The Sorting Hat
chapter seven of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
Harry and his classmates enter Hogwarts for the first time and are sorted into houses; Harry becomes a Gryffindor when he requests not to be placed in Slytherin. The students then join the feast, where they meet their housemates and a few other Hogwarts characters, discuss their professors and classwork, and sing the Hogwarts school song before being ushered to bed at the top of Gryffindor Tower.
The entrance hall was so big you could have fit the whole of the Dursleys’ house in it. The stone walls were lit with flaming torches like the ones at Gringotts, the ceiling was too high to make out, and a magnificent marble staircase facing them led to the upper floors.
(by gerre)
Professor McGonagall now stepped forward holding a long roll of parchment. “When I call your name, you will put on the hat and sit on the stool to be sorted.”
(by Laurence Peguy)
“Potter, Harry!” As Harry stepped forward, whispers suddenly broke out like little hissing fires all over the hall. “Potter, did she say?” “The Harry Potter?”
(by Hala Zabaneh)
“I don’t think I’ve introduced myself? Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington at your service. Resident ghost of Gryffindor Tower.”
(by Laurence Peguy)
It happened very suddenly. The hook-nosed teacher looked past Quirrell’s turban straight into Harry’s eyes – and a sharp, hot pain shot across the scar on Harry’s forehead.
(by NicoPony)
Everybody finished the song at different times. At last, only the Weasley twins were left singing along to a very slow funeral march.
(by gerre)
“Oooooooh!” he said, with an evil cackle. “Ickle Firsties! What fun!”
(by haystax45)
At the top of a spiral staircase they found their beds at last: five four-posters hung with deep red, velvet curtains…. Too tired to talk much, they pulled on their pajamas and fell into bed.
(by Chantelle)
about the chapter
Just as an aside – if you’ve never been in a large hall in which hundreds of people simultaneously attempt to sing the Hogwarts school song to their own individual tune, it’s an experience. Having done it once, I can confidently list “utter chaos” among the things that Dumbledore enjoys (enough to be “wiping his eyes” after it’s done!).
The Wizarding World
The first years’ reaction to the ghosts entering the room is interesting. They’re all so startled that it’s clear even those raised by wizards have probably never before come across one. So then, are there other ghosts in Britain? And if so, where do they live (or haunt)? Sadly, we’ll only ever hear about others in passing, so it’s hard to know the full story.
Another insight into the workings of the Wizarding World comes through Harry’s conversation with Neville, where Neville explains how scared his family was that he “might not be magic enough to come” to Hogwarts. Though the story is little more than a humorous aside for the eleven-year-olds at the table, it’s also an early inkling of how deep the prejudices of the world really are. After all, the Longbottoms nearly killed Neville trying to “force” magic out of him. Malfoy has already shown us that wizards descended from Muggles are considered lower-class; now we’re seeing that other “deformities” can turn even a child into an extreme outcast as well.
The Boy Who Lived
Though his dislike for Slytherin isn’t founded on much – hearsay from Hagrid and Ron, and a couple of encounters with Malfoy – Harry trusts his instincts enough to avoid the house. Notice that he doesn’t specifically ask for Gryffindor, though, despite hearing nearly as many negatives about Hufflepuff as he has Slytherin. In other words, it’s not Harry’s normal fears of acceptance that drive his choice (even Hagrid said that Hufflepuffs are “duffers”). Instead it’s his gut feeling about Slytherin specifically – and quite possibly the air of presumed superiority that surrounds the members of its house. Knowing full well what it’s like to be treated as an inferior, Harry wants no part of that game.
Something to Remember
The Sorting Hat very nearly placed Harry in Slytherin, despite the fact that, at least from Harry’s perspective, he doesn’t have much in common with any of the Slytherins he ever meets. Harry will later wonder why the Hat nearly made this choice, but it will be a long while before he discovers what it was the Hat was seeing inside him when it considered placing him there.
The Final Word
(When asked, “Where did you get the idea for the Sorting Hat?”)
“That was a bit of hard work. First, I considered the many different ways we sort things. Pulling names out of a hat was the one that kept coming back to me. So I twisted the idea around and came up with a talking hat that could make decisions.”–J.K. Rowling, October 1999
“My favourite book was The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge…. And perhaps more than any other book, it has a direct influence on the Harry Potter books. The author always included details of what her characters were eating and I remember liking that. You may have noticed that I always list the food being eaten at Hogwarts.”–J.K. Rowling, November 2002
I just love the pictures of all the Hogwarts characters! Laurence Peguy has such beautiful drawings, and the pictures of the school are amazing.
