Periodically you see a fan fiction author try to deal with either Harry, Ginny, or both being sorted into Slytherin (the same problems occur with other charactes this is done with). In doing this, you have a few possible ways of handling Draco. If you stick very close to cannon, then your character, now in Slytherin has an enemy in their very house making their lives miserable all the way into the common room.1 Alternately, you can try to make the members of Slytherin less evil, less the villain of the story.2 This varies from they are actually the good guys and everyone else is actually the bad guys, with hand-wavy explanations for how they ended up following Riddle,3 to stories where the parents remain just as evil as cannon,4 but the children are not yet corrupted, and everything in between.
The problem with Harry, Ginny, or both having significant numbers of friends in Slytherin house who do not hate their own parents is that these are not nice people.
- Blood status prejudice is exactly equivalent to racism, and these are not mildly racist people, these are the kind of racists that make racism deservedly hated and clearly a vice.
- Slytherin house espouses achieving your ends “by any means.”5
Ambition is not a bad thing. Cunning however, at least in English, does have a shady slant to it. It implies, though not all definitions require, trickery and deceit. I can see someone like Percy or even Ron sorted into Slytherin for their ambition, or Fred and George for their willingness to deceive when pranking. Giving the Sorting Hat its due, I believe that Percy went to Gryffindor because he is not at all cunning in his ambition, nor nearly ruthless enough to overcome that lack. Ron avoided Slytherin because his ambition is too unformed, a desire to be admired, but no idea what for. Fred and George on the other hand may only be in Gryffindor because the Hat is lazy.
But why is Draco in Slytherin? I believe that is not laziness on the Hat’s part. Draco has a very good idea of his ambition - he wants to be his father. He has no work ethic, and very little actual intelligence about achieving that end, but that is his ambition. And it is precisely Draco’s cunning, again, admittedly without a ton of intelligence to back it up, that gets Harry and Ron in trouble over and over. Draco consistently tricks them, pushes their buttons, just out of sight of the teachers that might actually punish him, and sure enough they rush into it every time. It is no wonder the fannon idea is that Gryffindor students lack brains. And keep in mind that intelligence is a Ravenclaw feature; cunning is not at all the same thing.
It says nothing ultimately positive about Draco when you realise that it is cowardice and stupidity that hold him back from achieving his ambitions.
While I have only really explored Draco in depth, you can ultimately make the same case for anyone who befriends him. Saying that the rest of Slytherin house is afraid of Lucius only goes so far. For if Lucius can cow that many families that effectively, then he ultimately controls a full quarter of the society entire wizarding society. Since we know that Slytherin students do not exclusively marry other Slytherin students (the Black family tree has intermarriages with the Potter, Longbottom, Crouch, Prewett, and Weasley families), his influence would then extend far further than just that quarter. Riddle would have no need of a revolution.
I have seen this done, but I don’t have the particular works on hand as I write this.↩︎
I have seen this done, but I don’t have the particular works on hand as I write this.↩︎
I have seen this done, but I don’t have the particular works on hand as I write this.↩︎
I remember reading at least one example of this, but not where.↩︎
Mrs. J. K. Rowling. Quoted at “SORTING HAT SONGS” on MuggleNet. Last Viewed: 2023-02-10.↩︎