If there is one thing that links most people in the young adult category together, it is Harry Potter. We all lived through the release of the books and the movies. Many of us dreamed of getting that Hogwarts letter in the mail and going off to school in a flying car, which then lead to dreams of potions, wizard duels, and Quidditch games. Unfortunately these dreams were unable to manifest into reality because, well, it's a book series not real life.
That is until Pottermore came along. Released back in 2011 to much fanfare and delight, the website let us Muggles have a chance to experience what it would be like to go to Hogwarts including being sorted into a house, having a wand pick you and learning potions and spells. It was pretty much every child's dream that grew up loving the Harry Potter series.
I was very much one of those people who was ridiculously excited for Pottermore. I even stayed up very late one evening to get early beta access to the website when it first was released. I was ecstatic having one of the early access codes. I was going to be able to finally learn exactly which house I belonged in and what it would have been like to go to Hogwarts. As soon as I was able to use my access code, I did. I spent hours on the brand new website, exploring different scenes from the first book in the series.
It was amazing. Especially when I was sorted into Slytherin. The house known for its ambition, cunning, and creativity. I has always thought I would be a Slytherin because I was never afraid to go after what I wanted. It was wonderful to have this idea of myself finally affirmed by a quiz written by the author herself. It was like a part of me I knew was there had finally been unlocked.
I ended up only getting to about the third book on Pottermore before I forgot the site existed and moved on. As much as I loved Harry Potter, I no longer had the time to spend hours on a website for fun. I had high school responsibilities like homework and rehearsals to attend to, so I let the website slip from my mind and continued on with my life.
Much to my surprise I found myself on Pottermore again the other night. I had been browsing Facebook late one evening trying to fall asleep when I saw an article about the Sorting Hat and Pottermore. It said that the site had just been relaunched with an all new Sorting Hat quiz that JK Rowling had rewritten. Apparently I had missed where the site had been relaunched in September of 2015 without the Sorting Hat quiz. So now there was a new one and people were getting very different results.
My curiosity was piqued. I had to go back to Pottermore and see if I would still be a Slytherin with this brand new quiz. So here I was back on Pottermore, retaking the Sorting Hat quiz to find out my true Hogwarts house. I started the quiz finding the new questions to be harder to answer. But they were more interesting, like if I preferred the moon over the stars. I went through the entire quiz, and then it gave me my result.
I was a Hufflepuff. My stomach dropped. Hufflepuff is the exact opposite house from Slytherin. Hufflepuffs are known for being nice and caring, putting the rules and loyalty above all else. Slytherins are not that way. I felt like something had to be wrong with this result. I didn't belong in the house known for being the least clever.
My world felt like it had been turned upside down. Pretty much everything I thought about myself and Harry Potter was crushed to pieces. I wasn't sure what to do. So I went straight to my social media (snapchat to be exact), and lamented how lost and confused I felt. For years I had always thought of myself as an ambitious and cunning Slytherin who went after what she wanted. Was this suddenly not true because I had now been sorted into Hufflepuff?
That is what has been hardest for me with this new house. Am I still the Slytherin I was? Or have different sides of my personality come to the forefront to make me more of a Hufflepuff? I'm still not entirely sure of the answer, but I'll get there eventually. For now, I'm just going to find out more about Hufflepuffs and figure out how I belong here. Take the new sorting quiz if you dare. What has changed about you so that you may end up in a different house?
