[actual harry potter shitposting]

I saw a video about the Houses the other day and it made a stupid but weirdly right point

and I've been thinking about it a lot

and that is that Crab and Goyle shouldn't be in slytherin

they're two idiots who decided, apparently on their own, to make it their job to keep Draco Malfoy's teeth inside his mouth

that's the most thankless, dangerous, selfless role imaginable

they're Gryffindors

only a gryffindor would be stupid and determined enough to become Malfoy's bodyguards unprompted

yeah they don't have the slytherin ambition?

they're there for their mouthy buddy

Hufflepuff also, honestly

would work

they were assigned minion at birth

zklfhds;hgs'ldhgl'ha'sd

but not slytherin (and definitely not ravenclaw)

I have seen at least one theory that Slytherin's original intended role fell apart over the centuries as it became the house for wizard racists. So ambitious people who weren't shitheads balked at being assigned there, and scions of shitty wizard nobility wanted in regardless of aptitude, and the hat takes that sort of thing into account

(And the process reinforces itself)

"it became the hose for wizard racists" does make sense when you consider that their dorm password is a racial slur

house*

Hogwarts puts all the blood fascists in one room for centuries and acts shocked when they start killing people they don't like

Of course in general it's just genuinely hard to write societies and subcultures made up entirely of ambitious, scheming backstabbers, as you can see with, like, drow, or Romulans

"Why are you sleeping in the hall?"
"Because if I go in there, they'll murder me in my sleep."

the founder was also a racist though so I don't know that it was truly "became"

kamikasei by contrast it is quite easy to write subcultures of blood racists

They're not complicated

I've observed that there's some interesting parallel in Crabbe+Goyle and Fred+George in the final book in that they both lose half of their duo

And it's kinda sad that even people writing more Nuanced Slytherins don't do much with that