I Finally Donned the Sorting Hat

/ Chel Owens

I remember when Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone was first published. My former sixth grade teacher said to me, “There’s an excellent book that’s just come out on the market. You have to read it.” She has good taste, strong opinions, and more than a little experience with literature.

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It was she who read our class The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tyler, The Log of the Ark, and The Wheel on the School. She allowed us to pick our own spelling words to be tested on and held us to a self-chosen monthly book-reading quota. In her classroom I read nearly every book on her shelves -and that’s saying something.

Knowing this, I read the book she recommended. I loved it. I read the others as they were released as well, pouncing upon them as soon as I could.

I know there are many to whom the series is not so impressive. My own husband has only read the first one. He and his sister began reading the second together, and he hated Dobby so much he hasn’t continued from there. One of my college English professors told us the Harry Potter books were only ‘good;’ not ‘great.’

I also know there are many to whom the series is life. They know the characters, creatures, spells, and trivia by heart. They know which floor of Hogwarts one might find: the Room of Requirement, Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom, or the entrance to Slytherin’s common room. Those Potterheads’ greatest wish is that they will get a letter in the mail announcing them as accepted pupils to the greatest school of witchcraft and wizardry…

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If I had been introduced to the series after its popularity, I’m not sure I’d be so fond of it. Hype and popularity ruin a thing for me.

Whether or not that’s the case, I will admit to falling more into the admirer category than the hater one. I’d love a wand and magic powers, yes; but much of my love for the series is Anglophilia. Blame my ancestry, perhaps. For that reason and the …insanity of the die-hard fans, I hesitate in admitting my affection.

So it is that, last night, I finally took an online quiz to determine which house I would be in. I did not get a song sung by a hat nor a voice in my ear; I instead answered a few questions regarding personality.

Out of curiosity, have you a guess to which I was assigned? I had. It wasn’t what I expected.

I definitely had two that I preferred not to be placed in. -Which is another thing I still do not understand about Potterheads. If you’ve read the series closely and if you are such fans, surely you would not want to publish to the world that you were placed in Hufflepuff. Right?

Everyone says Hufflepuff are a lot o’duffers. -Hagrid

Back to me. I’d like to think that I’d be sorted into Gryffindor. I’d like to think that maybe I’m less brave now because I have more self-preservation as part of being a mother, so that would be a possibility at the age of admittance (eleven years old).

But really, I was even quieter and more self-reserved then -unless someone ticked me off.

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So I’m in Ravenclaw. ‘S probably right. And, that result’s better than the time I took the Which Disney character are you most like? at Disneyland and was given Maleficent.

31 thoughts on “I Finally Donned the Sorting Hat”

  2. My daughter, a school teacher, introduced me to Harry Potter in the very early years before fame hit JK Rowling. She asked if I would buy books for her classroom library and suggested Harry Potter because her students liked the books. I read the books before I gave them to her and was hooked. I waited in anticipation for the next in the series to be published. I just took the quiz and the sorting hat put me in Hufflepuff. Thankyou for reviving the memories.

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  5. Welcome fellow Ravenclaw! I was just as hesitant and just as surprised. But it fits after I read about it and thought about it. I came to the series way after the hype. I think it was not long before the final book was published that I finally bought and read them all. My step-daughter insisted I read it at one point. I fought it out of over-popularity. Then I started, very skeptically, with Order of the Phoenix. I had much to criticize, but also was intrigued enough to later try starting at the beginning. I must admit to being a fan at this point, though not a Potterhead. I say enjoy what you enjoy and don’t worry about the popular opinion. It’s a fun and captivating world to escape into reading.

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    • I’m glad to read another late-arriver’s affections for it.

      After my English professor pointed out its flaws, I was able to look at the series more critically and come back around to about the same opinion with more experience.

      I’m sure I’ll dedicate an entire blog post when I have more uninterrupted time, but the main gist is that Rowling succeeds on so many levels. Escapism is a winning point for me in fiction novels.

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  8. at least it wasn’t Slytherin….
    Not sure what I am on the Potter spectrum. Not a Potterhead, definitely someone who’s enjoyed reading them but won’t do so again, unlike say Lord of the Rings, loved reading them out loud to the kids more than any other way of consuming them… I shan’t take the test as I know what I’d like and what I expect. And currently I have a Pensive on order from Amazon to help me defrag my memory… there’s some problems with the customs about letting it in

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  11. You should read Brandon Sanderson before he becomes super famous. The stormlight archive is very promising. I was a huge Harry Potter fan growing. It cultivated my love for the fantasy genre.

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      • The thing is that all his books are interconnected. They’re set in a meta verse and a few characters turn up in different series’s although they can be read separately. I’ve read the first trilogy of Mistborn. It’s brilliant. The Stormlight Archive is supposed to be his magnum opus. He’s finished three books. I think he plans to write ten. He even did a great job of completing The Wheel of Time series after Robert Jordan’s death.

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