Lily a Slytherin? (was Sorting)

[Jim Ferer]

No: HPFGUIDX 2735

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, "Susan McGee" <Schlobin at a...> wrote:

> The idea that Lily could be a closet Death Eater upsets me -- it's 
> almost like other HP lists where people say "oh, wouldn't it be
cool 
> if Harry turned to the dark side." 
> 
> In some ways, how effective an author is depends on how much we 
> invest in her or his universe -- and I am very invested in the HP
> universe. 
> 
> In that universe, death eaters are evil. They torture and kill the 
> innocent. Can you imagine coming home to find Voldemort's sign above
> your house and go in to find your family dead? That's evil. Lily, 
who 
> sacrificed herself for her son, is not evil.

The idea that bad is *bad* is an important theme for JKR (she has
said 
so).  She says she owed it to her readers to show them what the bad 
people were truly like.

Young people get these ideas of the bad guys being cool from pop 
culture.  The bad guy always has the best lines and the coolest gear. 
It starts with pale monsters in Scooby-Doo and progresses to Disney 
villains. (I recently saw Little Mermaid II and was bothered by the 
villainess for that reason).  Many people have no concept of what bad 
really is. How cool would these people think Slobodan Milosevic is? 
I 
am terrified by how people who think Lily or Dumbledore could be evil 
must see the world.