House Points: What Is Their Purpose?

House Points: What is Their Purpose?

As any avid Harry Potter fan knows, a tally is kept every year at Hogwarts of the total number of points amassed by students in each of the four Houses. The House with the most points at the end of the year wins the House cup for that year, but the reasons for having House points go beyond this superficial competition. The competition was likely instituted as a means of making students enthusiastic about the points system, for the system otherwise would not benefit them. Instead, it benefits the teachers and the school.

Awarding (or deducting) House points is first and foremost used as a means of enforcing rules. Minor infractions such as "making a racket" in the Great Hall and having a book outside of the castle are punished by subtracting five points¹; fighting is generally worth a ten-point deduction². Being out of the dorm and wandering the castle after curfew is apparently deemed to be a more egregious breach, for which McGonagall took twenty points from Draco³ and fifty each from Harry, Hermione, and Neville, although the Gryffindors' case was exacerbated by the fact that McGonagall believed they had purposely lured Draco into disobeying the rules⁴.

The ability to award and deduct House points therefore adds to the authority of teachers and especially prefects. The entire prefect system is based on their ability to enforce school rules through deducting points for infractions. In the books, we rarely see this behaviour in practice, and in fact there was a bit of confusion when early editions of Order of the Phoenix (OotP) contained a line which made it sound like prefects in fact did not have the ability to deduct House points, but that was later clarified. In an extension, or imitation, of the prefect system, Dolores Umbridge imbued her Inquisitorial Squad with the ability to deduct House points as well. This, as Ernie Macmillan quickly realized, "would completely undermine the prefect system"⁵. But it was the only way in which Umbridge could give her troops any authority to enforce her rules.

House points are used not only to enforce written (or at least common-sense) rules, but also to enforce codes of behaviour, and, in a larger sense, to shape students' behaviour. In the classroom, students are often rewarded with points for providing correct answers, on the order of five to ten points per answer. This clearly encourages students to be studious, to volunteer answers, and to pay attention. The system thus tends to reward students like Hermione, who naturally exhibit all of these traits, while discouraging disruptive or lazy students. The benefits to the teachers are clear, assuming that students care about whether their House gains or loses points, which it seems that they do.

Teachers also use the House points system to enforce their own classroom ethics. Thus, in addition to deducting points from Harry for "cheek"⁶, Snape also takes points away from Hermione for being eager to show off her knowledge⁷, and for helping Neville⁸, two traits which another teacher might in fact encourage. Lupin, on the other hand, seemed to award points to the students in his Defense Against the Dark Arts class not only as a reward for having completed the task of confusing the boggart, but also in order to boost their self-esteem, encourage them, and give them an incentive to tackle the next task with greater confidence⁹.

Professors at Hogwarts also use the House points system outside of the classroom in order to encourage (or, more often, discourage) behaviour that they personally approve or disapprove of. Professor McGonagall took five points away from Harry for not having himself under control and provoking Umbridge into giving him further detentions¹⁰. This seems quite unfair, given that the detention itself was already an unfair punishment. However, Professor McGonagall was trying to teach Harry the value of keeping one's temper and not letting oneself get provoked into an act of anger. This is her own personal opinion, and has nothing to do with the rules of the school or with schoolwork. Returning briefly to the above-named incident in which Harry, Ron, and Neville were each docked fifty points, there, too, McGonagall took more points from the three Gryffindors than from the Slytherin, even though they all were guilty of breaking the same rule, because she wanted to impress upon the three boys the importance of integrity. A third example is Professor Sprout's awarding of twenty points to Harry, ostensibly for passing her the watering can, but really it was her way of expressing approval of Harry's having given an interview to The Quibbler¹¹.

It is interesting that the teachers are given free hand as to which traits they award, or in other words, there is no schoolwide set of values which they are required (or encouraged) to support. As is evidenced in the books, by promoting the values that they themselves have, each professor ends up favoring the students in his or her own House, no matter how fair they might think they are being.

The type of behaviour which is most resoundingly rewarded through the House points system at Hogwarts is acts of bravery. Repeatedly, Harry and his friends receive large point bonuses from Professor Dumbledore at the end of the school year: in Philosopher's Stone/Sorcerer's Stone (PS/SS) for overcoming the barriers guarding the Philosopher's Stone¹²; in Chamber of Secrets (CoS) for defeating the basilisk¹³; and in OotP for "alerting the world toVoldemort's return"¹⁴. There are, as far as we know, no similar large point bonuses awarded for being especially loyal (Neville is even awarded ten points for not being loyal to his friends¹⁵, when he stood up for what he believed was right, rather than helping Harry, Ron, and Hermione to get the Philosopher's Stone). There are no similar bonuses for being especially ambitious; nor are there any large bonuses for outstanding academic prowess. Therefore, the one trait which is explicitly rewarded -- bravery -- is the one that is most often identified with Gryffindor House. There is, of course, nothing stopping a student in any other House from being brave, and in fact Luna, a Ravenclaw, also receives fifty points for helping at the Department of Mysteries.

The House points system at Hogwarts is used to encourage and enforce certain behaviours, and at least under the Headmastership of Albus Dumbledore, the mores which are promoted are obedience, studiousness, and, above all, bravery. Although this favoring of Gryffindor by the Headmaster (a former Gryffindor himself) is offset to a degree by the free hand which the rest of the professors have in distributing points according to their own personal whims and inclinations, the fact that the Headmaster can award such large amounts of points still stilts the system in favor of his own House. (And one can only assume that a Headmaster or -mistress from another House would end up favoring their own House in the same manner.)

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PS 11, p. 134; OotP 15, p. 285

² PS 12, p. 144; OotP 17, p. 322

³ PS 14, p. 175

⁴ PS 15, p. 178

⁵ OotP 28, p. 552

⁶ PS 8, p. 103

⁷ PoA 9, p. 187

⁸ PoA 7, p. 141

⁹ PoA 7, p. 152

¹⁰ OotP 15, p. 285

¹¹ OotP 26, p. 513

¹² PS 17, p. 221

¹³ CoS 18, p. 355

¹⁴ OotP 38, p. 751

¹⁵ PS 17, p. 221

Page numbers are from the following editions of J.K. Rowling's works:

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, London: Bloomsbury, 1997 (37th printing, softcover).

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, London: Bloomsbury, 1997 (5th printing, softcover).

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, London: Bloomsbury, 1999 (12th printing, softcover).

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, London: Bloomsbury, 2003 (1st edition, hardcover).