Hermione of Gryf and Rav...and on we go. The Houses at Hoggie were, first, a nod to tradition (especially as, per Rowling, the Founders somehow managed to inform the Hat) but mainly a matter of administrative ease.

Potential can not be manifested if not confronted with the need to develop it.

My genes can have a lot of information on how to produce the vital proteins which will allow me to survive in a glacial environment. I live in a mediterranean climate, so it's hardly for them to express.

Harry's potential to become the chosen one expresses when confronted with the consequences of Voldemort's choices on the prophecy.

Environment triggers decisions, those decisions create my destiny & reordinates the environment according to them.

As long as the one doing the choosing is not aware of what the choice would be ahead of time it is still experienced as a choice by the individual and viewed as such by an observer.


This is not what behavioral sciences show. Parents set up parameters for choices while the child is interacting with them. Peers set the parameters for choices on the playground, teachers and peers at school, etc. Once a child leaves home parents no longer set up parameters for much at all, but the now-adult for the most part sets parameters for hirself, based on what s/he is most comfortable with. But the parents' genes are in the child all life long. Statistically speaking, we tend to grow up into our biological parents, regardless of who raised us.


But environment isn't an independent factor. The environments (plural) that children find themselves in are chosen by their parents - my husband and I chose for our daughter to be raised in a suburban environment in a particular culture etc. And adults choose their environments for themselves - by choosing places of residence, profession, workplace. Most people won't choose environments that clash extremely with their personalities if they can help it.

I agree, all are important but the one I prize above all the rest is bravery.

I disagree. I believe your decisions creates your enviroment or more precisely our perceptions. All our beliefs lie in our perceptions. Our beliefs result in us thinking a certain way and our thoughts create our decisions, which carry us to our enviroments.

And our decisions are fueled by our personalities. It's a cycle.

And you believe we get our personalities where? Through our thoughts I'd say.

What a confusing discussion there, I think I'll stay out of it and skip to the 'who is right' part.

As a puff, I'm going to have to say puff. That's to say, I think being fair is the most important quality of those four.
Because think about it, if everybody were fair to one an other, all the time, there wouldn't be any problems in the first place.

And intelligence...it sounds good but how do you define it?

I think I was confusing myself there...

I agree, it would be easier if everyone just got along. And intelligence is perhaps the ability to think rational thoughts. Also the ability to learn facts and skills and apply them suitably, especially when this ability has been properly developed.

How do you explain Sirius then Oryx if environment and parents set up a child's choices for them? certainly it explains Regulus to a point, but how does it explain Sirius breaking from all of that if it wasn't his own personal choice?

What made him choose Gryffindor Ideals over his Family's Slytherin ones? For that matter what made Tonks choose Hufflepuff?

Although I agree that in most cases children grow up to be very similar to their parents, according to psychologists, there are occasions when this rule just doesn't apply. I'm not sure specialists can give an adequate explanation to that. Sirius, to take the most obvious example, rejects the family principles and ideals from a very young age. We see that no other child behaves like this; all the young children want to follow in their parents' footsteps and be in the house where their parents once were. Sirius's case was rare, but not unique. I was such a child, never approving of my parents' choices and never seeing eye to eye with them on almost anything.

As for the question that has spurred such a complicated discussion, I don't think I can choose. Hogwarts was founded because four gifted wizards joined their forces. Each of them prized different qualities, but it was their combined power that made the wizarding school a reality.

And where do thoughts come from? The core of personality is genetic, and the way our genes interact with environment - mostly the peer environment of the playground and school (though home environment influences the aspects of personality we display around close family members).

Shard, I don't see why home environment has anything to do with personality outside the home. My claim about home environment is that it has very little influence - limited to childhood and to interactions with one's nuclear family. Children sent to boarding schools would be even less influenced by home environment than those raised at home. And those interactions that are influenced by home environment are also influenced by the genetics of the participants. I don't know enough about Regulus to make a more detailed response.

(BTW I don't think Sirius chose Gryffindor ideals, he chose the House where James wanted to be. Had James said he wanted to be a Hufflepuff Sirius would have tried that. Not sure if the Hat would have agreed, though.)

Slytherin! Ayn Rand, baby. Rational Self Interest.

Well then it's still choosing to follow a comparitive stranger to his own family. Clearly Sirius didn't buy he family propaganda like his brother did.

