Harry Potter vs. Twilight

Theory

Not about HP vs. Twilight, but oh well.

I have a theory about Harry Potter. Why were the Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs, and Ravenclaws so good and the Slytherins so evil? My theory: the heads of house.

So we see in Harry Potter the heads of house: Minerva McGonagall, Filius Flitwick, Pomona Sprout, and Severus Snape.

The first three are all fair, McGonagall almost exceedingly so. They have high expectations for the students in their respective houses, and the students do their best to live up to those expectations. Think about it: McGonagall essentially demanded the best behavior and herself only showed superb behavior. Children do try to live up to expectations placed on them. So even though Gryffindor is full of troublemakers and rowdy, boisterous students, they're good because they are expected to behave well. Their primary example is Minerva McGonagall.

Same with Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. When their heads of house insist on excellence, they rise to the challenge. Certainly, they're not perfect. No one is. But they tried their hardest to please their head of house.

Now take Slytherin. They've got Severus Snape. A man who is still bitter because his childhood crush didn't like him back. A man who thinks it's okay to unfairly award points to his own house and take points away from his own. A man who threatened to kill a student's pet if the student got something wrong. A man who bullied anyone and everyone who wasn't a Slytherin and allows even the most egregious misbehavior from his own house.

That's the Slytherin role model?

And it goes back, back to the founders of Hogwarts. We don't know much about Slytherin, but he was bigoted enough to leave a BASILISK in the sewers of the school to be commanded by anyone who could speak Parseltongue. That, and his pureblood supremacism? Yeah, I think he was a little biased during his stint at Hogwarts.

Even when the Slytherins had decent role models (Slughorn), the students didn't have the best of the best. Slughorn was a good man, but think of how easily he was bought off. His own personal bad habits. His singling out of promising students to raise them above the rest.

AND when Slughorn was teacher, there was always a popular student all too interested in dark magic. Tom Riddle, for example, and the people who admired him. Slughorn wasn't a bad person, he just wasn't nearly as firm about good behavior as other teachers.

So. Just something to think about.