By: Saundarya Mitter [Edited by Georgia Wood & Carla Norman]
Module: HST5413 (re)Writing History
There are multiple reasons as to why and how Harry Potter lost the Battle of Hogwarts in 1998 but they would not have been possible without a specific trigger, his placement in the Hogwarts Slytherin House by the Sorting Hat in 1991. Kanika Scamander, Headmistress of Hogwarts, blamed the housing system itself for creating Lord Voldemort and failing Potter in her inauguration speech in 1998, describing how it weakened their morality and stability from the inside.[1] Nevertheless, wizards, witches and historians alike have debated upon which of the different events in Potter’s life had the most significant impact on both him as a person and his ability to defeat Voldemort. To add to historiographical debate using Scamander’s stance, this essay will focus on three of the most accredited factors: Potter’s trust issues manifesting from the breakdown of his only friendship, his inability to understand what a family was weakening the power of “a mother’s love”, and the build-up of his psychological trauma over time, alongside justifying how only his placement in Slytherin could lead to these manifesting in Potter’s life.
In order to completely understand the significance of Slytherin and the house system itself, one should look to Hogwarts historian Priya Yongguk-Bang. In her book, she explains how Hogwarts was a wizarding school attended from ages eleven through to seventeen and how the school was divided into four houses, known by the name of its founders. First years were officially accepted as a student of Hogwarts after they underwent a character assessment in front of the school. This was done by the Sorting Hat, a sentient wizard hat that looked into the students’ mind and heart when worn and sorting them into a house based on their most prominent attributes. Bravery was a trait of Gryffindor House, intelligence that of Ravenclaw, loyalty a characteristic of Hufflepuff and those with ambition were sorted into Slytherin.[2] This system was so integral to both Hogwarts and its students that the first piece of information learnt about a student by their peers and teachers, right after their name, was what house they belonged to. Belonging to a house was an identity. Students’ uniforms changed from plain black robes to ones mixed with their house colours, their main area of residence was their house common room and dormitories, and they had their meals at their house tables. This identity was embedded into a young witch or wizard and stayed with them for the rest of their life. Slytherin, however, had the worst reputation of the four, to the extent that Hogwarts’ own groundskeeper, Rubeus Hagrid, declared not one witch or wizard that had turned to the Dark Arts (evil magic) was not in Slytherin, which resulted in intense rivalries between it and the other houses, particularly Gryffindor.[3] Slytherin’s reputation was further worsened by how it was the house of the darkest wizard serial killer in history, Tom Riddle, also known as Lord Voldemort, You-Know-Who or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.
One element of Potter’s downfall was that he never learnt to trust anyone but himself due to the breakdown of his friendship and therefore was not strong enough to fight Voldemort alone. While he became friends with Ronald Weasley the minute they met, he was the only friend Potter would make. Both were ostracised by their fellow Slytherins due to their rivalry with Draco Malfoy, which began when Malfoy insulted Weasley’s financial status and Potter defending his new friend. Pooja Flamel explores the repercussions of this in her biography of Potter, describing how any possible support they had was lost the minute both were sorted into Slytherin. Malfoy, a legacy student, was from a family sorted into Slytherin for generations, and was regarded highly by all sorted into the house.[4] On this basis, Potter’s sorting into Slytherin had failed him for the first, but not the last time, as Malfoy had the influence in their shared house to blacklist those who had angered him, and had done so successfully. Despite the fact that the focus of Flamel’s and Yongguk-Bang’s works was not the outcome of the Battle of Hogwarts, they can be used in conjunction with one another to explain it. The rivalry between Slytherin and the three houses meant other students did not attempt a friendship with either Weasley or Potter, so the duo could not rely on anyone else until their friendship ended in 1994. Considering they were each other’s only source of support, it was no surprise that Weasley’s ending of the friendship was seen by Potter as the ultimate betrayal. Potter then suffered the consequences of losing his only friend, a consequence which would not have existed had it not been for the sorting system he was forced to be a part of and was simply abandoned in return.
