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If Inanimate Objects Could Talk:
From a Reader's Perspective
by Hermione Granger
August 12, 2004
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is a place where students learn, live and play. So much time, energy, attention, is spent on classes, eating, Quidditch games, rumours, essays, talking and (well, for me at least) reading in the library. One rarely stops to think about the castle itself. The novelty of moving staircases and secret passageways wears off a bit after first year, and it all becomes normal; it's second-nature to skip the trick stair now. As I have learned from my reading of Hogwarts: A History, there is much to know about the building. Today however, my curiosity was piqued not by a book, but by a room.
The trophy room in Hogwarts serves as a record of achievements of those who have passed in and out of the doors of the school. Although I have found that while trophies and plaques and such things are useful in discovering who made their mark on the school, they are not very good at what the people who received the awards did to deserve them. And this is the point where the fun of logical deduction comes in. Yet a few small inanimate objects tell so little, I will admit that my logic borders on speculation.
Before seeing part of the trophy room for yourselves on JKR's site (fansites section), little was widely known of it. In CoS (Harry Potter and Chamber of Secrets) the trophy room and awards come to the attention of readers a number of times:
1. As Ron's punishment for crashing the famous flying Ford Anglia into the Whomping Willow, he is assigned the task of polishing and cleaning in the trophy room.
2. After Harry discovers T. M. Riddle's diary, Ron remembers that Riddle received an award for special services to the school. After looking through the trophy room, Harry also finds Riddle's name on a list of Head Boys, and a Medal for Magical Merit.
3. At the end of CoS Harry and Ron both receive awards for Special Services to the School.
While these mainly were used in CoS to further the plot and help solve the mystery of the Chamber of Secrets, the trophy room and its contents remain mysterious. It seems as though something that Harry Potter has lacked for most of his life is a sense of personal history. Not having any memories of his parents, discovering he was a wizard at age eleven, and being suddenly immersed in a world where he's famous for something he cannot remember, has made Harry, and his avid fans, always thirsty for information. Harry is intensely curious and interested in any piece of history related to his parents or friends of his parents. Examples of such things are his Invisibility Cloak, the Marauder's Map, the photo album Hagrid made, and even the scene Harry saw in Snape's Pensieve. Readers have become curious about those things right along with Harry.
Upon viewing the trophy room on JKR's site, curiosity about several characters approximately a generation older than Harry has increased. There are several awards in the trophy room that belong to people readers know little about. Unfortunately, a mere name on a trophy or plaque doesn't give much away, so I will attempt at figuring out a bit more.
The awards as they appear on JKR's site are as follows (excluding the fan site awards and the bottom row, which isn't entirely visible):
- Name: Tom Riddle
Description: small, gold and wood, trophy
Position: top row, left-hand corner
- Name: [Jam]es Potter
Description: small, black with gold and wood, plaque
Position: top row, second from the left
- Name: Frank Longbo[ttom]
Description: medium-sized, blueish silver and dark blue, trophy
Position: top row, third from the left
- Name: Tom Riddle
Description: silver with gold and wood, plaque
Position: top row, third from the right
- Name: Sirius Black
Description: large, gold and wood, trophy
Position: top row, second from the right
- Name: James Potter
Description: medium-sized, silver and wood, trophy
Position: top row, right-hand corner
- Name: Bellatrix Black
Description: small, gold and wood, trophy
Position: centre row, left-hand side
- Name: Ha[rry Potter]
Description: small, silver and wood, trophy
Position: centre row, third from the right
- Name: Lily Evans
Description: medium-sized, gold and wood, trophy
Position: centre row, second from the right
- Name: Percy Weasley
Description: medium-sized, silver and wood, trophy
Position: centre row, right-hand side
Interestingly, all these were awarded to characters we have heard of; it is no arbitrary list of names thrown together. We know that awards and records are made for the trophy room for being Head Boy or Girl, Magical Merit, Services to the School, Quidditch, and possibly for winning the House Cup. It's possible that the trophies we see on the shelf are Medals for Magical Merit. In CoS it is mentioned that there is a list of Head Boys and Girls, so none of these are likely to do with the awards listed above. Also, I think it's likely that records of who won the Hogwarts Quidditch Cup and House Cup would be in some form of list, rather than individual awards and trophies for all participants. I can't be sure, because of the small size in font, but I believe the two plaques (#2 and #4) say: "For Services to the School".
...However, they did find Riddle's name on an old Medal for Magical Merit, and on a list of Head Boys.
"He sounds like Percy," said Ron, wrinkling his nose in disgust. "Prefect, Head Boy -- probably top of every class."
(Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - Bloomsbury/Raincoast Paperback, page 175)
Ron compares Tom Riddle with Percy, both of whom have trophies on JKR's site. It is probable that Riddle's trophy is his Medal for Magical Merit, and therefore also likely that Percy was awarded one as well. We know that Tom Riddle received the Services to the School award for claiming to have caught the person behind opening the Chamber of Secrets in 1942. (Although what he actually did was frame Hagrid, when it was Riddle himself who opened the Chamber....but you already knew that.) Harry and Ron also received the same kind of award for actually stopping the attacks related to the Chamber of Secrets, from which I think it's safe to say that the Services to the School award is given for doing something that greatly helps the school as a whole or someone in the school. We do not, however, know what James Potter did to receive the award. While we still don't know a lot about him, we know the most about James's time at Hogwarts compared to the others on the list. He played on the Gryffindor Quidditch team, he was Head Boy, he often got into mischief along with his friends, and was enemies with Severus Snape, but also saved Snape's life. Could the plaque have been awarded to James for saving Snape's life? Or did he do some other deed that more broadly helped someone or the school in some way? Are all the other trophies Medals for Magical Merit as well, or are there even more awards that we haven't heard of that are commonly given to students?
Another variable is if the trophy room on JKR's site is what it is supposed to look like, now, in 2004, or if this is what it looked like in 1996, after OotP takes place. There is also the chance that the trophy room on the site is not accurate. Riddle's Services to the School award is described (on the same page as the quotation above) to be a "burnished gold shield", rather than a small silver plaque, as it appears to be on JKR's fan site page. This could mean, however, that Riddle was awarded more than one Services award. As usual there are far more questions than answers, but for now, all we can do is continue to cautiously speculate.
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