Hi! Hope you are well. I was thinking about alternative sortings for Harry and how it would change things. Slytherin!Harry is the one more used in fics, and the less interesting to me. Even some of the few Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw Harry that I read tend to go to a 'snake' personality. Do you have headcanons for a Harry sorted in one of those two houses? Not only the big things, but things like how his quidditch careeer would develop and who would be in his circle of friends. Thanks.
Iām doing pretty well, all things considered, yes. I hope you are as well.
Iāve covered Slytherin!Harry before - it is by far one of the most well known tropes, possibly because itās directly suggested by canon itself - you can find that over Here.
Unfortunately, regarding your question, I canāt really help. Iāve not read any fics where Harry is sorted Hufflepuff and while I have read one fic where Harry sorts Ravenclaw it is The Fic That Shall Not Be Named, which is a terrible piece of shit fic where Harry is effectively a self-insert. So I really donāt think that counts.
The thing is to come up with headcanons for Harry in a different house requires thinking about what would make him value the traits of those houses such that he would end up being sorted to them.Ā
Hufflepuff is relatively easier - if he was, perhaps, meeker or more scared due to treatment by the Dursleys then Gryffindorās bravery would be daunting, heād likely dislike and distrust Draco as a bullying figure enough to want to avoid him and so, regardless of prior interactions with Draco or Ron, end up going to Hufflepuff. However, in that case you have a much less proactive Harry, so a lot of aspects of canon would go drastically differently. Another option is if Harry is not the Boy-Who-Lived but Neville is, and Harryās parents managed to avoid the fates of Nevilleās parents in canon and lived on to have other children. Thus, while Harry may aim for Gryffindor like his parents, thereād be no real cost to ending up in another house and if he had younger siblings he might have a more nurturing spirit and a tendency towards kindness and a willingness to put the work in thatād head him towards Hufflepuff.Ā
This could also, in theory, be a reason for him to end up in Ravenclaw - if perhaps he was nurtured towards intelligence by living parents. We know from canon that Harry can be sharp-tongued at times, which is an aspect of wittiness, and we know too that Lily and James were extremely smart at school - Harry could well inherit that and go from there. However,Ā I donāt know that heād necessarily value intelligence and wit above bravery, which is what would be required to go to Ravenclaw over Gryffindor. Even in canon, Harry is smart, but he doesnāt value book smarts and wit over practical knowledge and avoiding trouble until trouble inevitably finds him at which point heāll face it because what the hell else is he going to do?
I think, if you want headcanons for how life for Harry in a house other than Gryffindor or Slytherin would go, youād want to first ask whyĀ he ends up in the house he does - what causes him to value those traits over Gryffindor or Slytherin - and how those aspects of his past then influence his future.
None of us exist in a vacuum, after all. We are all the result of a myriad experiences and our responses to them.














