Gryffindor
Godric GryffindorCourage, nerve and chivalry, and a common room up a staircase behind a portrait. The sword only comes to a Gryffindor who needs it.
Franchise · Primary · since 1997Ravenclaw
Harry Potter
Seven books read before I knew what a compiler was. The houses, the spellbook, Quidditch, the wandlore, the seven Horcruxes and the three Hallows: the whole architecture of the thing, laid out. And for the record, before the Hat below gets a say in it: I am a Ravenclaw, and I have never once been talked out of it.
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and WizardryDraco dormiens nunquam titillandus · never tickle a sleeping dragon
A castle in the Scottish Highlands, founded around the year 990 by four of the greatest witches and wizards of the age, three of whom got along. Unplottable, Muggle-repelling, and to anyone who should not be there it looks like a ruin with a sign warning them off.
Below it, a wand: a length of wood and a core of something that was alive, and the single most personal object anyone in this world owns. Eleven inches of holly and a phoenix feather is a different life from fifteen inches of elder and a thestral tail hair, and Ollivander could tell you which was which by the feel of it.
Slytherin
Salazar SlytherinAmbition, cunning and resourcefulness, in a dungeon common room under the lake. Not one house of villains, just the one that keeps score.
Ravenclaw
Rowena RavenclawWit, learning and wisdom, behind a door that asks a riddle instead of a password. Get it wrong and you wait for someone cleverer.
Hufflepuff
Helga HufflepuffHard work, patience, loyalty and fair play. The house that took everyone, and the one that stayed and fought when the castle emptied.
The Sortingthe Hat has never been wrong, it says
A thousand-year-old hat that reads you and shouts. It takes your own choice into account, which is the single most important rule in the series and the reason Harry is not in Slytherin. Mine put me in Ravenclaw and I did not argue. Put it on and see what it does with you.
Put me on, then.
It sorts at random, the way a hat that reads minds cannot. Argue with it and it will sort you again.