What about those twin studies where the twins were split up at birth and raised by other families, in sometimes completely different environments? There are lots of twins who still have very similar character/behavioral traits (that are too alike to be coincidence or just common to everyone) which suggests that much of personality is genetically programmed.

I think Harry's anti-Slytherin stance was influenced mostly by what Hagrid and Ron said about that House. Harry had no idea of what differed one house from another, except that his new friends told him that there were dark wizards that came from Slytherin. If he went in with no prejudice against Slytherin the outcome might have been different. In this case, I don't see Harry as brave at all, but as being more loyal to his newly found friends. Perhaps this loyalty is what prompted the Hat to put Harry in Gryffindor, since the loyalty is considered a Hufflepuff trait - putting others before yourself, yet he had too much fire in him (through both his parents) to be a content Hufflepuff.

Momwitch: Did Harry know that Voldemort had come from Slytherin when he asked not to be put there? He did have part of VM in him, so he should have been considereed for Slytherin. But if this is the house that destroyed your family...I think Harry's dislike for Slytherin was fueld by Malfoy's rudeness and arrogance toward Ron and Snape's obvious dislike of Harry.

I wonder if James hatred of Snape was rooted in Snape's friendship with Lily. Sure, there must have been tension between Sirius and the Sltherins, but we also know that James liked Lily long before Lily returned any affection.

I don't read any real enmity into the whole sorting issue. I see it more as friendly rivalry. My children attend a school where you are sorted into homeroom alphabetically. They have contests with rewards.

Me, I'd have hoped for Ravenclaw but would probably have gone to Hufflepuff. I work very hard to consider all viewpoints before I make my decisions.

All of them are right.Everyone need to be brave and intellegent,in some cases cunning and everytime kind-hearted and hard-working.

That was my point, wondering. Harry was a "clean slate" (pure of heart ) so to speak, with no knowledge of Hogwarts other than what he was being told in bits and pieces through a former Gryffindor, and a Gryffindor wannabe. His interaction with Draco on the train and while waiting to be sorted didn't help things, as Draco was Harry's first experience with a Slytherin "type", although it is really not fair to judge an entire house upon one or two of its students. Not all Slytherins were like Draco, as we see later on with Slughorn and in Snape.

Also his new knowledge of both his parents coming from Gryffindor would influence his decision. It would give him the opportunity to get to know them, by walking the same halls and corridors they did, touching the same furniture they touched, imagining what they might have been thinking in the Gryffindor common room...there are lots of things there that would help him make a connection with them in a way he was never able to before, so it would only be natural for the Harry portion of himself to want to be there too. Dudley went to his father's alma mater, so given that example, it must have been gratifying for Harry to know that his parents weren't nameless nobodies without histories of their own. In Gryffindor, he would be able to experience a part of that history for himself.

Again, at that point, I don't think it was Harry's bravery that put him in Gryffindor, but his loyalty - both to his friends, and his true family.

I wonder why people still get confused. Loyalty was the trait Helga valued more. So it'll make Harry a nice badger. He's braver than ambitious. More ambitious than loyal & clearly pretty much loyal than smart.

Back on topic... each founder was right & together they were even righter.

To be honest, I don't think that any house is the best or the worst or whatever. I think that they are all equal in a way. The four founders were friends right, so if they were friends then people that are sorted in each house are somewhat related, right?

I would rather be in Ravenclaw but to be honest Slytherin best fits my personality. I mean I am cunning. But I would prefer to be in Ravenclaw... Everyone wants to be smart, right?

There are no such things as the most important virtue. I think all of them are important. All of them have a virtue which everyone has. I think they only get sorted into different houses because the houses element might be the strongest in your personality. Please look below and you will notice that each virtue is what everyone has.


Hufflepuff - Kindness



Ravenclaw - Wits



Slytherin - Cunningness



Gryffindor - Bravery

I wasn't confused, Hatun punchaw. I know that loyalty is the Hufflepuff trait, but this was my reasoning as to why his loyalty put him in Gryffindor: (post #25)


An extension/explanation of that should have been: since Harry was exhibiting loyalty (or put others before himself), the ambition that is Slytherinesque took a back seat when the Hat had to make its decision. As was mentioned, he had too much fire in him to be a really successful Hufflepuff, so the best match was an alignment with the house whose element was fire.

hmmm, I liked all your comments momwitch. But I think I'm going with Hatun punchaw. Apparently, Harry chose Gryffindor. He had the necessary bravery and desired it over Slytherin. To me, loyalty implies a little longer relationship than anything Harry had experienced in the magic world. I think you make a good argument for his choosing Gryffindor out of love for his parents.

