#hello tiny fandom

Nostalgia found me, now I am fixated with this.

Still playing with @sortinghatchats​ philosophical / psychological Sorting Hat system. Basically, they give each character two houses: a ‘primary’ and a ‘secondary.’ I’m gonna do a simplified run-down:

Your ‘primary’ is WHY you do things. So - 

Gryffindor: because I feel this is right. (Everything for the Cause)

Ravenclaw: because I decided this is correct. (Everything for the Truth)

Hufflepuff: because this helps my community. (Everything for People) 

Slytherin: because this helps me/my inner circle. (Everything for My People)

Your ‘secondary’ is HOW you do things. So - 

Gryffindor: Smash the system! Charge!

Ravenclaw: Plan, build tools, gather information. 

Hufflepuff: Community-build, caretake, call in favors

Slytherin: Act, adapt, find the loophole

Now some character analysis! Spoilers though Foxglove Summer, because that’s as far as I’ve read at the moment. 

Peter Grant has an absurdly loud Hufflepuff primary. His groups are his everything. His family, his neighborhood, the Metropolitan Police, his beloved London. He will happily risk his life for a family of German tourists he just met - they are people on his turf after all. It bothers him that the magical community is so disjointed, and it is his dream (his “gift” to Hugh Oswald) to stitch it all into one piece. Peter’s vows to the police matter, his vows as a magician of the Folly matter. In a perfect world he would unite his two communities so they never come into conflict with each other. 

Peter also has a very loud Ravenclaw secondary. He learns about magic, then immediately starts setting up experiments with controls and objective measurements instead of practicing more heavy-hitting spells. When he uses magic in practical settings, he still favors set-up and planning. He likes building traps and magical detector grids. 

He also has a huge reserve of knowledge, mostly to do with London history, architecture, and jazz. It feels very Ravenclaw that the one advantage Peter has over villains like Mr. Punch and the Faceless Man is that he knows the names of ancient Romano-British priests and what a stadtkrone is. Peter saves the day with bits of trivia, by working out some unusual way to use magic, or by inspiring powerful friends to come to his aid with that blinding-bright Puff primary. 

There’s a fairly serviceable Slytherin secondary performance in there too, one that’s mainly used for police work. Peter has his “command voice” and “community policing manner.” He’ll play dumb to get a confession. He’ll manipulate a suspect. He can make himself look more or less suspicious. (basically, he mimics Lesley). But he still approaches those Slytherin skills in a systematic Ravenclaw way, and drops them when he’s off the clock. 

And honestly, he gets his best results when he polices though his Hufflepuff primary. (”You should talk to me because I genuinely care about your problem.”) If you are a person, Peter Grant feels responsible. He also has a pretty broad definition of “person.” When he learns about ‘jazz vampires’ and ‘secret underground tunnel people,’ he goes right to THEY ARE CITIZENS OF LONDON AND THUS DESERVE LEGAL REPRESENTATION. (Pretty much the most Huffleclaw response ever.) 

Thomas Nightingale was, once upon a time, a Slytherin primary with a huge inner circle. David Mellenby was part of it. Maybe wizard Uncle Stanley. Probably the teachers and classmates he reminisces about so fondly. But then there was WWII, and Ettersburg, and Nightingale was left alone, hand-carving thousands of names into a memorial wall no one but him would ever see. If that’s not the act of a broken, mourning Slytherin, I don’t know what is. 

Molly gets him though the next few years (not his job, not his legacy, not his community) but there are still probably periods where she has to force him to eat. Their relationship is ambiguous, but I see an element of debt or contract there. Like Molly helped a reckless younger Nightingale out of a tough spot, and in return he promised her sanctuary for as long as she should require it. There might even be a magical component - some ritual Nightingale does to keep her happy and healthy. I’d sort Molly as Slytherin/Hufflepuff, but since she doesn’t talk and isn’t really written as human, it’s hard to say. 

At this point, Nightingale has booted himself out of his own inner circle. Molly matters, and that’s about it - certainly Thomas Nightingale deserves no consideration. He’s content to watch English magic die, and then die himself. But then he starts mysteriously getting younger. He can’t just wait for the clock to run out anymore. He’s forced to adapt to the new world. 

So Nightingale uses healthy selfishness as a way to heal. He is a broken, petrified Slytherin deciding that actually, yes, he is worth something. He goes out to buy himself an expensive, beautiful wardrobe and an expensive, beautiful car. Then he starts doing the parts of his job he finds interesting. Over the next few decades he un-petrifies to the point where he starts to maybe consider recruiting an apprentice. 

