Slytherpuff Friendship

I see that many people post about friendship between Hufflepuff and Slytherin. Here I want to share my experience because I'm a Hufflepuff and my friend Lady Slytherin is, obviously a Slytherin.

Hufflepuff gets this reputation of being kind and loyal, even adorable. Slytherin, on the other hand, has the stereotype of being ambitious and evil. However, Lady Slytherin and I don't fit that stereotype. She's a sweet yet sarcastic Slytherin while I'm a troubled yet hilarious Hufflepuff. We also have different MBTI; she's INTJ, I'm ISFP.

Our friendship consists of:

1. Hufflepuff shares weird thing that she finds on the internet
2. Slytherin has various reaction to that weird thing: "hahaha", "what the hell", "aaaarrrghh", etc
3. oh wait, Slytherin also shares weird thing
4. we both can relate to Sirius Black's scene, "I did my waiting" because that would be our reaction when we finally become doctor
5. we have only one mutual fandom: Harry Potter
6. we respect each other's fandom but constantly compare them: she likes Tolkien's works, while I like A Song of Ice and Fire by George. R. R. Martin (Hufflepuff isn't always about cute story, you know)
7. Hufflepuff is that emo kid who still plays songs by My Chemical Romance
8. Slytherin is not really into bandom
9. our conversation starts with normal everyday thing but ends up with something absurd
10. usually I'm the one who makes the convo absurd
11. Hufflepuff relationship advice consists of: fiction book and some weird things from the internet (if you don't get it, it's all right)
12. Slytherin is more mature when it comes to relationship advice: give and take should be balanced, you should love yourself first, etc
13. still, we both don't really have good luck in relationship (being single for too long time and spending too much time with fictional characters, duh)
14. but if someday Lady Slytherin finds someone, I'm ready to ship them, they would be my OTP
15. and if someday I find someone, she would be surprised first because I'm not always that interested in relationship, not even fictional relationship
16. anyway, we love bookstore; we can just go to the bookstore trying the quill (kidding) or pen then feel happy 
17. or just look at the book covers and make joke about them
18. or give each other book recommendation
19. or give each other encouragement to buy book like, "Buy this Game of Thrones novel! You want it, right?" 

The list can be longer but I think that's enough for now. Do you have any experience with inter-house relationship?

Am I a Death Eater?

Gerard Way has just stated that he's sorted into Slytherin and his wand wood is made of yew. Then I remember something. Voldemort was a Slytherin and his wand was yew. The difference is, Gerard Way has dragon heartstring as wand core and Voldemort has phoenix feather.

Is Gerard Way secretly a Dark Lord? No, he's a Sleep Lord.

If he were Voldemort, would that make me, his fan, a Death Eater? No, I'd rather be a Pancake Eater.

Learning from Slytherin

I had a random conversation with Lady Slytherin. She's a self proclaimed Slytherin who was sorted into Gryffindor in Pottermore. 

Apparently, Lady Slytherin didn't accept that. She never accepts it. Then she tried a YouTube quiz "Which Hogwarts House Are You in?" and was sorted into Gryffindor. She said, "I'm not evil enough." After that, I showed her a BuzzFeed quiz "These Five Questions Will Tell You What Percent Slytherin You Are". And her result? She's 100% Slytherin.

This is a problem that bothers us. Many quizzes about Hogwarts house still consider Slytherin as evil. Lady Slytherin and I see Slytherin as a house with people who have "unique" priority and do their best to keep that priority safe.

Let's take a look. Harry, Order of the Phoenix, and Dumbledore Army's priority is to defeat Voldemort and the Death Eaters so people can live in peace. For that reason, they practice their magic and make strategies to defeat the dark wizards.

However, Slytherins have various priorities. For the Malfoys, their family matters. All that they do is to keep Malfoy family and lineage safe. Lucius stated that he had been under Imperius curse during the first Wizarding War (the one before Harry was born) then he wasn't prisoned in Azkaban. Thus, Malfoy family was still safe, rich, and powerful. After Voldemort was back, Lucius declared his loyalty again. He did it because he knew what Voldemort was capable of and he didn't want to risk his family.

For Snape, Lily was important. All of his act as double agent was motivated by his feeling for Lily. His motivation might not so "pure" as the other members of Order of the Phoenix. He still hated Harry at some point because Harry was James Potter's son. However, as Harry himself said, Snape was the bravest man he ever knew. 

And finally, let me talk about our infamous Slytherin, Tom Riddle aka. Voldemort. What did Voldemort consider important? Power and immortality. For those things, he was willing to read old books and travel the world. For those things, he was willing to live through the pain of splitting soul. And also for those things, he was willing to act polite and courteous to people (remember Helena Ravenclaw and Hepzibah Smith?).

Now I'm not saying that Slytherins are right. I'm saying that there's nothing wrong with being Slytherin as long as you understand what truly matters to you.

Validated

I wrote that I had to submit three title ideas for my thesis. Today, I got the validation result. I was quite lucky since not everyone got their idea validated today.

The validator team approve my thesis idea on exercise and sleep. I will write it with the help from psychiatry department. If you wonder why student who wants to write about exercise and sleep is helped by psychiatry department, that's a long story.

A lecturer told us what the validator team consider before approving our ideas. They consider whether our idea is new. They see if we, undergraduate students, can do that. They also take a look at our three ideas and read between the line on what interests us.

I guess they see that I'm interested in psychiatry. Beside that, exercise and sleep have correlation to mental health.

What about my three friends? Their ideas were also validated today. Elsa will write about toothpaste. Lady Slytherin will write about eugenol (I don't know what it is). Miss Perfume will write about health insurance. 

I hope we can do it well.

p.s. I guess someday I will write on why I call my two friends Lady Slytherin and Miss Perfume.