I'm a little confused here. I thought that what Harry chose was 'not Slytherin' rather than 'yes Gryffindor.' So to me that would mean the hat chose which of the 'not Slytherin' houses it thought he would be better in.

And I'm coming down on the side of those who say that no one of the traits is better or worse. Each of them is good or bad depending on how they are utilised. Bravery can become recklessness, loyalty can lead to peer pressure, brains can lead to overthinking of things and Cunning isn't necessarily bad. It can help you work out problems.

I agree. One should have a balance. But I'd rather go to Hufflepuff. For it isn't only loyalty. It's justice too. One has a fair mind. To have intellect, courage and a bit of cunning along with loads of fairness is excellent I think.

And I think there's no paticular 'best' house. You are srted into a house where you can excercise your talents. That's it. No quality is the best. It's just that according to your qualities you're sorted into a house that suits them best and gives youa chance to improve them.

You are correct Sethtaylorsummer. Harry's only choice is not Slytherin. The hat takes over from there. So Harry has some choice but the hat ultimately decides. I agree that no house is best. Your talents are neither good nor bad. It all depends on how you use them.

I think you have to decern between Potterverse (as created by JK) and reality. In Potterverse the Slytherins are largely portrayed as unredeemable. In reality no one group is completely unredeemable. Also, the nature vs. nurture arguement is reality based. I was recently called Slytherin on a thread here at leaky by someone who simply didn't agree with me. It was supposed to be an insult, but is it really?

I think the importance of house unity in the later books and the fear of turning every student into a Slytherin show that all qualities are neccesary for success.
Slytherin: without drive and cunning, a person would be stuck in a rut. But with too much, they end up power-hungry.
Hufflepuff: Harry couldn't have made it through his 7-year journey without loyal friends and having (for the most part) loyalty to his friends. However, too much loyalty can land a person in a Wormtail situation.
Gryffindor: Bravery is clearly needed in batttle, but in everyday life standing up for what's right and important requires bravery. However, bravery to the point of recklessness usually turns out badly.
Ravenclaw: The world requires smarts. It's normally the case that the smartest people get the best jobs. But being a know-it-all sends the message to other people to avoid you. We saw this with Hermione and Percy. (Oddly enough, neither were Ravenclaws)

Oryx, I take it you don't believe in free will but in fate? My teachers were way off about me then - I WAS fulfilling my potential since I could only have done what I ultimately chose to do - mess around That has some unsettling implications though, like Hitler couldn't be held accountable for his actions since he was only doing what he was capable of doing.

Going back to the original question, I think courage is possibly the most important since it's behind pretty much every other quality if you want to put that quality into good use - you need courage to be loyal, courage to fulfil ambition, courage to put your smarts into use, courage to do pretty much anything, you know, even wake up, get out of bed and leave the house. Or stupidity. Courage or ignorance - but I don't think there's a house for the latter so let's go for courage. That you need a little of each goes without saying - but we already have a little of each by being human, so there's no reason to say that it's NOT more important to be courageous than ruthless or smart or hard-working. I don't think the author of this thread was asking us which quality we'd adopt and which other qualities we'd dump by default . I think possibly they were asking which quality we'd like to have our personalities dominated by.

As an eagle, i can state that sometimes the logical option should be take the risk, work hard or sneak around.

What you put first depends on what you value more. Through all years of school at Hogwarts, certainly the other traits not as valuable to your house will have a chance to develop, based on the primary traits.

Right or wrong is what you choose to label as them.

well quite frankly all the virtues are repesented in each house...so it all depends on which virtues you act upon and those choices are reflected in the house that was chosen for you....but all in all id rather have cunning just too get out of sticky situations...and its partly biased becuase i like Slytherin...

Was it a Gryffindor proponent who insulted you? There would be bravery used for an evil purpose.

I think that Slytherins are portrayed that way because we are seeing the wizarding world through Harry's eyes. Yes, there are a lot of bad Slytherins but I agree completely that no one group is completely unredeemable. It also seems from Rowling's statements that she thinks that the fandom is a little too hard on the Slytherin house. I think she rather likes the Slytherins in some ways.