Potter never overcame the shock of his closest confidante leaving him and developed trust issues that affected any alliances he made further on. Historian Tony Stark blames the demise of the friendship on Potter’s selection as a champion in the Triwizard Tournament, a dangerous competition between wizarding schools that awarded the winner eternal glory. Stark used Weasley’s betrayal to justify his argument that this event caused Potter to believe he could not trust anyone, a poor judgement that led to him losing to Voldemort.[5] Weasley always supported Potter, but was constantly overshadowed by Potter’s reputation as “The Chosen One”. The only identity he had was ‘Harry Potter’s poorer red-headed sidekick’.[6] Stark concludes that Weasley’s jealousy came to a head when one of Potter’s tasks in the Triwizard Tournament was to save him. Weasley felt his reliance on his only ally was manipulated by the Tournament to allow Potter to achieve eternal glory and was angered by how he was never credited for willingly being a part of the task to help his friend. This was evidenced by Harley Park’s newspaper article where she described Weasley as “the damsel in distress saved by the heroic Harry Potter”.[7] In this light, Potter’s identity had eclipsed Weasley’s not only in Hogwarts, but throughout the wizarding world. The importance Weasley placed on regaining his identity outweighed the importance of Potter’s friendship, thus, he abruptly ended it, and never spoke to Potter thereafter. Using this, it was clear why Weasley’s desertion irrevocably changed Potter’s outlook on trust. It made him constantly believe that his alliances would inevitably break because of who he was and so he could only depend on himself. Potter ended his alliances against Voldemort himself to prevent anyone else betraying him just as Weasley did, and that is why he made the fatal mistake of confronting Voldemort alone.
Stark, however, limits his reasoning by simply reducing Weasley to a jealous friend who had turned his back on Potter, signing Potter’s death warrant by doing so. Stark does not consider the role of the Slytherin house even though it is significant to his argument as he discusses identity, which for a wizard, begins with the sorting system. Weasley’s jealousy was cultivated by his Slytherin trait of ambition as he yearned to achieve the status Potter had within the wizarding world, and was willing to sacrifice his loyalty to him due to another lesser-known Slytherin characteristic, self-preservation, which Yongguk-Bang mentions in her discussion of Slytherin’s history.[8] The idea of self-preservation being a core ideology encouraged in Slytherins also justified Potter’s intense self-reliance, but Stark never uses this. Due to the Slytherin he was, Potter was alone even before he formally renounced his allies, as evidenced by his diary entries notably one written the night before the Battle of Hogwarts.[9] In this, Potter wrote how the only thing he would trust on the battlefield apart from himself would be his wand as with it, he had survived the Triwizard Tournament, his temporary capture in Voldemort’s clutches and would survive the final battle. Potter’s diary is valuable as it highlights Potter’s emphasis on self-preservation because of his distrust for those around him and depicts how he thought he was capable enough to end Voldemort's tyranny alone. The breakdown of Potter’s only friendship was therefore a key factor in his defeat, but this was also exacerbated as a result of Potter being sorted into the house of Slytherin. Though it was painful to experience Weasley’s betrayal, it was his internal Slytherinian need for self-preservation that prevented him from embodying emotional vulnerability to wholeheartedly maintain his alliances, which was ironically the one thing needed to maintain Potter’s actual self-preservation against Voldemort.
It was rumoured that the ancient magic of “a mother’s love” was what saved Potter as a baby in his first encounter with Voldemort. After Seer Sybil Trelawney prophesied the birth of the one with the power to defeat Voldemort to parents who had defied him three times successfully, Voldemort quickly associated this with Lily and James Potter and their new-born son, Harry. As a result, Voldemort resolved to find and kill them in order to maintain his invincibility.[10] Grace Lovegood documented in her article how at the surprising request of Voldemort’s right-hand, Severus Snape, Voldemort had offered Lily three chances to save herself by giving up her son to him and accepting Voldemort as the rightful leader of the wizarding world.[11] Lily Potter refused each time, and lovingly sacrificed herself to protect her child. Building on Lovegood’s article, Lily’s final act was believed by members of the wizarding public as something which had invoked an old magic which imbued Potter with a charm protecting him and backfiring the killing curse Voldemort had cast, back onto himself. The killing curse destroyed his physical body and left him half-alive until 1994. On the other hand, historians such as Prathina Peverell see the idea of the power of “a mother’s love” as simply a fable, with her going so far as to declare in the main wizarding newspaper, The Daily Prophet, that it was not a “pretend” form of magic that had determined the fate of Lord Voldemort and Harry Potter, and that any consideration of it would be as foolish as putting the hope of the wizarding world on a child.[12] Nevertheless, Peverell’s stance will be rebutted in this essay as undeniably, Potter did have the potential to defeat Voldemort as he had already done so officially once before and had evaded him an additional three times.