Kara said this on February 22, 2009 at 3:34 pm
My favorite part of this chapter are the “few words” before the banquet by Dumbledore!
Neither in the British nor in the German version of the book do we see Dean Thomas getting sorted. Therefore we don’t learn that he is black as it is never mentioned again. In fact, I once heard that the makers of the film had to be told by JKR as they had cast a white boy as Dean.
Seamus asks, why the Bloody Baron is covered in blood. We’ll learn why in book 7.
Neville: “The family thought I was all Muggle.” We later learn that there is a word for those who are born to wizards but is non-magic.
We never hear the school song again.
Note Harry’s dream about the turban that talks to him.
Kim said this on March 17, 2009 at 8:26 am
Yes I thought that was very interesting about Harry’s dream. I love the foreshadowing in these books, how you don’t realise but something in there is vitally important. I also love how J K Rowling mentions little details about what food or drinks her characters are having. I think it’s cleverly hinting at what sort of people they are.
Eliza said this on July 17, 2009 at 12:39 am
I love that Ron mentions his relief that he doesn’t have to wrestle a troll in order to be sorted, as Fred had suggested. What beautiful foreshadowing to the events that take place a few chapters later!
Natalia said this on August 11, 2009 at 2:55 pm
As I recall the teachers all had very strained smiles while singing the school song, my guess is that they all told Dumbledore that it sucked and that’s why we never heard it again.
Booga Man said this on August 14, 2009 at 11:36 pm
Wasn’t there a JKR quote out there mentioning that Dumbledore only made them sing it because he was feeling particularly celebratory and *that’s* why we never hear it again?
Natalia said this on August 17, 2009 at 11:02 am
I was really taken by how small the class sizes were. I mean 10 kids per year in each house, or roughly that; so just 40 new kids per year on average? For the entire population of the UK?! Or .00000066 percent of the population every year roughly. So, less than one in a million kids are born wizards or witches each year. Wow.
grrreg said this on September 10, 2009 at 12:02 pm
One more thing I wondered is if the ratio of students/house is kept constant , and if so, how?
grrreg said this on September 10, 2009 at 12:07 pm
This chapter is great. Knowing Hogwarts. What Natalia says it’s true, I didn’t realize that. And I love that Jo includes those little details, like the food they eat.
Paula said this on September 14, 2009 at 12:54 pm
I’ve always been confused about the small number of first years, too. If that’s the case every year, where are the “hundreds” of students that are mentioned in this chapter.
Brenda said this on September 16, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Remember, everyone in Harry’s year was about one year old when Voldemort was first defeated. During the First Wizarding War, wizards and witches might have been afraid to have chilren. That might be why there are only 40 children in Harry’s year.
Jeremy said this on October 1, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Good point, Jeremy. After all, that’s what happened in the US (at least) during WWII. But they’d seriously need to have more teachers for when the population starts increasing again. :)
Natalia said this on October 1, 2009 at 1:03 pm
I’m currently listening to OotP and there are a “hundred or so” carriages. 6 kids are riding in Harry’s carriage. If that’s average, that would make 600 or so students, which would 100 students per year, since the first years are taking the boats. So yeah, it seems there are only few in Harry’s year.
Kim said this on November 6, 2009 at 11:30 am
I’ve always been very interested in the question of the number of students in each year. It does seem to me that forty is about average for a year at Hogwarts, not only because it’s the apparent number in Harry’s year, but because it makes logistical sense.
We know there’s only one teacher per subject at Hogwarts, and first and second years only take eight subjects. For now I’ll discount astronomy, because we know this takes place at night, outside normal class time. This still leaves seven subjects for the first and second years, and we know that every student takes every subject.
Based on this information, it would be impossible for each house to have all their classes separately (i.e. with students from their own house only). The first year alone would have four teachers, leaving three for the second years. Even without considering the older students, there just aren’t enough teachers to go around without houses doubling up for some subjects.
If the average year at Hogwarts contains around 100 students, this would mean some classes are taken by 50 students at once. English state schools very rarely have more than 35 students in one class. Class sizes in private schools don’t usually go much over 25, and can be as small as 10 depending on the subject. This ensures that teachers are able to keep an eye on all the students, and give attention to each student that requires it.
Consider the amount of trouble that can be caused by just twenty students in a potions class, under Snape’s watchful eye. How much more chaotic it could be with 50! I doubt even Snape has the ability to watch fifty students at once to prevent dangerous mistakes. In fact, he sometimes misses things with twenty (such as when Harry throws a firework into a cauldron in CoS without being noticed).
