Sybill was sorted into Ravenclaw.
Manus raised his hand to applaud as well and gave her a slight nod. His gaze swept over the second-year boy whose ignorance had just earned him a scolding and whose expression was now rather unpleasant.
Ravenclaw House did not have Slytherin's Pure-blood supremacist rhetoric, but neither was it as harmonious as Hufflepuff.
The thing that determined status here was far more direct and left far less room for ambiguity than bloodline—knowledge. It was not innate; if you were lacking, that was your own failing, and you had no one else to blame.
Voldemort, a half-blood, could use Parseltongue to fabricate a Pure-blood background because there was essentially no difference between half-bloods and Pure-bloods. Voldemort had Parseltongue to prove that he belonged to the Gaunt family, and everyone knew that the Gaunt family consisted only of Pure-bloods, so people naturally assumed that he was one too.
But someone lacking in knowledge found it difficult to pretend to be knowledgeable, because the two kinds of people saw the world differently. Pretending rashly would only make them say things that made others laugh.
Moreover, unlike Pure-blood supremacy—which seemed active because of Voldemort's existence but was in fact a viewpoint broadly rejected by mainstream social norms—Ravenclaw's discrimination based on knowledge had always been there.
Ravenclaw's discrimination based on knowledge had existed since Hogwarts was founded, since the very beginning of the house itself.
Other than perhaps having kind upperclassmen lend you a hand in your first year, from second year onward, if you could not answer the Bronze Door Knocker's question, you truly could not enter the common room. Perhaps you could ask someone to bring you in, but anyone still willing to do so at that point was unlikely to have been sorted into Ravenclaw House.
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