What’s Your Hogwarts House?
As someone with a dangerous love for metaphors, I find it difficult to describe the cultural influences of millennials because it seems like nothing else anyone has experienced. Of course, I haven’t been alive to experience anything else, so naturally I think the world spins on its axis by the power of avocados and student debt. But try explaining to your 80 year old grandmother that scrolling through Twitter for 5 minutes isn’t going to destroy civilisation, and that with all the inequality and intolerance, maybe civilisation should be destroyed anyway.
Then there’s the situation where we’re all different, and our differences are more visible than ever. This isn’t a unique obsession with who we are, it’s just that we’re growing up in a time where “who we are” is more than our faces, qualifications or opinions, but also our interests, preferences and funny stories in 140 characters or less. So the closest I could get to an analogy that fits was: “We’re all on the shelves of the cereal aisle and everyone hates the gluten-free stuff who act like they’re better even though on the inside we’re all secretly made of cardboard and cause tooth decay and can’t afford ourselves.” I said I love metaphors, not that I was good at them. But then, there’s always Harry Potter.
The biggest inaccuracy in Harry Potter is that he’s more famous in the Wizarding World than he is in our one — which is hardly the case. His name is on books, DVDs (they still make DVDs just to put his name on them), movie posters, phone covers and people’s body parts. Round spectacles aren’t “retro” but “Harry Potter glasses”, and this is an unverified stat, but I’m sure there has been an increase in the use of wand-related innuendo since 2001. We have whole theme parks for our entertainment, and anything remotely connected to boy wizards with lightning bolt scars is guaranteed to be a financial success (even if we DON’T WANT IT). But of all the pop culture devices given to us by Harry Potter, the one chain of monoculture holding together this generation of compassionate, funny deadbeats is Hogwarts Houses.
I don’t know if it’s simply human nature or we’re taught that there’s merit in belonging. But I do know that in spite of our love of streaming TV shows alone in our rooms while hidden under six blankets with a poor oxygen supply, on some level we all seek, at most, acceptance, or, at least, company. Being part of something bigger than you are is empowering, and we take comfort in knowing that while this life thing may suck, it sucks slightly less when you’re not alone. And we’re ‘lucky’ (in the same way that Harry having a maternal aunt to take him in when his parents died was ‘lucky’), that as soon as we emerge, kicking, screaming and covered in bodily fluids, we find this world is one with allocated grouping. We’re male, female, boy, girl, black, white, rich, poor — the list extends as far as the imagination of some dudes who lived a billion years ago and hated everyone allows. We’re assigned company, and inherit their stereotypes, struggles, support and conveniences. We’re told who we’re supposed to be, and how we’re supposed to be it, even before we can control our own bowel movements.
When you belong to a minority or an oppressed group, the most prominent thread in the fabric of your life is a lack of agency; whether you’re a woman who has to take the long route home to avoid a group of guys on the corner, or a trans teen forced to wear clothes that are your size but don’t fit, or both. Even our activism and anger in response to our struggles is less a choice than it is a necessity. I mean, I don’t write about social justice issues because I find it a fulfilling hobby — I would actually love to write about the 38 different ways we can eat potatoes and cheese together, thanks for asking — I write about it because I have to. We wake up every morning to a world determined to tell us who we are, then adamant that we shouldn’t be who it tells us we are: you’re too black, too gay, too girly. We reclaim labels we never asked for because they’re ours, and our existences are political statements we never intended on making.
Hogwarts Houses were a way for us to salvage some of that agency growing up. Sirius Black proved you aren’t born into a House, Albus Dumbledore makes a point that it’s our choices which define us, and Harry Potter himself chose which House he would be sorted into. For once, we could decide where we fit best, and the company we wanted to align ourselves with: we chose our blessings and our burdens. Gryffindors are the heroes defending arrogance and recklessness. Hufflepuffs value friendship and loyalty, yet fight to be taken seriously. Slytherins are ambitious and cunning, but also, well, evil. Ravenclaws are intelligent and don’t care what anyone else thinks of them because everyone else is inferior and doesn’t read.
Growing up with anxiety, all I ever wanted to be was brave. But courage existed on the other side of the fence, in some other world, where all my heroes lived. Harry was my key to this place: if he could deal with puberty, crushes and school while also trying to save the world and not get killed by an all-powerful sorcerer hellbent on his demise, then I could maybe do half of those things reasonably well, right? In the beginning, calling myself brave sounded as ridiculous as calling a moth a dragon, but I was a Gryffindor because I wanted to be a Gryffindor, and because deep down I knew I could be a Gryffindor. Yet every time I tried to assert myself as the Harry of my life, I stumbled like Neville, and it hurt.
I felt wrong, not in the sense that I was incorrect about a Math problem or the answer to the universe— I felt wrong. And it hurt because I believed with my whole being, like only a kid can believe, that bravery was the zenith of human existence, and I was not it. But when the same Neville who lost his toad took a sword to a giant snake, I found a place for myself at the hero table. More than just prominent traits, Hogwarts Houses showed us the various ways they can manifest: we could be different from each other, and belong no less. I may not have saved the world (yet), but I found that the very same things I never thought I could do, I had done reasonably well, and that was enough. I was enough. I could be a Gryffindor, so I was a Gryffindor.
In the great struggle to define ourselves, define everyone else and resist all definitions, Hogwarts Houses are a haven for those of us who are entirely aware of our own ignorance. “Who are you?” is often a question with answers we don’t like, or don’t want, or don’t know, or never were. The power to say “I’m a Gryffindor” and have others know what it means, is relieving. But the power to say “I’m a Gryffindor” and know exactly what it means to me, is liberating. We’re all still different, and we’re all still trying to belong, but now we do so on terms incidental to human beings that are different and trying to belong, and not our birth certificates or social standing. A complete stranger becomes your best friend after complimenting your Ravenclaw scarf, and the Hufflepuff and Slytherin sustain their friendship on the shade they throw at each other. It’s rooted in an understanding that we share a common interest in fiction, we value the same traits in people, we celebrate ourselves so others can do the same, and, most importantly, we all want to be here right now.
Identity has been necessary since our oversized brains began thinking too much, and is even more essential now that our environment demands it. Hogwarts Houses allow our identities to be wholly ours, underlined only by what is meaningful to us, with the underlying caveat that none of us are right, but none of us are wrong either. Because sometimes the cereal aisle is crowded, and the cereal aisle is confused, and the cereal aisle has to participate in an ice-breaker. Then, there’s always Harry Potter.