Instead, I think an average of forty in a year is about right. That means classes of 10-20 people, which is in line with the average for an English private school. Of course, this doesn’t answer the problem of the ‘hundreds’ of students in the Great Hall or the ‘hundred or so’ carriages, but
I choose to take these references as hyperbole on JKR’s part. Everything we see is from Harry’s perspective, and it’s quite normal for a young boy to see things in exaggerated terms.
Next, I want to answer Grreg’s point about there being less than one in a million magical children born each year. This seems to be based on the number of children in Harry’s year (40) as a percentage of the overall population of the UK (roughly 60,606,000 based on the percentage given).
In fact, we need to find the number of magical children born in 1980 (40) as a percentage of the number of children born in 1980. As I haven’t been able to find the number for 1980, I’ve taken the number for 1977 (the closest I can get). In 1977 there were 569,259 live births in the UK, and roughly forty of these were magical:
40 / 569,259 x 100 = 0.007026679
So around 0.007% of children born each year are magical, or 7 in 100,000. This seems fair to me, particularly considering that the wizarding population in general appears to be quite small.
Finally, I have a comment on Jeremy’s suggestion that wizards and witches might have been afraid to have children at the height of Voldemort’s power. In fact, there is a school of thought that the number of marriages and births actually increases during times of national turmoil, because people are terrified that they won’t have time for all this later in life. Consider Molly Weasley’s comment in HBP:
“I know why it’s happened, of course. It’s all this uncertainty with You-Know-Who coming back, people think they might be dead tomorrow, so they’re rushing all sorts of decisions they’d normally take time over. It was the same last time he was powerful, people eloping left, right, and centre…”
I realise she’s talking about marriage, but “decisions they’d normally take time over” could certainly include the decision to have children. The Weasleys are actually an excellent example of this: Bill Weasley was born in 1970, right around the start of Voldemort’s first reign of terror, and the Weasleys proceeded to have five more children, all while Voldemort was gaining power. Only one of their seven children was born after the fall of Voldemort. Similarly, Tonks and Lupin have a child at the height of Voldemort’s power the second time around.
Of course, these are just two examples, and they could have been the exception rather than the rule. But the evidence is that Voldemort was powerful for more than just the year Harry was born, as per Dumbledore’s comment in the first chapter of PS: “we’ve had precious little to celebrate for eleven years.” If fear of Voldemort was stopping people from having children, why did it only start in 1980? We would expect the years above Harry to be similarly small if this was the case, and that makes the literal interpretation of ‘hundreds’ of students very difficult indeed.
Caitlin said this on November 17, 2009 at 8:56 am
I just re-read Natalia’s comment (“they’d seriously need to have more teachers for when the population starts increasing again”) and realised this could be put forward to counter my first point above – there are so few teachers because there are only a few students. This is a fair argument, but it doesn’t sit well with me. Everything in the books seems to point to the idea that there has always been just one teacher per subject, particularly the fact that most of the teachers around now were teaching during Riddle’s time at Hogwarts (before the proposed drop in births). It seems odd that if there were more teachers in previous years, we’ve never seen or heard about any of them (even in various memories). For example, Slughorn taught potions (surely one of the subjects requiring extra teachers for more students, to ensure everyone can be watched closely) when Riddle was at school, and it definitly seems to be implied that he was the only potions teacher.
Caitlin said this on November 17, 2009 at 11:04 am
When the students are discussing their parentage at the dinner table, I notice that Neville sidesteps the issue altogether by talking only about his Gran and other extended family. I didn’t spot this the first time I read the book, but it stands out on a second reading.
Billie said this on January 11, 2010 at 12:09 pm
I love the songs included in this chapter! So creative and adds much richness to the text. The Hogwarts school song sounds like something a young student would compose… I can picture that it was originally chosen as the winning entrant in a “Write the School Song” contest.
In the FAQ section of her website, when asked why we haven’t heard the school song since the first book, JK Rowling replied that “Dumbledore called for the school song when he was feeling particularly buoyant, but times are becoming ever darker in the wizarding world…”
Surely Dumbledore was feeling particularly buoyant and celebratory in this chapter because Harry (who Dumbledore had been watching and planning for so closely for years) was finally at Hogwarts and back in his care.
Harry’s dream at the end of the chapter always stands out for me. This is the first of the many predictive nightmares/visions Harry will experience over the next seven years. I think it’s interesting that Harry forgets all about the dream and consequently can’t share it with anyone, so only the reader is left with this clue about the sinister nature of Quirrell’s turban.
Great site, by the way! Quite a treat to read.
Andrea said this on February 6, 2010 at 8:50 pm