Snape as Head of House / House-Elves / Prejudice

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 30583

Sorry about more than one post, but I couldn't fit more topics in the 
previous header.

Little Red (hen? riding hood? rooster?) wrote:

> Does anyone find it odd that someone as young as Snape (early to
> mid 30's according to interviews with JK, and the fact that he went
> to school with James), could be Head of Slytherin House?  It seems
> that the other HoH's are much older.  

I believe that the Head of a House has to be Former Pupil (Old Boy
 or Old Girl) of that House, and maybe not many Slytherins become 
Hogwarts Professors. Maybe any other Slytherin professors are just as 
young or very bad administrators or not sufficiently dominating of 
personality to keep Slytherin kids in order. Professor Trelawney 
might well be a Slytherin Old Girl, but do you thinkn she'd be any 
good as House of Head?

Margaret Dean wrote:

> But it does occur to me to wonder whether the house-elf situation
> is more like slavery (which most if not all of us, I suspect,
> would consider insupportable even at its best, because it denies
> the full humani-- um, er, let's call it =beinghood= -- of the
> slave) or more like marriage (which comes in a whole spectrum of
> forms, ranging from the totally satisfying to the horrifyingly
> awful). 

Well, Pippin once asked why we didn't compare House Elves to House 
Wives, who also are not paid for their labor. 

Jim Ferer wrote:

> Harry's at least a little prejudiced against the Slytherins,
> isn't he?

Oh, yes, how can we pontificate about prejudice (against Muggles, 
Muggle-borns, giants, werewolves, House Elves, etc) without 
questioning our own opinions of Slytherins?

> That's not prejudice, that's making an informed distinction, and
> that's necessary. To do otherwise is the path of relativism and 
> moral cowardice. What virtue is there in a dementor?  Would you
> care to examine your "prejudice" against Nazis or members of the 
> KKK?

I was going to reply that I think that Dementors are Beasts rather 
than Beings (altho' they are not in FABOULOUS BEASTS and both 
Dumbledore and Voldemort spoke of "alliance" with them). As Beasts, 
they act according to their instinctive nature, which happens to be 
that they eat other people's happiness and devour souls. I imagine 
that that is not a matter of personal evil because it is not a matter 
of choice: it's just that that is what they eat. Avoiding such 
dangerous Beasts is not prejudice any more than avoiding trichinosis 
is. It's the same as, the various sorts of parasitical invertebrates 
that burrow into the bodies of various vertebrates and give them pain 
and diseases and sometimes death are not sinners, they are merely 
things.

If the Dementors ARE Beings (in accordance with the above mentioned 
hints from canon), innately evil Beings are a question against 
Dumbledore's The fault lies in our choices not our stars, dear 
Brutus. How COULD a Dementor CHOOSE to stop being evil?

But I must object to your statement about Nazis and Klansmen. A 
proper saint would believe that, as human beings with souls and free 
will, they have the ability to learn better and repent their past ill 
doing. There is in fact an ex-Neo-Nazi who wrote a book about how 
his journey to non-bigotry started when his son was born with (I 
think it was a cleft palette) and he realised that according to his 
ideology, the baby should be killed for being 'defective' and he 
couldn't stand the thought, so he started questioning his beliefs.  
Bringing it back to HP, Snape stopped being a Death Eater.