What’s Your Hogwarts House, and Did It Surprise You?

There are a ton of Hogwarts sorting quizzes out there, including the “official” one available on Pottermore. So where’d you end up?

In our continued celebration of the 20th anniversary of Harry Potter’s U.S. release, let’s talk Houses. Many of us, when reading the Harry Potter series or watching the movies, self-sorted ourselves into one of the fabled Hogwarts Houses. The Houses as depicted have different ethos, and their members tend to favor certain traits. So if you’re bookish and scholarly, you might envision yourself in Ravenclaw; if you’re loyal and gentle-minded, you might just be a Hufflepuff.

The Harry Potter wikia has a run-down of the House basics if you need a refresher:

Gryffindor values bravery, daring, nerve, and chivalry.
Hufflepuff values hard work, dedication, patience, loyalty, and fair play.
Ravenclaw values intelligence, knowledge, and wit.
Slytherin house values ambition, cunning, and resourcefulness.

Of course, the stereotypes applied to the Houses aren’t the last word. Hermione Granger seems like she would’ve been bound for Ravenclaw, but she was put in Gryffindor. And Harry influenced the Sorting Hat’s decision when the Hat sensed that he would do well in either Gryffindor or Slytherin. People are complicated, and we all contain elements of all of the Houses.

With the advent of Pottermore, you can now be officially sorted into a house based on a quiz. The quiz is rather esoteric; there are questions like whether you’d take a road through a forest or along a waterfront and it’s hard to see just how personality is measured through a good deal of the queries like that. But there are others that are of a more revealing nature.

Here’s one: “After you have died, what would you most like people to do when they hear your name?” These are the options:

Ask for more stories of your adventures
Think with admiration of your achievements
Miss you, but smile
I don’t care what people think of me after I’m dead; it’s what they think of me when I’m alive that counts

There’s no right answers on Sorting quizzes, but they tend to trend towards one House or another. You can probably game the system and get the House you’ve long thought you belonged in. But sometimes, you can be surprised.

I’d long thought myself rather a Hufflepuff. But when I took the Pottermore quiz a couple of years ago, I was genuinely shocked to be put into Slytherin. I took more and more quizzes that other sites have put together—always Slytherin, without fail. Answering the questions honestly showed me some of my own personality traits I hadn’t necessarily acknowledged. I’m now proud to be a card-carrying Slytherin and couldn’t imagine not identifying as a Slytherin. What had I been thinking? Just because I try to be a nice person doesn’t make me a Hufflepuff.

Obviously, this Sorting is all just in good fun, and the results are hardly scientific. But I think it can be an interesting tool and a surprisingly self-reflective excercise—a mirror of Erised, if you will.

So what House did you get, and were you surprised by the results? Tell us in the comments. If you’ve never taken a quiz before, Pottermore is here, and if you don’t want to go through the sign-up process, you can take the same quiz here. (If you sign up at Pottermore you can also get a Patronus, which is a graphic sequence done really well, and question for another day.)

(images: Warner Bros.)

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