At the end of the first Harry Potter book (and movie) The Sorcerer's Stone, the Hogwarts Academy student body and faculty are assembled to determine the house champion. For those unfamiliar with this, Hogwarts is divided into four houses: Gryffindor (Harry Potter's house), Ravenclaw, Hufflepump, and Slytherin (the "bad guys'" house). Throughout the school year, Slytherin has gradually been building up its seemingly insurmountable lead over the others. And Gryffindor is in last place, 150 points behind. The assembly hall is already decorated with the Slytherin colors, and the students at the Slytherin table are in high spirits. Then Headmaster Dumbledore, himself from Gryffindor, stands up to give the house champion award. But just before he does this, he gives Harry and his two Gryffindor classmates Hermione and Ron each 50 points. This ties Gryffindor with Slytherin for the lead. Then Dumbledore credits Gryffindor with 10 more points for another student's efforts to stop these three from doing what they did to earn the other 150 points! The results? Suddenly (surprise, surprise) Gryffindor finds itself in the lead, wins the championship, and the colors around the hall suddenly switch from Slytherin's to Gryffindor's.
What a rip-off! Sure, Harry and his friends were heroes and all that sort of stuff, but this last-second action of Dumbledore's smacks of a big fix to me. I was already ticked off at Potter for refusing a handshake with his soon-to-be arch rival Draco Malfoy, but this outrage at the end of the school year made me wonder whether or not I wouldn't be better off rooting for the bad guys. Sure, I know that in the end they will probably lose, but at least in the Harry Potter series, I always thought that Slytherin was easily the coolest and most interesting house. What does that say about me?
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