[HPforGrownups] Re: About Slytherin House

[Alexander]

No: HPFGUIDX 33469

  Greetings!

> I wrote some day long ago:

>   Ah, and a question springs up to my mind. What if we have
> a magic-wielding, ambitious, treachery, evil-inspired,
> cowardly, etc etc, *muggle-born*? Would he be sorted into
> Slytherin despite Salazar's ideas? And if not, what house
> would he hit then?

> David P. wrote in response:

> Well, He Who Must Not Be Named was a halfbreed Slytherin, so I guess
> Salazar was nothing if not flexible...

  Voldie was also a Slytherin heir, don't forget about that,
too. He was not mudblood - only half-blood. For him, rules
could easily be bent (if there were any - read below). But
what I'm trying to say is that it doesn't prove anything -
and we are still free to assume that no mudbloods are sorted
into Slytherin (or the other way around). Even more, there
are still no examples of a Slytherin mudblood - I think a
boy/girl of this ancestry would be oppressed enough in
current Slytherin atmosphere, and it would be definitely
worth noting somewhere during 4 years...

> Red XIV has put his 10 cents, too:

> I tend to think it was, at least initially, a security
> issue to Salazar. (...) Also, if Salazar really were an
> evil-hearted bigot from the start, why wouldn't Godric,
> Rowena, and Helga have just founded the school without
> him?

  How many answers do you want? They could invite him even
though they didn't like him and his views, for the sake of
completeness. Or because they wanted to keep an eye on him.
Or because he wasn't such jerk _at the start_.
  Also, remember that there were medieval times then, and
children were _not_ returning home for summer holidays. They
were given away to the school that was damn long away - what
security issues are you talking about? Muggle-parents could
be easily left uninformed about their children "satanic"
meddlings... :)
  Another reason is that if it was security issue, Salazar
would definitely bring it into debate on whether mudbloods
should be accepted - he was debating against "goodies", and
it would be a much stronger argument than mudbloods general
inability/stupidity/anything-else. Still the legends tell us
nothing about that (and they are not the legends, as magic
society seems to have much more accurate recordings of that
time).

> But apparently he eventually got to the point that he wanted to leave
> a monster behind that would kill all the "mudbloods". Or did he? We
> only have legends of unknown accuracy to show that it was really
> Salazar Slytherin who built the Chamber of Secrets & put the basilisk
> in it.

  And only a parseltongue can tame basilisk, and we know
Salazar being parseltongue for sure. And the monster is
hiding in Salazar's statue. I would say that if not Salazar,
then at least one of his heirs (this is even more probable,
as building his own statue is more like in Lockhart's style,
but not Salazar, Voldemort or anybody else I know from
Slytherin).

> While I certainly don't like Slytherin as it's seen now, I do try to
> resist the knee-jerk assumption that simply because Voldemort is pure
> evil, that his distant ancestor must have been too. Likewise, it's
> not fair to assume that Salazar was a bigot because the students in
> his house, a millenium after his death, are bigots. (...)

  Why do you think Voldemort is pure evil? I would love to
see him change his views by the end of 7th book, and there
are definitely ways to do so (they always are).
  We can judge Salazar quite effectively by the students of
his House. Don't forget that the Sorting Hat only sorts
those to Slytherin who deserve that from the point of view
of Salazar - it was he among the other three who put some of
his thinking and personality into the Hat.

  That's all cool and good, of course, but there's still
ambiguity. Can a mudblood be sorted into Slytherin is still
unknown.

Sincerely yours
Alexander Lomski