In Defense of Salazar Slytherin

[corinthum]

No: HPFGUIDX 40977

Treyvan wrote:

 > It seems hypocritical of Slytherin to call
 > them that, considering he prefers students who have a "certain
 > disregard for rules." I think Slytherin didn't trust
 > muggle-borns to keep the location and existence of the school 
 > secret.
 > After all, the castle was built as a safe haven, away from the eyes
 > of muggles. Revealing any information about Hogwarts to the muggle
 > parents of witches and wizards put the school and all the students 
 > in jeopardy. The four founders might have been the best wizards of 
 > their
 > time, but I doubt very much they could have held off a muggle army.

And Naama countered:

 > You know, I've never seen why not. It seems to me, from what we've 
 > seen so far, that a) Muggles simply couldn't have found Hogwarts and 
 > b) wizards can easily defeat any number of Muggles.
 
I have to agree with Treyvan on this one.  Hogwarts is enchanted to
look like a run-down, dangerously decrepit castle, but it is still
visible.  And if enough muggle-born wizards let it leak that this
place was a haven for wizards and witches, I wouldn't put it past the
muggle kings of that time period to send an army to investigate.

Also, although wizards are capable of magic, and could no doubt defeat
a large number of muggles, they are not invincible.  I'm picturing the
end of Star Wars Episode 2, where several vastly outnumbered Jedis
(people who are powerful, magical, and trained to fight) are
eventually cornered by their non-magical oponents.  If the wizarding
population was so small that they had to marry muggles just to
survive, then a decent sized army could probably defeat them. 


Treyvan also wrote:

 > We don't
 > even know if women can be Parsel-mouths, the three we know of are
 > male. For all we know, the ability to speak to snakes could be tied
 > to the y-chromosome. 

To which Naama replied:
 
> It it were, Voldemort couldn't have inherited it, since he is 
> Slytherin's descendent through his *mother.*

Genetically speaking, next to nothing is tied to the Y chromosome. 
Sex-linked traits are (usually) recessive traits carried on the X
chromosome.  Parselmouth could work this way.  Therefore, a boy
(genotype XY) needs only one copy of the X-parselmouth gene to have
the ability to speak to snakes, whereas a girl (genotype XX) would
need two X-parselmouth genes.  Because parselmouth is such a rare
trait, it would be extremely rare for a girl to show this trait, which
is consistent with the fact that the only people we've heard of thus
far have been male.  If parselmouth is sex-linked, then Tom Riddle
would have had to inherit the trait from his mother (X from mother, Y
from father), a carrier of the gene, which is consistent with her
ancestry.