Which Hogwarts House are the Fundamental Forces?
Hogwarts is the opposite of everything which ever advanced humanity: science, technology, and NOT sending your children somewhere full of monsters. Hogwarts leaves more hazardous materials lying around than the Cold War. New student induction is a millinerial phrenologist permanently labelling three-quarters of other students their enemy.
But reality really is divided and defined by four different forces. What if we put the Sorting Hat on the Standard Model?
Weak Nuclear Force: Hufflepuff
The strong and weak nuclear forces don’t affect much outside their own small range, sticking mainly to themselves by holding atomic nuclei together. So they’re Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff: only there to make up the mass while Gryffindor and Slytherin enjoy spectacular special effects. And be honest: as soon as soon as you saw “weak” you knew it was Hufflepuff. Even if you are one. The weak force is one million times weaker than the strong, because in nuclear physics adjectives are no longer messing around. It’s a thousand times shorter in range as well, affecting an area only one quintillionth of a meter. That’s a thousandth of a proton.
Tiny, weak, keeping almost utterly to itself except when forced to interact at point blank range. Which is exactly what happens when you tear a small child from their family, send them to boarding school, subject them to a humiliating parade of being judged in front of the entire school on their first day, and the nicest thing said by even a magical nice-thing-saying hat is “Uh, I’m sure you’re pretty friendly.”
So what’s the point in being friendly? All life on Earth. And not just in the Sesame Street sense of “making it worthwhile” but the thermonuclear energy supply sense of “actually existing”. It turns out being friendly is pretty important! For example: two protons getting friendly to fuse in the Sun’s core, unleashing energy, warmth, light, and making little things like “everything in the universe which isn’t a cold cloud of hydrogen.”
The weak force is also the only one to appreciably affect neutrinos*. Possibly because electrically neutral and almost massless neutrinos are the only things to sleet through the world with less effect than Hufflepuffs.
*Gravity technically applies but the effect is appallingly small even compared to the weak force.
Strong Nuclear Force: Ravenclaw
Ravenclaw is the strong nuclear force. Which is the strongest anything force. It’s a hundred, a million, duodecillions of times stronger than the other three, and those aren’t hyperbole: those are the actual orders of magnitude between the strong force and electromagnetism, weak force, and gravity. The strong force is also the most complicated by an absolutely staggering degree. Which is exactly what Ravenclaws should earn while everyone else gets a basic diploma. They’re acknowledged as the smartest students in the school as soon as they arrive! You’d think an educational establishment would do more with that. Why aren’t they in advanced classes? Why are they losing valuable time while Gryffindors and Slytherins are bickering instead of learning? An easy magical cure for all disease is delayed because the brilliant are being held back by bickering idiots.
The strong nuclear force holds the nucleus together. Every single atom of every single thing? The strong nuclear force says you’re welcome. Gravity and electromagnetism put on the big show and the lightning bolts, but the world they’re struggling over is at the core (of every atom) shaped by strong nuclear. The strong nuclear force works with its own system of quantum chromodynamic color charges which the other forces can’t even perceive, never mind affect. They’re the standard model equivalent of sophisticated in-jokes. Because even among the laws of physics the Strong Ravenclaws are the nerds.
The strong force would utterly stomp all the others out of existence if it wasn’t focused entirely on its own extremely short range. Super-smart, all-dominating, and keeps to itself instead of getting involved in all the weak nonsense of everyone else? Sounds pretty Ravenclaw to me. You can’t tell me they don’t really run magical society. You divide a bunch of kids into “brave, evil, friendly, and smart”? The smart ones are going to prove it by backing off and quietly getting on with everything while the first two slug it out and the third wrings their hands about why we can’t all get along.
Electromagnetism: Slytherin
Glowing lights! Lighting bolts! Glowing while electrocuted by lighting bolts! Pretty much everything we associate with evil wizards from Harry Potter to Star Wars is electromagnetism. (And if you think “from Harry Potter to Star Wars” is a false range I can offer a thousand pages of fan-fiction to prove otherwise). Electromagnetism is 137 times weaker than the strong nuclear force. Which is why Hogwarts is the only school in the entire world where the jerks don’t bully the smart kids. Instead Slytherin target the “brave” Gryffindor, because their “brave” is the perfectly idiotic blend of “stupid enough not to avoid fights” and “obedient enough not to use their actual magic wands against bullies.”
Electromagnetism is why atoms don’t just fly through each other. Every atom is mostly empty space, it’s only the repulsion between negative electrons which stops you when you hit an obstacle. Which is what antagonists are for: to get between people and where they want to be.
Electromagnetism has infinite range. No wonder people were scared to say Voltemort’s name. It can’t overpower the strong nuclear force in the atomic nucleus but it does build everything else around it. Little things every element in existence. And all of chemistry. So also biology. As with all evil groups in power they’ve simply gotten on with rearranging reality to their designs instead of waiting to talk about it.
In true evil fashion electromagnetism is strong enough to dominate everything but instead wastes most of its potential struggling against itself. The magnitude of charge in existence would be enough to explode everything, ever, always. Except half of it is always opposed to the other half. Just like any story with multiple villains — they get in each other’s way to give everyone else a chance.
Gravity: Gryffindor
Gravity: by far the weakest, it’s almost impossible to even see how it ever achieves anything (if you ever find a graviton please report for your Nobel Prize), but it reshapes the big picture of the entire universe around itself anyway. Of course it’s Gryffindor.
Like electromagnetism gravity has infinite range. Unlike electromagnetism gravity always attracts and never repels, because Rowling-forbid that any Gryffindor should experience or display any kind of negative characteristic. Ron Weasley attracts Hermione despite being the world’s most useless whiner. Hermione attracts Harry and Ron despite correctly informing them that everything they ever do or did was wrong. And Harry attracts everyone despite being functionally useless at magic while also attracting constant lethal attack by magic.
Gravindor is about ten to the power of minus thirty-eight times weaker than the strong nuclear force. That’s a hundredth of a thousandth of a millionth of a trillionth of a quadrillionth. (And that’s still less laborious reading for such a small effect than Order of the Phoenix). It should disappear as a rounding error in every calculation. Gravity does disappear as a rounding error in every calculation, except the ones involving such immense masses they override all other terms. You need to rearrange the entire universe with ludicrous amounts of extra material just to make it possible for gravity to win. Which is exactly what happens in Hogwarts.
Harry Potter is the black hole at the heart of the Hogwarts’ galaxy. Only consuming, drawing a swirling vortex of every other force in existence into its inescapable singularity. All the spectacular Slytherin effects are only reactions to his all-dominating narrative attraction. Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw are crude matter to bulk up his all-consuming story, providing a little warmth while he crushes their existence around him. All their possibly interesting interactions overridden and removed from reality as they pass the Harry’s narrative event horizon.
Luke writes more glorious science humour at ZERO POINT COMEDY!