Potter’s sorting into Slytherin prevented him from fulfilling the prophecy as it changed the extent of power this maternal magic had. Undermining Peverell, Collen Jung supports the concept of “a mother’s love”, describing it as a charm endowed when a mother willingly makes the ultimate sacrifice to protect a child out of unconditional love, like Lily did for her son.[13] This creates a magical shield impenetrable by the one wishing to cause harm, seen in practice by how Quirinus Quirrell was unable to touch Potter as he had been possessed by Voldemort, whom the shield was designed against. A limitation was that Potter had to live in close proximity to a blood-relative of the one who had bestowed the protection for it to be maintained until he came of age. In this case, it was his mother’s sister, Petunia Dursley. Though they begrudgingly agreed to take him in, the Dursley family was abusive to Potter meaning he never learnt about the importance of family and the role of a loving mother. Even after coming to Hogwarts, the moment the Sorting Hat sorted Potter into Slytherin, it was guaranteed that family and “a mother’s love” was something that he would never understand. Considering Potter desired to leave the Dursleys, his original friendship with Weasley allowed him to witness the effects of emancipation first-hand. Weasley’s shame at being a Slytherin in a family sorted into Gryffindor for generations made him decide to become permanently estranged from his family. This meant that Potter never met them or saw how a loving family worked. He instead interpreted family being nothing more than a hindrance resulting in him running away before he became of age, forsaking his mother’s blood protection.
Peverell and Jung, however, fail to acknowledge an emotion just as powerful as “a mother’s love”: a mother’s hatred. Potter’s disregard and eventual disdain for familial relations meant that he wrongly interpreted Slytherin House’s approved traits of self-preservation and resourcefulness to mean that everyone only existed for themselves; their fate would affect nobody but them. Therefore, when he had an opportunity to save Malfoy from the fire during the Battle of Hogwarts, Potter did not see Malfoy as someone’s son, but as an individual who had tormented him and simply walked away to face Voldemort. Unbeknownst to Potter, the repercussions of this would cost both him and Malfoy their lives. Flamel describes how when Voldemort sent Narcissa, Draco’s mother, to check whether Potter was defeated after his second casting of the killing curse, Narcissa realised that Potter had survived, and secretly asked him whether he could have saved Malfoy.[14] Not realising the importance of a child to their mother as being in the Slytherin House had not enabled him to understand this, Potter simply nodded without remorse.
In this regard, Narcissa harboured deep and personal hatred for Potter, as his ambition of defeating Voldemort had resulted in the loss of her only child. Her need for vengeance was the final element needed to break Lily’s maternal blood protection that Potter had already weakened from his own actions as a Slytherin which brought his defeat. Contrarily, time traveller J.K. Rowling remarks in her alternative history report how Potter’s placement in another house would have ensured Malfoy’s and consequently, Potter’s survival, as his Ravenclawian wisdom, Hufflepuffian kindness, or Gryffindorian chivalry meant he would have stopped to save Malfoy.[15] The significance of “a mother’s love” is therefore vital in understanding Potter’s defeat, but it was the Sorting Hat’s decision to place him in Slytherin which forced this outcome.
A third factor attributed to Potter’s defeat in the Battle of Hogwarts was his trauma from the events of his life that progressed into a self-loathing much stronger than his resentment of Voldemort. Mary Delacour, Hogwarts professor turned psychologist, noted in her observations of Potter that his abuse at the hands of the Dursleys meant he lacked confidence, and thusly was originally more susceptible to the whims of others.[16] Using Delacour’s argument, the Sorting Hat’s decision to place Potter in Slytherin becomes clear. Regardless of how Potter desperately did not want to be in Slytherin after being explained of its reputation and realising his parents were Gryffindors, Potter did not have the courage to ask the Sorting Hat to place him in the same house his parents. He experienced the full extent of his helplessness by not protesting his sorting into the house of his parents’ killer. The moment the Sorting Hat touched Potter’s head, it proved that if he was not brave enough to ask the hat for a place in Gryffindor, he would not be brave enough to face the darkest wizard ever known. This sorting, alongside his treatment in Slytherin House and at the Dursleys, meant that Potter was never able to forget that him being a Slytherin meant that he had permanently lost the last link to his parents and as a result, Potter continued to blame himself for everything that happened to him. Delacour states how, eventually, this self-hatred became too much for Potter to handle and he began using his Slytherin trait of ambition as a coping mechanism. Through taking this path, he became obsessed with regaining the power stolen from him by those who made him feel helpless through revenge. His ill intentions prevented him from achieving Voldemort’s demise.
