If you listen closely, my friend, you will hear a great many things in the halls of Hogwarts that have passed over the heads of generations of students and staff alike.
There are very few who ever come to Hogwarts who truly delve into the depths and mysteries of magic. Most purebloods enter with the supreme arrogance of the entitled, who have never once questioned the existence nor origin nor their right to that power. If it has endured until now, surely it would not forsake us now. Their forever only seems to stretch back as far as the birth of their great family.
And for the Muggleborn, oh, the poor, hopeful Muggleborns, with shinning eyes and grandiose dreams. Introduced later than their counterparts, but still young enough to believe anything they're told about this new, glittering world. They are too little worldly to question authority, to see everything with a skeptical eye and taste with a grain of salt. They succumb so easily to the indoctrination. The little they learn in their Muggle schools falls away. Science is taught only when magic doesn't exist to explain away fallacies. Math, logic, and the scientific method have no place in a world with wands and spells and painless answers. Little by little the great Wizarding school chips away at what their school tried to nurture, those fragile, budding thinkers.
Who is there immune to the spell? Gryffindors? Brash leaders with unwavering ideals, who never take the time to see, perhaps not all is as it seems?
Slytherins? Whose ambitions draw them to the quickest, dirtiest means of power?
Hufflepuffs? Whose overriding sense of group loyalty ensures that no one questions the status quo?
Or the dear Ravenclaws, who thirst for knowledge handed out freely in Patented Self-Refilling Glasses and are hard-set against original research and fieldwork. Perhaps if they had any basis for logical investigation in place of blind belief, there might have remained some hope.
Given the choice between the two worlds, at the end of their school years, lifetimers and indoctrinated alike scoff, Magic? Well of course! Only the insane would forsake the Wizarding World.
We're lucky just to be here. is the unspoken sentiment.
If even a mere modicum of thought remained in the minds of one of those students, perhaps someone, some unwavering, persevering Muggleborn might have stopped at the threshold, turned around and said, I know how to make the Wizarding World a better place. They might have gone back inside, made their way past the main staircase and past the Great Hall, turned down the second hallway, and reached the first door to the left. They could have gone inside, sat down and rewritten the entire outdated Muggle Studies curriculum, and made a difference.
But no one did.
If someone had, they might have noticed the signs of potential in young Tom Riddle. If someone had, they might have noticed his hope and budding idealism and his already brilliant mind. If someone had tried to make a difference, they might have had an inkling of what first-year Luna Lovegood is talking about when she came in speaking about genes and environmentally-stimulated mutations.
But no one did.