Sorting Hat

The Sorting Hat (Pottermore)

Nowadays we have Pottermore to help us learn our Hogwarts house (and our Ilvermorny house and our wand and our patronus), but waaaaaay back in 2001, when Sorcerer's Stone was first released to theaters, the Warner Bros Harry Potter website offered a rather rudimentary Sorting Hat quiz. It asked those obviously leading questions like "If you found a wallet with money in it, would you keep it or give it back?" Clearly, if you gave it back you were a Gryffindor because only a Slytherin would keep it! I'm pretty sure those answers didn't actually matter and that houses were assigned on a rotating basis because my three younger brothers and I all took the test, one after another, and all wound up in different houses. Convenient, huh? I was Slytherin which by brothers razzed me about, but I didn't mind because I thought it was cool that the four of us could rep ALL the houses.
But somewhere along the way, I can't remember how, I came across this PersonalityLab quiz which, at 100 questions and with an answer spectrum, seemed to make so much more sense and to be so much more comprehensive than the "if you found a wallet" questions I was accustomed to. People say these personality quizzes are bogus, and maybe they are, but it certainly feels more personal that an answer that appears to be randomly assigned and since I can't actually get sorted by the Hat, I'll happily settle for a quiz that feels personal. To this day this remains my favorite sorting quiz. (Although, if you happen to know your Myers-Briggs type, this page is kind of neat, too!)

I didn't sort on Pottermore for a long time because I just didn't see the point: I already knew my house - Personality Lab had put me into Hufflepuff. Every other quiz I ever took put me into Hufflepuff. Even my MBTI said I was a Hufflepuff. I. Was. A Hufflepuff. Period. Eventually I caved, though, logged into Pottermore and was sorted into ... Slytherin. WHAT?!?! Can you believe it?! I couldn't. I felt so betrayed. I tried to wrap my head around this new identity and even complained to my boyfriend (who pointed out that I *might* be taking this too seriously) about my woes. In the end, I deleted my account and tried again. This time I was placed in Hufflepuff. I recognize that this may have been a bit of a Slytherin thing to do, but my world was right again and I just didn't care.

I can only assume that the hat took my choice into account here, the way Harry told Albus Severus that it would. It's entirely possible that I "would have done well in Slytherin" just like Harry, but also, like Harry, I made a choice and that choice was honored. Hufflepuff pride!