"Or perhaps in Slytherin,
You'll make your real friends,
Those cunning folk use any means,
To achieve their ends."— The Sorting Hat
Slytherin is one of the four Houses at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, founded by Salazar Slytherin. In establishing the house, Salazar instructed the Sorting Hat to pick students who had a few particular characteristics he most valued. Those characteristics include cunning, resourcefulness, leadership, and ambition. Many Slytherin students tend to clique together, often acquiring leaders, which further exemplifies Slytherin's ambitious qualities. Examples of these include Draco Malfoy's gang, and the Death Eaters.
The founder highly valued and favored pure-blood students and the Sorting Hat admitted that it can be a factor when being sorted. Students of any blood status can be placed in the house. However, a Muggle-Born student from that house is considered to be quite rare.
The emblematic animal of the house is a snake and the house's colours are green and silver. There were two notable heads of the house; Horace Slughorn took the role twice and Severus Snape. The patron ghost of the house is the Bloody Baron. Slytherin corresponds roughly with the element of water due to serpents being commonly associated with the sea.
Salazar Slytherin decided to leave the school when an argument started between him and Gryffindor, and they either duelled or started a civil war between the two houses. Such an argument would be forever known as the origin of the feud between their two houses and also made them the houses that are most competitive
When Slytherin departed Hogwarts, he would leave behind the Chamber of Secrets with the purpose of an true heir opening the chamber one day and unleashing a means of purging the school of those who, in his view, were unworthy to study magic: Muggle-borns. The chamber was opened twice and the Serpent or Basilisk of Slytherin was killed the second time by Harry Potter in the second year.
There have also been definite examples of half-bloods sorted into the house, including Tom Riddle, Dolores Umbridge, and Severus Snape. Harry Potter was nearly sorted into Slytherin, but because he asked not to be, he was placed in Gryffindor instead. Also, pure-bloods are not automatically placed in Slytherin. There have been various examples of pure-bloods sorted into other houses; the Weasley family, Sirius Black, Neville Longbottom, and James Potter were all sorted into Gryffindor house.
The Slytherin common room is in the dungeons of Hogwarts Castle and underneath the Black Lake. Because of this, the light in the common room is green. Harry Potter along with Ron Weasley entered the common room in his second year to find out if Draco Malfoy was the one opening the Chamber of Secrets. To enter the Slytherin common room one must merely speak aloud the current password in front of a stretch of a damp stone wall; once the word is uttered a concealed stone door will slide aside leaving a rectangular hole in the wall leading to the Slytherin common room. The only known Slytherin password is "pureblood". There are high-backed chairs and a carved mantelpiece on the fireplace.
Kommentare