Oryx, I agree with you about genetic determination and choice. I know a child who never knew her father or what he was like, yet she is so very much like him it was amazing. They grew up in very different environments also. So I think that people really will be what they are predisposed to be for the most part. We make choices and fate acts randomly on our lives but I also think our inclinations for choice are quite determined.

There has been discussion of the Sorting Hat allowing Harry's choice because he asked to be in Gryffindor. I don't think that one can really say that this shows that the Sorting Hat takes your choice into account in every situation. Probably only if it senses that you are split rather equally between two houses. The hat could tell that Harry had Slytherin in him (the Voldemort soul) and the rest of him was Gryffindor, so it let him decide (but really, the larger part was obviously Gryffindor anyway - so really, was is Harry's asking what made the Sorting Hat decide?).

I think that each predominant character trait that the houses have need others as complements. What is bravery without wisdom? What is ambition without bravery? etc... It does seem that each predominant trait needs to also nurture its complements.

There also was a section at the end of the Sorting Hat's speech that questioned whether sorting the wizards into houses was actually wrong. And it seems that Beauxbatons and Durmstrang don't sort their wizards, so it might be argued that really sorting the kids is a little like racial stereotyping. It just kind of forces a model onto them to some degree - even if they may have that characteristic in them.

I can't think of a single character who felt they got sorted into the wrong house. So each house must be where each character felt that they belonged. As for Slytherins being portrayed as unredeemable, JK said that only LV was unredeemable and that some of the Slytherins fought against him. I do agree that the Slytherins we get to know tend to be a little selfish, but not altogether evil.

Is Sirius really so different from his family? The key characteristics of the Blacks is the strength of their convictions, their passionate attachments to those they love or revere, their willingness to risk all for what they believe in, their recklessness, their wilfullness and their hauteur. As personalities, Sirius and Bellatrix especially are suprisingly similar. What differentiates them is that they express their personalities through an opposing set of values. Sirius does not, of course, have Bellatrix's sadistic streak, nevertheless, his disdain of those in oppositon to his values is just as intense and unforgiving; and he can be an equally formidable opponent. Rebellion against the family creed of 'toujours pur' was not unprecedented among certain members of the Black family and these people were no doubt young Sirius's inspiration. What would have been surprisingly un-Black about Sirius is if he had become a mealy-mouthed, timid soul who bent with the prevailing wind. Tonks, too has that 'come hell or high water' attitude in the face of oppostion, again a true Black characteristic. No shrinking violet would be prepared to marry a werewolf, again an example of rebellion, in this case against her parents' disapproval. Finally it's not really the choices they make that makes them true Blacks but rather the utter conviction they maintain in those choices and their 'go to the devil' attitude towards those who would censure those choices.

What influences a person's choices in life is a very complex interaction between personality and environment both within the family and without. A person can be shaped equally by what they oppose as much as what they agree with. Often the resolve one has in one's convictions can be strengthened through familial opposition especially when one has a naturally rebellious spirit and the will to stand firm. There is no free choice independent of personality which in turn is a product of genetics, nurture and a conscious decision to modify or accentuate those aspects of character you like or dislike. Sirius chose Gryffindor because it was his courage that enabled him to oppose his family values. He may be as bright as any Ravenclaw, however, in Sirius action takes precedence over reflection and Gryffindor is the house that no doubt stood most firmly in opposition, at least in his mind, to Slytherin. In short, his Black heritage is as responsible for influencing Sirius's choice of house as it is in the case of Bellatrix.

I don't think there is a correct house. I am a Ravenclaw with quite a bit of Gryffindor in me, quite like Luna. I have never suffered from SPS (Slytherin Predjudice Syndrome) and, even though I sort everyone I meet into one of the houses, I don't value one house over the other. There can be Smart, Loyal, Couragous or Ambitious people in all of the houses, it is just not their defining characteristic. It is quite saddening to think that they are split like that, I feel especially sorry for the Slytherins. They have just had bad luck, because many ambitious people turn out to be a little too ambitious. But I think they are all highly important qualities and it isn't important to differentiate one from the other. Always remember Dumbledore when he said "You know Severus, sometimes I think we sort too soon." Did any of you listen to the J.K. pottercast when she was saying about the fact that it isn't inevitable that how you are like at 11 is how you'll be at 30. xxx

I believe that the use of the Sorting at Hogwarts placed young kids within a "family" setting where their strongest qualities would be strengthened and mediocre qualities would have a chance to blossom--not to "segregate" and divide.

