[QUOTE=Jodi]
I didn’t like that we learn so much of Dumbledore from Rita Skeeter’s poison-pen biography (Kitty Kelly, anyone?). Harry knows that Rita is a liar and a sensationalist who makes things up to sell papers or books – look at what she said about him. So why would he believe the things he was reading in her book?
[/QUOTE]
It’s somewhat ironic that, as biased as Rita Skeeter’s book was, her facts seem to have been solid. Dumbledore really did have a sister who almost nobody knew about, and who seemed to have been kept in seclusion and died under mysterious and questionable circumstances. And I’ll bet that Dumbledore didn’t advertise the fact that he and Grindlewald were good friends back in the day.
Of course, Rita interpreted everything in the worst possible light, but I don’t think anything in her book was an outright lie.
Does anybody want to speculate on what house Ollivander the wandmaker was in? Ever since book 1, I’ve suspected he was a Slytherin. It was his comment about how Voldemort accomplished “Great things. Terrible things, but great.” Basically, he was admitting that Voldemort, as bad as he was, nevertheless became a major mover-and-shaker in wizarding society. And then in book 7, we see he is keenly interested in the Elder Wand. You know he’d love to have that wand, even though he knows he’d probably get killed over it. I think he’s an example of a good Slytherin. He’s ambitious and desires greatness, and is capable of recognizing greatness in others, but he isn’t an evil creep.
It seems to me that some characters were put in Gryffindor House mainly because they’re good guys, and not because they actually fit in there. I’ve long thought that Hermione was really more of a Ravenclaw. She’s certainly smart enough. But then, she probably wouldn’t have become friends with Harry and Ron if she was in a different house. I like to imagine that she, like Harry, was a borderline case who could have gone either way.
Then there’s Hagrid. I always imagined him as a Hufflepuff, mainly because he was so loyal to Dumbledore. Also, one of the Sorting Hat’s songs basically says that Hufflepuffs are the students who aren’t brave enough to be Gryffindors, aren’t ambitious enough to be Slytherins, and aren’t smart enough to be Ravenclaws. To be perfectly blunt about it, Hufflepuffs are the burger flippers of the wizarding world, the guys you know are probably going to be stuck in low-paying, dead-end jobs for the rest of their lives. Like Hagrid. Rowling, however, said he’s a Gryffindor. Again, I think she put him there mainly because Gryffindor is the “good guy house”
Lastly, consider Dumbledore. Based on what we learned in this last book, I think he would have been a good Slytherin. Think about it: we know he used to have dreams of greatness, but he abandoned them when he realized that power would corrupt him. And we know that he was really good at manipulating people toward his ends. As for bravery, well, he dueled Voldemort in book 5, but we never heard anything about him directly confronting Voldy at any other time. And it would seem that he put off duelling Grindelwald as long as he could. I’m not saying he was cowardly, but bravery wasn’t his foremost quality. I’d say his best fit would be Slytherin, maybe borderline Ravenclaw because he’s so smart.
