Okay, so I don’t have any other idea to write about, so I am spleening about every inconsistency in the Harry Potter series. Now, I am a Millennial, but before you start saying “Read Another Book,” I must tell you that the last few weeks have been great for my Twitter follower count, so there’s that.

I don’t have a plot hole this week. I have a complaint about the HP world building. Namely, why does Slytherin House exist? Okay, I know that technically Slytherin is the house for people with “great ambition,” but originally the entire point of the house was a place to put all of the evil wizards. Hagrid even says every wizard who ever went bad was in Slytherin. (I guess Peter Pettigrew is an exception) Every character we are supposed to hate is in Slytherin and while there may be some decent people from the house, like Snape and Slughorn, it’s basically the asshole house.

Being sorted into Slytherin is like being told to your face that you are going to Hell. No, really, think about it. The Sorting Hat has perfect knowledge of the mind and soul of every person who is sorted, and it tells some people they belong in the same house as Voldemort whose mascot is a classic symbol of evil from the Bible. Almost like some kind of infinitely just and wise being telling you that you should share a zip code with Hitler in the afterlife or something.

I don’t mean to say that the existence of Slytherin is bad writing. Yes, it’s a pretty black and white world J.K. Rowling made, but it’s a children’s book. Furthermore, when she tried to introduce shades of grey in the later books, the stories got worse, particularly the last one. That isn’t to say the last books were bad, they just weren’t as good as the early ones. Rowling does shades of grey better than George Lucas does, but not as well as either of them do good vs. evil. The dropoff from books 1-3 of Harry Potter to the rest of the series is not nearly as bad as the dropoff from the Original Star Wars Trilogy to the “morally complex” sequels.

No, I mean looking at it from the perspective of people in universe, why do they educate people they know have a high likelihood of turning into bad wizards. Why don’t they just use the Sorting Hat to identify who bad wizards are (which it practically already does), snap their wands in half, and send them packing?

Well, there’s an answer to this question. You have to think of the Wizarding World as having a social contract, just like ours does. Order comes from making compromises between the various parts of society so that everyone feels like they have a place at the table. Imagine if the ministry did just expel all the Slytherins and snap their wands in half? What would happen then?

The Slytherins aren’t going to just take that lying down. After all, they include some of the oldest and wealthiest wizarding families in the United Kingdom. They can buy new wands, and if Ollivander won’t sell to them, they’ll go abroad or more likely start their own wand shop. And then they will start their own magic school. What do you think that place will be like?

We get a pretty good idea in the fourth book. Draco mentions that Durmstrang teaches the Dark Arts, not just defense against the Dark Arts. The headmaster is a former Death Eater. A Durmstrang equivalent in the UK would likely lead to multiple wars.

That’s why Slytherin house exists. It’s better to have the Slytherins at Hogwarts taking OWLS than it is to have the Malfoy, the Lestranges, and the Blacks of the world founding their own school and teaching their children the Unforgiveable Curses at the age of eleven. Hogwarts is a unifying institution in that everyone in British Wizarding World goes there. If the Slytherins had their own school, they’d probably form their own society in their own section of Britain, and how difficult would maintaining the Statute of Secrecy be when the Slytherins are holed up in Scotland killing muggles for fun?

Now, there is a problem with all of this. Namely, this already happened. In both wizarding wars. Voldemort comes on the scene, and despite the effort by everyone else to integrate Slytherins into the rest of society, even giving them cushy government jobs, they go crazy and start trying to take over. Social contract broken.

This happens. In the U.S., we have a social contract called the Constitution, and that worked pretty well until we had a Civil War and it didn’t. So, after the Civil War was over, we amended the Constitution three times. Europe had an informal balance of powers in the nineteenth century, which fell apart in World War I. They tried, and failed, to reform their contract in the interwar years, but after World War II a new set of international institutions, NATO, the EU, the UN, gradually took shape.

The problem with the Wizarding World is that after being threatened by Voldemort and the Death Eaters, their social contract remains completely unchanged. When the first book begins, we are ten years away from a Slytherin led revolt against the system, and the Soring Hat is still doing what it always did. We’re even told that the people directly responsible made up stories about how they were hypnotized into being Death Eaters. No changes to the system have been made to prevent this from happening again. And hey, what do you know, it does! Voldemort returns, the same people who led the attack the last time rally around him due to either fear or enthusiasm, and this time they even overthrow the government for a full year.

A lot of people don’t like the Epilogue, and I didn’t mind it from a story standpoint, but what bothers me in hindsight is that it shows once again that the Wizarding World has done nothing to modify their social contract to prevent another Wizarding War. Harry’s child worries openly about being sorted into Slytherin, which indicates that it still exists. Draco is there despite having played an active role in assassinating Dumbledore, apparently a free man. It’s like if we had a Civil War and decided to just let the South keep its slaves. At least Europe tried to change during the interwar period. Wizarding Britain just keeps going with the same system that failed twice without anyone asking “Why did this happen?” or “How can we keep it from happening again?” Inevitably, some other dark wizard will rise, and another war will start.

Now, I don’t know how I would change this. Yes, yes, I do. Abolish Slytherin house. Tell the Sorting Hat to put the Slytherins in other houses. If the parents complain, tell them that if you start a war, you better win it. The public will support you given the last two wars they had to live through. Half of these people should be in Azkaban anyway. Have tolerance training seminars at Hogwarts. Do something.

If you would like to do something, buy my book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BLSVRZN5