Intro

Hello and Welcome to this episode of the podcast, "The Mnemonic Tree", where we add a single mnemonic leaf to our Tree of Knowledge.

Today's episode is one for all the Harry Potter fans out there, and it will be a nice easy one after a few more difficult mnemonics and it will be on the Harry Potter Hogwarts Houses.

To make it a little more challenging we will be doing the full name of the house founder, not just the surname which is the house name.

The Harry Potter fantasy book series written by J.K. Rowling is the best-selling book series in history having sold over 600 million copies. It centres itself around the main character, Harry Potter who is an orphaned boy who discovers he is a wizard on his eleventh birthday.

With that being said, we will begin with a summary from Wikipedia.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wizarding_World_of_Harry_Potter_Castle.jpg

Wikipedia Summary

Hogwarts is divided into four houses, each bearing the last name of its founder: Godric Gryffindor, Salazar Slytherin, Rowena Ravenclaw and Helga Hufflepuff. Throughout the school year, the houses compete for the House Cup, gaining and losing points based on actions such as performance in class and rule violations. The house with the highest end-of-year total wins and has its colours displayed in the Great Hall for the following school year. Each house also has its own Quidditch team that competes for the Quidditch Cup. These two competitions breed rivalries between the houses. Houses at Hogwarts are living and learning communities for their students. Each house is under the authority of one of the Hogwarts staff members. The Heads of the houses, as they are called, are in charge of giving their students important information, dealing with matters of severe punishment, and responding to emergencies in their houses, among other things. The dormitory and common room of a House are, barring rare exceptions, inaccessible to students belonging to other Houses; however, different houses will share classes as they are based on year group rather than House.

In the early days of Hogwarts, the four founders hand-picked students for their Houses. When the founders worried how students would be selected after their deaths, Godric Gryffindor took his hat off and they each added knowledge to it, allowing the Sorting Hat to choose the students by judging each student's qualities and placing them in the most appropriate house. The student's own choices may affect the decision: the clearest example is the Hat telling Harry that he would do well in Slytherin in the first book, but ultimately selecting Gryffindor after Harry asks it not to put him in Slytherin.

The translators of the books' foreign editions had difficulty translating the "house" concept; in countries where this system does not exist, no word could adequately convey the importance of belonging to a house, the loyalty owed to it, and the pride taken in prizes won by the house.[11]

Extracted from: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogwarts]

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Yule_ball,_Harry_Potter_series_06.jpg

Mnemonic

Harry Potter - Hogwarts Houses Mnemonic – SHRuG

(Picture Harry Potter being asked what is the spell to make his broomstick fly and he just shrugs his shoulders and fly’s away)

1. Salazar - Slytherin (Water)

2. Helga - Hufflepuff (Earth)

3. Rowena - Ravenclaw (Air)

4. Godric - Gryffindor (Fire)

Five Fun Facts

1. Each house has its own ghost. Slytherin has the Bloody Baron, Hufflepuff the Fat Friar, Ravenclaw the Grey Lady and Gryffindor the Nearly Headless Nick.

Now I love all these Harry Potter characters except for one and that’s Nearly Headless Nick. I love John Cleese but I just thought he was a very poorly executed character!

It’s funny how a lot of Harry Potter puns can just Slytherin into the conversation!

2. The school’s motto is Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus, which in Latin means “Never tickle a sleeping dragon.”

3. The name of the station where you board the Hogwarts Express is on platform 9 ¾ at King’s Cross, Train Station.

4. The Great Hall ceiling is bewitched to look like the sky outside.

5. To ensure no boys get into the female dormitories the stairs will turn into a slide if the boys try to climb them.