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lavalamp comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 10 - Less Wrong
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Snakes are associated with Slytherin pretty heavily in the books.
Yes, but snakes don't live their lives constantly being ambitious.
Lions are the mascot of Gryffindor, not phoenixes. But phoenixes embody the virtues of Gryffindor.
Badgers are the mascot of Hufflepuff. But if you ever encounter an animal more Hufflepuff than Lassie I will eat my hat.
My point isn't that there aren't animals that are associated to houses, it's that dogs don't understand anything except Hufflepuff, just like Phoenixes don't understand anything except Gryffindor.
I don't see it. They burn up and are reborn. They heal stuff. They make things light. They are loyal and from what I can tell excessively empathetic. Sound like baddass Hufflepuffs to me.
If they constatly charged into fights trying to show off (then getting killed and reborn all the time) then sure, Gryffindor!
And eagles for Ravenclaw, again, not particularly Ravenclaw in real life.
A more suitable mascot in terms of behavioral traits and abilities would be, well, a Raven.
Ravens are hoarding thieves, rather than scholars. There is a similarity, there, but typically a mascot reflects aspects more flatteringly, no?
When you are creating animal mascots to represent your defining features and your defining feature is IQ and cleverness you run into something of a problem. The only scholars I know are humans.
I'd obviously go with crows rather than ravens (both have respectable levels of intelligence). The ravenclaw mascot being a crow just doesn't quite seem right for some reason.
I'm actually not sure that Ravenclaw has anything to do with IQ or cleverness. Harry thinks it does- he notes at one point that "the 75th percentile of Hogwarts students a.k.a. Ravenclaw House is not the world's most exclusive program for gifted children"- but in actual practice it seems more like studiousness, or curiosity, or love of knowledge for its own sake, is the unifying trait. I mean, Dumbledore is a Gryffindor, Voldemort and Snape and Draco are Slytherins...
And Hermione and McGonnagal are both Gryffindor (in canon). House assignment is broken.
I think you are right about 'love of knowledge for its own sake'. A certain level of intelligence would also seem to be required.
They have to answer riddles to enter the dorms. But this may not require intelligence so much as genre-savviness. (Particularly in canon.)
How this is supposed to keep anyone out is beyond me. For all we know, canon!Hermione spent most of her spare time hanging out in the Ravenclaw common room tutoring seventh-years.
Yeah, I have to agree that "If Hermione Granger didn't go to Ravenclaw then there was no good reason for Ravenclaw House to exist."
Of course, in canon Pettigrew is a Gryffindor. It's enough to make one wonder about the whole idea of unifying traits.