The Ultimate Guide to Harry Potter Fanfiction

House Hate

Leontine_Willow asked me to cover this topic, and I'm always happy to do something for her! She's still fairly new to the Harry Potter fandom, so if you guys want to help her out with finding amazing fanfics and stuff, go for it! I'm sure she'd appreciate it. Also, go read her new fanfic! She's got two chapters up and I know she'd love the support!

Anyway, this is prompted because of all the stereotypes and misinformation I've seen about the Houses, and the unwarranted hate Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff get a lot of the time. Of course, I'm the living stereotype of Ravenclaw House, so I do not help my House's case very often, but I get really frustrated when I see all the wrong ideas people have of my House and Hufflepuff. Honestly, there's a lot of wrong ideas about Slytherin and Gryffindor here as well, but I'm mainly trying to cover the topic of House hate (which is not cool, guys, seriously).

I'll really briefly talk about Slytherin and Gryffindor before I get into that,

Generally, throughout the fandom, Gryffindor is everyone's favorite, followed by Slytherin (home of the Edgy™). Everyone adores Gryffindor because in the books, they weren't shown to have any major flaws as a House and people (for some reason) can't see why an entire House of brave, daring teenagers all stuck together through their hormonal high-school-type years could potentially be a bad thing.

Everyone loves Slytherin for the same reason everyone loves Snape, I feel like, saying that they're all misunderstood and tragic and dark (or they hate them for those reasons, replacing "misunderstood" with "evil"). However, this isn't the case, and I think this illustrates the same lack of understanding that makes everyone either forget about Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff or actively hate them. Slytherin's defining traits are ambition and cunning. Most people translate ambition into a thirst for power (which would fit in with the narrative above) but that's not necessarily it. Everyone has ambition. I have ambition to publish a book and be an amazing teacher and mother. Some people have ambition to go to third world countries and start foundations to help people. Some people have ambition to open their own business, or marathon all the Harry Potter movies without falling asleep, or simply make it through high school without a mental breakdown. Ambition can translate into so many different things, and Slytherin, while it is definitely home to pureblood elitists, is also home to the great minds that will go out and change the world one day.

Now, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff. I've seen hate on these Houses even in the comments of my books. I think this misconception of the Houses goes all the way back to the original books and the fact that there are hardly any characters from either of these Houses that have more than a passing part in the story. Cho, Marietta, Lockhart, Luna, Cedric, and Tonks are the only characters from either House who make any sort of impact on the plot of the books. Cho is universally hated among the fandom (another thing I take issue with), and so is Marietta, Lockhart is a fraud who lost his memory, and Cedric died before he got much of a chance to be anything beyond loyal, kind, and brave (heck yes, Hufflepuffs can be brave. It's canon). A lot of the impact he had on the story was how his death affected Harry, which doesn't do much for Hufflepuff House. So that leaves us with Luna and Tonks.

Now, both of these characters definitely go against everything the fandom associates with their House. Everyone seems to think that all Ravenclaws are like me: boring, stuck-up, know-it-all, smart, bookish prudes who don't know how to have fun because they're always studying. I don't know why this is the prevailing view, considering the fact that Cho and Luna, at least, don't fit into that box. The thing with Ravenclaw is that it's considered the smart House when it's actually the House of learning. I'm sure most of you think that means the same thing, but it doesn't. Learning can be learning about anything. It doesn't necessarily have to be schoolwork. As long as it's something your passionate about, that you want to understand better or be able to do better or know more about, it fits the bill. That's why Ravenclaw has so many artists and poets and creative people who aren't your typical bookworm nerds. It's probably the most accepting of the Houses, because in all honesty, the world has many Lunas, and they would all find their place in Ravenclaw. Personally, I see it as the most diverse House, full of people who are passionate about wildly different things and have learned to live with that because they're Housemates, and that's what you do. Ravenclaws are not boring, not stuck-up, and not nerdy (at least not all of them). Ravenclaws are passionate, creative, and accepting, and I will not tolerate any more hate.