Slytherin

Slytherin is one of the four Houses at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and is traditionally home to students who exhibit such traits as cunning, resourcefulness, and ambition. Its emblematic animal is the snake and its colors are green and silver. The house ghost is the Bloody Baron . Founded by Salazar Slytherin , the house is composed mostly of pure-blood students, due to its founder's mistrust of Muggle-born witches and wizards. Slytherin house has a negative reputation, with many claiming that it is the source of most Dark Wizards in Britain. It has a traditional rivalry with Gryffindor.

Traits and values

Personality

Slytherins tend to be ambitious, shrewd, cunning, strong leaders, and achievement-oriented. They also have highly developed senses of self-preservation. This means that Slytherins tend to hesitate before acting, so as to weigh all possible outcomes before deciding exactly what should be done.

The qualities which Salazar valued in the students he chose included cleverness, resourcefulness, determination, and "a certain disregard for the rules."

Blood purity

Slytherin's founder, Salazar Slytherin

The Sorting Hat claims that blood purity, is a factor in selecting Slytherins. This suggests that it bases its decisions more upon the views of its members than on any accurate test of a student's lineage.

Contrary to the wishes of the other founders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Salazar Slytherin wanted a stricter policy of admission to the school—one limited strictly to pure-blood students. The controversy this created apparently led to him leaving the school and the Chamber of Secrets behind. A millennium later, the house's students are still considered affiliated with Salazar's reputed views, and open expression of pro-blood purity sentiment does seem to be more common in Slytherin than in other Houses.

This disagreement over blood purity, which caused Salazar Slytherin's friendship with Godric Gryffindor to break, is the origin of the feud between Slytherin and Gryffindor, the two most competitive of the houses. Slytherin and Gryffindor are generally rivals in Quidditch and for the House Cup.

Reputation

It is said that all Dark Wizards were in Slytherin (though it is untrue).

It must be noted that Slytherins who oppose use of the Dark Arts and discrimination based on blood purity do exist. Furthermore, there have been Dark wizards from other houses.

Cunning and ambition are easily turned towards ill purposes, but are not inherently negative; furthermore, daring, intelligence, and loyalty can as easily become negative. A reason Slytherins may be thought less of by people is perhaps because many of them seem to value their own lives more than the lives of others.

Common room

The entrance to the Slytherin common room is located behind a stone wall in the dungeons of Hogwarts Castle. A password is required to enter it; whereupon a passage is revealed leading to the common room.

The common room is a dungeon-like room with greenish lamps and chairs. This dungeon extends partway under the lake, giving the light in the room a green tinge. The common room has lots of low backed black and dark green leather sofas with buttons, skulls, and dark wood cupboards. It has quite a grand atmosphere, but also quite a cold one. The password to the common room changes every fortnight, and it is posted on the noticeboard. It is decorated with tapestries featuring the adventures of famous Medieval Slytherins.

Heads of House

2008-2011

Landis Morgan

2011-2012

1 September 2011 -

Sebastian Darkfall

Prefects

The following students have served as prefect:

• Feliks Spectre, 2018 (Head student)
• Noriko Wakahisa, 2014
• Meredith Misslethorpe, 2013
• Esther Morrell, 2013
• Bastian Desrosiers, 2013
• Naomi Foley, 2013
• Virgil Carstairs, 2011
• Jordyn Dimbleby, 2011
• Deborah Clarencieux, 2011
• Zinnia Kinley, 2011
• Huxley Ward, 2011
• Georgiana Trishna, 2011
• Theo Whitman, 2011
• Ava Grosvenor, 2009
• Scarlette James, 2009
• Zoey McAdams, 2009
• Jasper Quinn, 2009
• Wolfram Tate, 2003
• Landis Morgan, 2003
• Emily Cooper, 2001
• Nadine Pinn, 1993
• Alberic Grimm, 1990
• Gilchrist Riordan, 1988
• Evangeline Kuester, 1988
• Caesar Selwyn, 1972
• Lucius Malfoy, 1972
• Edwin Glass, 1968
• Balthair Spectre, 1940