Book Club -September 27th-

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS

Slytherin

This house is named for Salazar Slytherin. Its symbol is the snake because Salazar Slytherin spoke Parsel, the language of serpents. Rowling views this house as symbolizing the element water. The Sorting Hat says that

Or perhaps in Slytherin,
You’ll make your friends;
Those cunning folk use any means,
To achieve their ends.

The resident ghost is the Bloody Baron, and the head of Slytherin House was Severus Snape, at least until the end of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Despite the many Dark Wizards that came out of this house and its history, Rowling herself has defended Slytherin against the impression that it is a bastion of evil. The name has the idea of snakes in it due to the word “slither”, and remains unchanged in the translations of the Harry Potter series except in French, in which it becomes Serpentard, an obvious development.

Hogwarts four Houses are also similar to what exists in many schools in Britain and elsewhere in the world. What makes them particularly distinctive is that students are placed into a particular house by the Sorting Hat during the Sorting Ceremony. The Sorting Hat itself created naming problems in foreign-language editions, with the French choixpeau magique being the most ingenious solution for its fusion of choisir (choose, select) and chapeau (hat).

Extract came from here!