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He really wouldn't rest until he said something shocking.
Even Snape's eyes widened at Dudley's words.
'I was only criticizing Gryffindor, and you dragged the other three in too?'
Dudley's words clearly piqued Dumbledore's interest.
"Explain it to me. What led you to think that?"
Dudley did not answer directly. Instead, he responded with a question.
"It's been several months since I came to Hogwarts. One way or another, I've already gotten a pretty good sense of how the four Houses are perceived. For example, Gryffindor is brave, Ravenclaw is wise, Hufflepuff is loyal, and Slytherin is cunning."
"Of course, there's also the other side... Gryffindor only produces reckless fools, Ravenclaw is full of rigid, inflexible people, Hufflepuff is just a gathering of useless cowards, and Slytherin is made up entirely of evil people."
"Professor Dumbledore, do you think so too?"
Dudley laid out both the good and the bad in one breath.
"And isn't that how it is?"
Dumbledore returned the question, though the interest on his face only deepened.
It almost seemed as if he already knew what Dudley was about to say.
"Of course not."
Dudley shook his head firmly.
"There's a problem with that. A very serious problem."
Gryffindor also had scum willing to sell out their own friends for personal gain. Slytherin also had decent people, people capable of resisting Voldemort's rule.
Human beings were emotionally complex creatures. People did not possess only the handful of personality traits represented by the founders of the Houses. And more than that, personality changed over time. Some people were terribly timid as children, only to grow up into very brave adults. Reducing children to just four personality categories was deeply flawed. Not even magic could properly explain that.
Because human beings simply did not remain defined that way for the rest of their lives.
Unless wizards stopped being human beings altogether.
That was not scientific.
And it wasn't magical either.
That was exactly why, after some wizards graduated, everyone felt they no longer matched their House at all.
"First of all, the sorting itself is already problematic. Take you, Professor Dumbledore. As far as I know, you graduated from Gryffindor. But I don't see even a trace of Gryffindor's recklessness in you. Based on your personal history, I'd say you fit Ravenclaw's wisdom far better."
After that, Dudley gave a brief summary of Dumbledore's life. He mentioned the fact that Dumbledore had mastered several non-human languages, including but not limited to Mermish and Gobbledegook. He also spoke of Dumbledore's immense talent and achievements in alchemy, his many collaborations with the greatest alchemist in the world, Nicolas Flamel, his discovery of the twelve uses of dragon's blood, and of course his defeat of Gellert Grindelwald, the greatest dark wizard of the nineteenth century.
In truth, Dudley had still left some things out.
From his own perspective, Dumbledore seemed more like a blend of Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. The young Dumbledore, at the beginning, had once walked alongside Grindelwald in the name of a certain "greater good." Back then, he had ambition, and he had ability as well. If not for what happened to his sister, perhaps the wizarding world would have gone down a completely different path.
Perhaps for better.
Perhaps for worse.
But one thing was certain: the greatest wizard of the current age would never have come to exist in quite the way he did now.
"I think so too."
Snape sneered mercilessly.
"Perhaps his brain underwent some kind of mutation?"
Dumbledore continued to ignore Snape. He merely blinked at Dudley.
"But I'm not rigid and inflexible, am I?"
Dudley suddenly asked,
"The Sorting Hat. I assume that thing is with you, isn't it, Professor Dumbledore?"
The moment he finished speaking, the Sorting Hat's distinctive voice rang out through the Headmaster's office.
"Hey, big boy. Who exactly are you calling a thing? I'm not a thing. I'm the great magical hat, and there is only one of me in the whole world."
Dudley followed that logic and replied,
"All right, Mr. Sorting Hat Who Is Not a Thing."
"...I think you're being sarcastic."
Dudley did not respond to that. He simply asked,
"If I remember correctly, when I wore the Sorting Hat, you said that under normal circumstances, you sort children based on their personality, right?"
"That's right. That's what the founders created me for."
The Sorting Hat admitted it without hesitation, sounding very proud.
"I follow the hearts of young witches and wizards."
"Then can I understand that, in reality, your sorting isn't actually all that precise?"
"Hey, putting it like that sounds very offensive."
It only complained.
It did not refute him.
That meant Dudley's reasoning was not wrong.
"If it isn't precise, then there's no need to divide people into four Houses. It's simply idiotic."
At that point, it was impossible not to mention the historical background of the era when the four founders created Hogwarts.
It had been an age when wizards were hunted. To protect wizards from Muggle persecution, they created Hogwarts, preserving magical bloodlines within the wizarding world. The goal was to pass magic on to future generations.
But that had happened a thousand years ago.
What had once been a refuge had now become the largest and finest school in the European wizarding world. After so many years of development, Hogwarts should not still exist only to pass down magic and preserve bloodlines.
If you wanted to say it elegantly, you could call it cultural preservation.
If you wanted to say it plainly, it was nothing but complacency and stagnation.
Nowadays, dividing students into four Houses when there was no real need for it only made the whole system feel strange and out of place. And even if you were going to divide them, it should not be based on personality, or worse, a handful of personality traits.
You could divide people by specialization.
But you could not divide them by personality.
That was the foundation of being a person, and also the foundation of studying anything seriously.
"The four Houses have their meaning. Perhaps one day, a wizard will appear who can truly inherit the spirit of those four great founders."
Dudley's words, and even his analysis of human nature, made Dumbledore stop seeing him as merely a child.
As for Snape, after teaching him for several months, he had already stopped seeing him that way long ago. In Snape's eyes, Dudley was already like a seventh-year student.
Of course, only in the field of Potions.
"But how many young wizards are truly capable of inheriting the spirit of the four founders? Most of them only want to live quiet lives."
"I don't know whether you've noticed this, Professor, but the atmosphere at Hogwarts is terrible. Truly terrible. Especially between the Houses."
In Dudley's view, dividing the school into four Houses clearly caused more harm than good. To begin with, the very act of separating them into Houses created opposition between them.
"For example, Gryffindor and Slytherin."
Dudley gave the most classic example possible.
"The relationship between those two Houses is openly hostile. And that was one of the main reasons why today's incident escalated as far as it did. If I were not in Slytherin, but in Gryffindor instead, then Hermione, who is close to me, would at most have been left out because of her personality. She would never have suffered what she did."
Everyone only remembered that Godric and Salazar had parted ways because their ideals diverged.
But who still remembered that Godric and Salazar had once been best friends, companions who would live and die together?
The Sorting Hat says Slytherin is rotten to the core, but are Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw truly that different?
"And then there's Hufflepuff..."
How many young witches and wizards, before even arriving at Hogwarts, already rejected the idea of being placed there?
From what Dudley had overheard before the sorting, many of them did not want to go there at all.
A lot of people directly associated Hufflepuff with mediocrity, branding it as the House for useless people.
In the chain of contempt between the Houses of Hogwarts, Hufflepuff sat at the very bottom.
So the question was this: did children really arrive at Hogwarts already despising it from the very beginning?
And was Hufflepuff really that bad?
"Of course not. They only become that way after the Houses are already decided..."
"Cedric Diggory, a third-year Hufflepuff. As far as I know, he's the most talented wizard in the entire third year."
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