In order to be successful, people in the real world play to their strengths. The same could also be said about the Founders of the Houses of Hogwarts. They each played to their strengths and passed down their passions and what they valued most in the form of Houses and the Sorting Hat. Just because someone was courageous/brave and in Gryffindor didn't mean they couldn't possess some wisdom associated with Ravenclaw. Also, just because a student with tons of ambition was placed in Slytherin doesn't mean they don't possess the hard-working quality of Hugglepuff.

I believe that the interaction between students of each House brought all those qualities together. They all took classes together, studied together, walked the halls together, endured hardships together. I think another purpose of the Houses was to "force" those students with different strengths to come together to problem-solve, discuss, etc. Someone from Gryffindor will have a totally different outlook than someone from Slytherin, but of course, two different students from the same House would have different thoughts about the same problem.

I do not think the use of the Houses in HP was meant to set stereotypes.

I wonder whether the Unspeakables are predominately ex-Ravenclaws? I see their role as the wizarding equivalent of academics researching into the complex theoretical foundations of magic. Even though obviously quite a few of the Gryffindor characters had the Ravenclaw intellect (James, Sirius, Hermione, McGonagall, Dumbledore and possibly Lupin) they were put in Gryffindor because they had an natural inclination to use their intelligence in acting within the world where courage was more significant rather than in purely scholarly pursuits. If you think of Muggle examples, Albert Einstein would be a classic Ravenclaw and Nelson Mandela, a Gryffindor. Yet clearly Einstein had courage and Mandela intellect but it is more a question of which of these qualities was emphasized in the roles they chose to play in society.

I don't see neither of the people you named (even as Albus isn't confirmed as a Gryffindor) as having Ravenclaw's intellect. Which is most throughtly reflected by Luna's answer to the riddle to access the common room.

They are quite capable students, with a high quote of thinking ability. But to always think and therefore act is what make the eagles different to lions. As this last ones would only think when they choose to take the risk of waiting... when action is required.

I think the animals for every house suits them. But i must admit, i do miss the people who died . . ..

I always imagined the Sorting Hat as looking at what's inside a particular person. Take Hermione - if students are sorted based on what you see on the outside then she would have been put in Ravenclaw based on her mind and her being "of wit and learning." Even if no one else could see it - not even Hermione herself - the Hat saw guts and gumption. It saw the girl who would take a stand for the mis-treated and the lonely and would go toe to toe with the a bully any day. Hermione had no problem telling anyone that what they were doing was wrong - a friend, a teacher or the Minister of Magic himself!

The Hat tells the first years "don't judge on what you see" and the Hat practices what it preaches. It looks inside the students to see what they are really made of, what they value and what they want. Long before we see it in him, the Hat sees that Neville is a brave boy with a good sense of right and wrong who is just as capable of standing up for his friends as he is of standing up to his friends.

In Harry it sees natural talent in this courageous and "cunning" boy who we know too well will "use any means to achieve his ends," a very Slytherin-y quality. When Harry begs to not be put in Slytherin the Hat probably sees that as fairly brave - a first year having the guts to speak up for something he really wants. He wants to be with his friend and the one Slytherin he met so far - Malfoy - gave him a feeling that that house was just not for him. The Hat sees this and respects it - thus sorting him into Gryffindor.

QUOTE(dompeldoris @ Dec 17 2007, 02:41 PM)

So who has it right? Would you rather be loyal, courageous, cunning or intelligent? What do you think would bring you furthest in life? We know from the books that it doesn't mean if you are from a specific house that you only have those exclusive traits from that house.
All of the houses certainly have amiable virtues, only which is most important?

You bring up interesting questions about the different Hogwarts houses. However, I don't believe that any single house has it "right" and I don't believe those virtues and/or characteristics that are used for sorting are the most important. Every human being has their own strengths; and that is exactly what the Sorting Hat "sees"; it sees what each individual is; it assesses that strength and sorts accordingly. I personally believe that we are all a potpourri of the various characteristics of the four houses and I believe that true of the characters portrayed in the books as well.

As far as what I would like to be, I think I am all of those things; loyal, courageous, intelligent (for the most part ), and I am cunning when I need to be. We are not two dimensional cut outs or carbon copies of each other. Diversity is essential for human beings to thrive, survive and it is vital for interactions with others.