Potter’s placement in Slytherin meant history had to repeat itself, and the only thing Potter could be was another Voldemort. Controversially, Scamander ended her inauguration speech by stating Trelawney was correct in prophesying that “neither can live as long as the other survives” since in the end, Potter and Voldemort were the same person.[17] Besides sharing the same attributes as both were sorted into Slytherin and parallel motivations of regaining autonomy over their situations, their lives were also exceedingly similar. Navita Braveheart chronicles Voldemort’s past as Tom Riddle in her article, which can be used to highlight multiple correlations between the lives of the two rivals.[18] Voldemort, like Potter, was an orphan who was mistreated until he arrived at Hogwarts. He was an alone and friendless Slytherin, never learning the value of love, family or how to trust anyone apart from himself, even when he had an entire army of Death Eaters at his control. Akin to Potter, Voldemort manipulated his Slytherin traits of ambition and self-preservation to ensure that he would never be helpless again. Voldemort focused all his efforts on this at the expense of others, including causing Myrtle Warren’s death when he unleashed a venomous snake from the Hogwarts Chamber of Secrets in order to have a powerful entity in his control. In light of this, Braveheart’s article provides explicit proof of how the Slytherin House made Potter become a likeness of Voldemort. Since no one understood how Voldemort’s mind worked better than Voldemort himself, Potter never stood a chance as a duplicate of him. Slytherin had already made one Voldemort using Tom Riddle, but the Sorting Hat made the same mistake again with Harry Potter. Scamander was correct in her speech as the outcome of their lives was due to one trigger, the sorting system.
In conclusion, when discussing the defeat Harry Potter faced at the Battle of Hogwarts, it is not about one argument being “right” and the others “wrong”, as every factor can be reconciled because they all have the same origins. Potter lost the moment the Sorting Hat touched his head as it made him succumb to the negative stereotypes Slytherin House had been surrounded by for centuries. Slytherin made him fall victim to the insecurities of himself from being sorted in a house that had produced the very wizards he had to vanquish. This isolated him from others, hampering his ability to trust, his knowledge of the necessity of family and his awareness of the love of his mother that was protecting him. The Sorting Hat’s decision carved the same path for his life as it had done for Voldemort before him. He was only “chosen” to be a duplicate of Voldemort rather than his rival. Due to this, it is vital that we understand the role of the sorting system on impressionable witches and wizards entering Hogwarts, and must amend it to bring justice to those like Harry Potter, and to prevent the creation of those like Voldemort.
Footnotes
[1] Kanika Scamander, Hogwarts Ruined Harry Potter [Speech] (Hogwarts, Scotland, 1998). [2] Priya Yongguk-Bang, Hogwarts: A History (England: BAP, 1990), pp. 57-70. [3] Rubeus Hagrid, Informing Harry Potter about the Wizarding World [Recorded Conversation], (Diagon Alley, England, 1991). [4] Pooja Flamel, A “Potter” Tea: Spilt, (Switzerland: BigHit, 2015). [5] Tony Stark, “Triwizard, Bye-wizard”, Friendship in the Battle of Hogwarts, (13 June, 2013), <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1IILrkvp4M>, [accessed 23 December, 2019]. [6] Stark, “Triwizard, Bye-wizard”. [7] Harley Park, “Triwizard Task Two: Dramageddon” The Daily Prophet, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxmP4b2a0uY>, [accessed 01 December, 2019]. [8] Yongguk-Bang, Hogwarts: A History, p. 73. [9] Harry Potter, The Diary of Harry Potter: 1994-1998, (ed.), Jungkook Jeon (Busan: Golden Closet, 2011). [10] Sybil Trelawney, The Dawn After the Dark Lord [Prophecy] (Hogsmede, Scotland, 1980). [11] Grace Lovegood, “The Last Potter Family Halloween”, The Quibbler, 35 (1982), pp. 11-20. [12] Prathina Peverell, “Harry Potter: The Chosen One to Fail.”, The Daily Prophet, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxmP4b2a0uY> [accessed 29 November 2019]. [13] Collen Jung, Maternal Magic: The Old Lore of The Power of a Mother’s Love (Canada: Moosewala, 1885). [14] Flamel, p. 312. [15] J.K. Rowling, Through the Time Turner: Draco Malfoy, [Report], (Edinburgh, Scotland, 2007). [16] Mary Delacour, Hogwarts Psychological Evaluations, (ed.), Lay Zhang (China: Sheep, 2014). [17] Scamander, Hogwarts Ruined Harry Potter. [18] Navita Braveheart, “Voldemort: The Dark Art We Could Not Defend”, Dark Wizarding History, 42 (2003), pp. 32-41.
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