I've been thinking. It's all supposed to be about our choices. In theory the sorting hat will put you where you want to go if it thinks you could go here or there if you’d fit on more than one house. Harry asked/told it he didn't want to be in Slytherin. So once you're in a house, the one you've asked to be in, or the one you fit in if you had no opinions at the time of the sorting, the people there have an influence on you. How strong is that peer influence?

I was specifically thinking of Crabbe and Goyle. Is it possible that Gregory Goyle and Vincent Crabbe asked to be in Slytherin like their friend Draco? What if the desire to be with Draco hadn't been there? Would they be different if they were in another house? Think about it... What do these two do other than stand behind the popular kids and crack their knuckles? What if they were in say, Hufflepuff. Would they be better students, would they be their own people and not someone person's lackeys? How would their lives be?

What about Neville? He could be a great Hufflepuff. Maybe an outstanding example. Get him out from under the outstanding Gryffindors in his year and he could shine all by himself.

Or think of it. Luna Lovegood: Gryffindor. Ok, maybe not that one....

Seems to me that many people could be in other houses at school and they’d fit in fine there, maybe even better off than where they are. How important is your house to the development of your personality? Would you be a different person if you were in a different house?

I'd agree with that one, entirely. We've seen a few examples of people not easy to classify. Hermione Granger was one, Harry, himself was another. Percy and Pettigrew were surely other borderline characters.

So far, Ernie Macmillan and other Hufflepuffs, including Cedric Diggory, have shown themselves loyal and hard-working. But when it really counts so far, they seem strangely absent. Well, Cedric couldn't help it, but where is Ernie when there is a DOM fight to be fought? Or Susan Bones might well have had good reason to support Harry, but who fronted up when Draco let in the Death Eaters? It wasn't Hufflepuff members, however worthy. It was Neville.

I'd say that is an excellent question. If you are lumped in with a group of people for a reason not necessarily of your choosing, how will that influence your decisions? If you are born in Melbourne, do you automatically diss Sydney? Or if you are born in Sydney, do you treat Melbourne's recently concluded Commonwealth Games as unworthy of your attention? And is Dame Edna Everidge truly a better representative of Melbourne housewives than Queen Liz, herself? Or do I represent a typical Aussie female, housewife or not, for that matter?

I can see how that translates into the Wizarding World. Does one automatically go along with family background and ethos or does one learn to think for oneself?

And when the chips are down, does it really matter which city or social group anyone was born in?

J.K. Rowling's texts appear to carry a very strong message against social exclusion of any kind. Wizard, Witch, Squib or Muggle; Pureblood or Mudblood; Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff or (as I suspect will become apparent in book seven) even Slytherin, it's your own choices that matter.

Examples -

Arabella Figg, a squib, is a key member of the Order of the Phoenix who kept an eye on Harry for years;
Hagrid, an expelled student and (in the eyes of some) disgraced wizard, has been entrusted with many crucial tasks for Dumbledore;
Lupin, a werewolf, chose not to let his condition get the better of him; and
Pettigrew, a Gryffindor and apparently one of the good ones, went over to Voldemort.

Peer pressure and cliques can occur in any circle. We've seen this in the Harry Potter books on a number of occasions - students travel in packs, whether it's Ravenclaw girls hanging around with Cho Chang when Harry's trying to invite her to the Yule Ball, or whether it's Slytherins guffawing sycophantically whenever Draco Malfoy makes a wise crack about Harry. But these are all minor matters.

However, at the end of the day I'm sure we'll see real strength of character in representatives of all groups and backgrounds, and failures on all sides as well. Not wanting to rehash old arguments, but who knows, Draco could still break away from his background and the bigotry that surrounds it (although, admittedly, he's looking more doomed with every book that passes).

Despite conspiring with Sirius Black to set the events in motion (no doubt they egged each other on), James Potter didn't let Snape, whom he hated, walk into the clutches of a fully transformed werewolf. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about.