The Four Founders of Hogwarts: Who They Were and What They Left Behind

More than a thousand years ago, four of the greatest witches and wizards of their age built a school in the Scottish Highlands, far from Muggle eyes. Each of them valued a different quality in young witches and wizards, and each founded a house in their own image.

Everything about the Hogwarts houses traces back to these four people: their values, their quarrels and the objects they left behind. Here’s what we know about each of them.

At a glance

Founder	House	Valued	Origin (per the Sorting Hat)	Famous object
Godric Gryffindor	Gryffindor	Courage, daring, chivalry	Moorland	Sword
Rowena Ravenclaw	Ravenclaw	Intelligence, wit, wisdom	A glen	Diadem
Helga Hufflepuff	Hufflepuff	Loyalty, fairness, hard work	A valley	Cup
Salazar Slytherin	Slytherin	Ambition, cunning, blood purity	The fens	Locket

The origins come from the Sorting Hat’s song in Goblet of Fire. Fans usually read the moor as the West Country of England, the glen as Scotland, the valley as Wales and the fen as the fenlands of eastern England.

Godric Gryffindor

Godric Gryffindor was the most daring of the four. The Sorting Hat sings that he valued the brave above all, and his house still reflects that.

The village of Godric’s Hollow, where Harry’s parents lived and died, is named after him and is traditionally said to be his birthplace.

His legacy

• The sword of Gryffindor. A goblin-made silver sword set with rubies. It presents itself to a worthy Gryffindor in times of need. Harry pulls it from the Sorting Hat in the Chamber of Secrets, and Neville pulls it from the Hat to kill Nagini.
• The Sorting Hat. The Hat was originally Gryffindor’s. When the founders worried about who would choose students after they were gone, they gave it the ability to judge for them.

His values in his house

Gryffindor’s members tend to act first and think later. That’s both the house’s strength and its weakness. See the Gryffindor guide.

Rowena Ravenclaw

Rowena Ravenclaw was renowned for her intelligence and creativity. The Hat says she would teach only those whose minds were sharpest.

The tragedy of the diadem

Ravenclaw’s diadem was said to enhance the wisdom of its wearer. Her daughter, Helena, envied her mother’s brilliance and stole it, then fled to Albania. When Rowena fell ill, she sent the Baron (later the Bloody Baron) to bring Helena back. When Helena refused, he killed her in a rage.

Helena became the Ravenclaw house ghost, the Grey Lady. Centuries later, she told a charming young Tom Riddle where she had hidden the diadem. He found it and turned it into a Horcrux, hiding it in the Room of Requirement.

Her values in her house

Ravenclaws prize original thinking. Their common room is guarded by a riddle, not a password. See the Ravenclaw guide.

Helga Hufflepuff

Helga Hufflepuff was the most inclusive of the founders. While the others picked students for a particular talent, she chose to teach any student who came, and to treat them all equally.

She was known for food-related charms, and many of the dishes served at Hogwarts feasts are said to come from her recipes. Fittingly, her house’s common room is right beside the kitchens.

The cup

Hufflepuff’s golden cup, engraved with a badger, was said to have magical properties. It was passed down to a descendant named Hepzibah Smith, who showed it to a young Tom Riddle. Shortly afterwards she was dead, and the cup was gone. Riddle made it a Horcrux, and it was later hidden in the Lestrange vault at Gringotts until Harry, Ron and Hermione stole it back.

Her values in her house

Loyalty, fairness and steady effort. See the Hufflepuff guide and why Hufflepuff is underrated.

Salazar Slytherin

Salazar Slytherin valued ambition, cunning and resourcefulness, but also blood purity. He believed magical education should be kept within all-magic families, and that Muggle-borns couldn’t be trusted.

He was a Parselmouth, able to speak to snakes, which is where his house’s serpent emblem comes from.

The quarrel

For a time, the four founders worked together. But Slytherin’s demand to restrict admissions put him at odds with the others, especially Godric Gryffindor, who had been his close friend. After a serious argument, Slytherin left the school.

The Chamber of Secrets

Legend says that before leaving, Slytherin built a hidden chamber under the castle that only his true heir could open. Inside was a monster that would purge the school of those Slytherin considered unworthy. In Chamber of Secrets, that monster turns out to be a basilisk, and the heir is Tom Riddle.

The locket

Slytherin’s heavy gold locket, with an ornate S in green stones, passed down through his descendants, the Gaunt family. Merope Gaunt, Tom Riddle’s mother, sold it to Borgin and Burkes for very little. Riddle later recovered it and made it a Horcrux. Regulus Black stole it, and Ron eventually destroyed it with the sword of Gryffindor.

His values in his house

Slytherins are ambitious, strategic and protective of their own. See the Slytherin guide.

The founders’ objects and the Horcruxes

Object	Founder	Became a Horcrux?	How it was destroyed
Sword	Gryffindor	No	Used to destroy Horcruxes
Diadem	Ravenclaw	Yes	Fiendfyre in the Room of Requirement
Cup	Hufflepuff	Yes	Hermione stabbed it with a basilisk fang
Locket	Slytherin	Yes	Ron struck it with the sword of Gryffindor

Voldemort wanted these objects because they connected him to Hogwarts’ history, the one place he ever felt at home. It’s no coincidence that he never got Gryffindor’s sword. The founders’ values seem built into the objects themselves.

A timeline of the founders’ legacy

When	Event
Over 1,000 years before Harry	The four founders establish Hogwarts
Founders’ era	Slytherin quarrels with the others and leaves; legend says he builds the Chamber of Secrets
Founders’ era	Helena Ravenclaw steals the diadem; the Baron kills her and himself
Founders’ era	The founders enchant Gryffindor’s hat to sort future students
1943	Tom Riddle opens the Chamber of Secrets; Moaning Myrtle dies
1940s–50s	Riddle acquires Hufflepuff’s cup and Slytherin’s locket and makes them Horcruxes
Riddle’s job interview at Hogwarts	He hides the diadem, now a Horcrux, in the Room of Requirement
1993	Harry opens the Chamber of Secrets and kills the basilisk with the sword of Gryffindor
1997–98	The cup, locket and diadem are destroyed; Neville kills Nagini with the sword

How each founder’s values show up today

The founders’ personalities are still visible in their houses a thousand years later:

• Gryffindor’s daring shows up in a house that charges into danger, sometimes without thinking.
• Ravenclaw’s love of learning shows up in a common room guarded by a riddle and a house full of original thinkers.
• Hufflepuff’s inclusiveness shows up in the house’s fairness and its record of producing very few dark wizards.
• Slytherin’s ambition, and his prejudice, both survive. The house still produces ambitious leaders, and it took until Harry’s generation for its blood-purity reputation to start fading.

How the founders still shape Hogwarts

The founders have been gone for a millennium, but they still decide every student’s house. The Sorting Hat carries their judgment, and every year it sings a new song about them. In Order of the Phoenix, its song recounts the founders’ falling-out and warns the school that it must unite against outside threats, just as the founders once failed to.

The houses are, in a sense, the founders’ disagreement made permanent: four answers to the question of what makes a student worth teaching.

Which founder would have chosen you?

The Sorting Hat still asks the founders’ question. Take our house quiz to see which founder would have picked you, and how the other three would have scored you.

For more on the houses’ symbols, read house colours, animals and elements explained.