The Founders of Hogwarts

Over a thousand years ago, the four greatest witches and wizards of the age shared a dream, to create a school where young people of the Wizarding World could study and be trained in the magical arts they needed to become skilled, fully-trained wizards. These four great wizards each founded one of the houses of the school that they worked together to form: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. They have been referred to as The Hogwarts Four.

For a number of years, this arrangement worked just fine. Each of the founders took a group of students to be in their own house and even though they had differences of opinion about who should be trained, the house system helped them all to work together. However, as the years went by, the differences between Gryffindor and Slytherin became a serious rift. Eventually Slytherin left the school.


A. Godric Gryffindor

Godric Gryffindor was born on a moor, a wild, windswept area of heathland that famously bred the hard and rugged people of the Scottish highlands. The West Country, where Rowling was born and grew up, also contains substantial areas of moorland, and moors are also found in mid-Wales and the north of England. True to his origin, Gryffindor praised courage, determination and strength of heart above all other qualities. He also seems to have been the most in favour of allowing muggle-borns into the school. His only known relics are the Sorting Hat & the silver sword Harry used to kill the basilisk, both of which are currently kept in the office of the headmaster. He was initially a great friend of Salazar Slytherin.

"Godric" is an Anglo-Saxon name meaning "he who rules with God" or "he who rules well." This would lend credence to the idea that Godric was the unofficial leader of the four founders. "Gryffindor" comes from the French "Gryffon d'or" or "golden griffin," the ancient symbol of courage, echoed in the lion that is the symbol of Gryffindor house.

Gryffindor and his house are symbolized by a gold lion on red.

A historical Saint Godric has many interesting connections with the Potter family. Among them are his protection of a stag from pursuing hunters, allowing snakes to warm themselves by a fire, and black hair. However, JK Rowling refuted the theory that Harry Potter is an heir of Gryffindor but was cagey on the issue.


B. Rowena Ravenclaw

Rowena Ravenclaw was born on January 22, in a glen, a dead giveaway to her Scottish origin. A great friend of Helga Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw was admired for her incredible creativity, she is said to have thought out and designed the plans of the moving floors and staircases in Hogwarts. Ravenclaw House thus values in its members a sharp mind, wisdom, and cleverness.

She is described as "fair", that is, beautiful, a trait her house appears to have inherited. Harry Potter, Percy Weasley and Dean Thomas have all developed crushes on Ravenclaw girls, and when the delegation of Beauxbatons, home of the ravishing Fleur Delacour, arrived in the Great Hall, they were seated at the Ravenclaw table. If we are to judge by the films, even the Ravenclaw ghost is a beautiful woman.

Her name, Rowena, is Gaelic and means "red-haired", perhaps another clue to her Scottish ancestry.

Ravenclaw and her house are symbolized by a bronze eagle on blue in the books and a silver eagle in the movies.


C. Helga Hufflepuff

Helga Hufflepuff is the founder about whom we can deduce the least. She came from a broad valley, and favoured honesty, fair play, and hard work. A relic of Hufflepuff, a small golden cup, was once owned by distant descendant, Hepzibah Smith, until it fell into the hands of Lord Voldemort.

Her last name could be a contraction of "I'll huff and I'll puff", the cry of the big bad wolf in The Three Little Pigs, signifying the hard work Hufflepuffs are famous for.

Hufflepuff and her house are symbolized by a black badger on yellow.


D. Salazar Slytherin

Salazar Slytherin is the most notorious of the four founders, and, even though his house is arguably the second most successful in Hogwarts after Gryffindor, he is always instinctively spoken of last when the four founders are mentioned. This is probably because he left the other three founders soon after Hogwarts was completed. He came from a fen, an area of marshland in central England, and his swampy home may have been due to his being a parselmouth, a wizard with the rare ability to speak to snakes. Slytherin, more than any of the other founders, was selective as to who he would allow into his house. Not only did he favour resourcefulness, determination and ambition, often to the point of ruthlessness, he also refused anyone who wasn't at least partly of "pure" wizard heritage, and is widely credited with beginning the "pure-blood" ideology followed by such families as the Malfoys and the Blacks, and embraced by his last descendant, Lord Voldemort, whose mother, Merope Gaunt, was a member of the House of Gaunt , a very ancient pure-blood family.

The disagreement between Gryffindor and Slytherin about whether to allow Muggle-borns into the school became so heated that eventually Slytherin left, but not before completing his own addition to Hogwarts, the Chamber of Secrets, beneath the Hogwarts lake. Knowing that any of his descendants would be able to speak parseltongue, he placed a basilisk (a giant serpent that only parselmouths can control) in the chamber, assuming that one of his heirs would be able to use it to purge the school of impure students. Eventually, his last remaining descendant, Tom Marvolo Riddle aka Lord Voldemort, discovered the chamber and set loose the basilisk.

Slytherin has left two relics that we know of: a black-stoned signet ring and a locket emblazoned with his serpent mark, both of which were heirlooms of his last line of descendants, the Gaunts. The Gaunts, though impoverished, were proud of their lineage and spoke almost exclusively in Parseltongue, even to outsiders.

Slytherin is the only founder for whom we have a anything like a detailed physical description. His statue in the Chamber of Secrets depicts a man "ancient and monkey-like, with a long thin beard that fell almost to the bottom of [his] sweeping robes."

Salazar Slytherin was probably named after António de Oliveira Salazar, a former dictator of Portugal. Rowling lived for a time in Portugal and her first husband is Portuguese. "Slytherin" could be a pun on "slither in", "slithering", or "sly therein."

Slytherin and his house are symbolized by a silver serpent on green.

Wizard Profile:

About me!

Recent Spells:

The Hogwarts Headmasters and Headmistress
Four Houses of Hogwarts
Heads of Houses
Lord Voldemort
Harry's Parents and their Best Friends
Places in Harry Potter
Quidditch
About Harry Potter

Wizard Web:

Harry James Potter