9:54pm August 16, 2013

➸ Nico: Influences and How We Grow.

I literally grew up in HP fandom. It was… well, it was a big deal. TBH, I’d probably be more Ravenclaw now, but I tend towards doing stuff according to how I would have identified as a young kid.

General consensus is that houses are only predictors if you let them be. What it really does is let…

I feel like anyone in any house can have traits of any other house. But what your house is, is determined by something that makes those traits more important.

It could be choice. Harry was sorted into Gryffindor partly because he chose it.

It could be who you are, deep down, what matters most to you.

It could be what you need to learn from.

Could be a lot of things.

I liked that they showed characters who could be in any of several houses but ended up in Gryffindor.

Percy seemed like a Slytherin… Until everything went to hell in a handbasket and he chose courage over ambition. Neville seemed like a Hufflepuff. Hermione seemed like a Gryffindor. But they were all Gryffindors.

In my case I have traits of Ravenclaw, Gryffindor, and Hufflepuff. But academics, while they interest me, could never be the main focus of my life. And while courage is important to me… Maybe it would work better to explain the difference between me and a Gryffindor friend.

It’s her absolute nature in a dangerous situation to throw herself in the middle of it, fight for other people, and protect others. It’s just what she does. It’s where she thrives. Even if she didn’t have the values so important to me as a Hufflepuff, she’d still be doing that.

And… I would do that if I had to. I’ve done it before. I will do it again.

But where I thrive most is in the values I have about the world. I think the most important thing in the whole world is caring about other people and seeing them as having the same value. I am an extremely hard worker and I don’t care if I’m in the background doing work nobody sees, or working equally hard in the spotlight. My life has thrust me into the spotlight but I would do just as well outside of it (and would strongly prefer to be outside of it, but my friend tells me that’s just as bad a character flaw as her youthful desire for the spotlight, and I’m trying to overcome it). I thrive best in work where I can promote the idea that people matter, whether through example or description.

My friend has the same values, but she didn’t always, and they’re not central to her temperament even though they’re central to her ethics.
I find it so weird that the Hogwarts houses show me more about people and myself than any hokey personality test out there, and that’s not what they are designed for.

I identify a lot with Neville and I think it’s the Gryfflepuff despite many differences between me and him. Several of my friends have independently called me Neville. And I’ve had to learn similar lessons in courage, I’m a very fearful person.

But I think in some ways we are inside out versions of each other? Me Hufflepuff with Gryffindor traits, him Gryffindor with Hufflepuff traits. And for him for many years people would see the Hufflepuff rather than the Gryffindor, whereas I think my public face sometimes looks more Gryffindor than Hufflepuff. But I can see he’s deeply Gryffindor, and I’m deeply Hufflepuff, in a way that matters but is hard to explain.