Then Peter Grant happens. And Nightingale starts going to police briefings because that will make Peter’s life easier. He adopts Peter’s lexicon. He protects him from disturbing information and dangerous situations, and descends like the wrath of God on anyone who tries to hurt him. (Peter starts counting on this, and factoring it into his plans.) Nightingale doesn’t care about the police, doesn’t care about the status of magic, doesn’t even really care about helping the helpless. No, he cares about Peter Grant. He’s one of those Sam Gamgee-style Slytherin primaries who adopt the morality of their Most Important Person. 

(And there is going to be a reckoning if he ever has to choose between Peter and the good of the community. Because he will choose Peter - and Peter will hate it.) 

Nightingale’s secondary is a little harder to figure out. He seems so Ravenclaw when he’s teaching Peter magic, but in retrospect he’s almost certainly performing the Ravenclaw secondary of whoever taught him. When we hear about his service record, the SS price on his head, his actions at the battle of Ettersburg - it becomes very clear that Captain Thomas “Tigertank” Nightingale once had a blazing Gryffindor secondary. One that he’s proud of. It burnt away, when his primary petrified, but comes back as he builds up his new inner circle. 

Now, Nightingale will consider the possibility that a dangerous situation is a trap, and then walk in anyway. He totally trusts his his improvisational Gryffindor secondary to blast though anything he might find in Varvara’s barn or the Strip Club of Doctor Moreau. Nightingale solves problems by making things explode. (And he always seems a little suspicious of Peter’s complex battle plans.)

Lesley May is a Ravenclaw primary whose system, whose Truth, is the Metropolitan Police. (She’s a bit like Javert that way.) Peter just wants to serve London. He happens to be a cop, but he could just as easily be helping his city as an architect or community organizer. But we are told again and again that Lesley is police.

That is why, when her face is destroyed, she Falls so hard. Her lowest, most desperate point is when she visits the police bar and drinks herself sick because she realizes that she can’t be a policeman anymore. Not really. And the terrible thing is, Peter brought her there to cheer her up. After all, he’s a Loyalist Hufflepuff powered by communities. It would have cheered him up. But all it does is drop Idealist Lesley into existential despair. She tries to find a new Truth in magic and the Folly, but all she gets is a new tool that she cannot use to be a policeman. So when the Faceless Man says he can give Lesley her face back... personal loyalties can’t really compete. 

Lesley also has a Slytherin secondary. Peter uses a similar secondary when he polices, but hers is so much more natural. She delights in finding clever ways to bend the system to her advantage. She has fun coming up with mundane explanations for magical events. (Peter seems to stick with “gas explosion” and “multiple gas explosions.”) Lesley is such a good liar - she has plans to defect during all of Broken Homes, and Peter and Nightingale have no idea.

At the beginning of the series, she is comfortable being around Peter in her neutral state. But as the books go on, that neutral state becomes more and more of an act. The horror of the facial injury shows up here too: how cruel is it to take away a Slytherin secondary’s ability to change faces by forcing them to always wear a mask?

Beverley Brook is a Hufflepuff primary. It’s possible that all the Rivers are Puff primaries (Lady Ty certainly is). Because what else would the god of a specific place be, if not a community-orientated Puff? Bev is loyal to her River and her family, and happily goes upstream in a hostage exchange to keep the peace. She doesn’t give Peter the time of day at first (probably thinks he’s another Slytherin, like Nightingale) but starts falling for him when she sees how much deference he pays to London and the various Rivers. How much he wants to help. Beverley and Peter are both Hufflepuff primaries who value people, but Bev is more likely to think of rivers, forests, and old trees as “people” (sometimes more than she thinks of actual humans as “people.”) 

Beverley definitely presents a loud Gryffindor secondary. She’s brash, she has no problem being shocking, she enjoys wearing T-shirts with provocative slogans written on them. She rescues Peter by steam-rolling the fairy court with a train. But... it was a train she borrowed from a friend. Her Gryffindor is actually a model masking a much deeper and more subtle Hufflepuff secondary. She problem-solves by doing favors, asking for favors, and making friends. This even ties into her magical powers of persuasion, and he way she needs permission to really unlock her powers. In the climax of the first book Beverley is wired like a genie - crazy powerful when she is in the service of someone else. Very, very Puff.

tl;dr

Peter Grant - Hufflepuff / Ravenclaw, with a Slytherin performance he borrows from Lesley and uses for police work. 

Thomas Nightingale - Slytherin who mostly adopts Peter’s morality system, because Peter is Important / Semi-burnt Gryffindor. Models Ravenclaw when he teaches. 

Molly - Slytherin / Hufflepuff

Lesley May - Ravenclaw whose Truth is the police. Fell when she lost her face / Slytherin. 

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