Good Slytherin (Was: Re: Thestrals and Slytherins)

[Steve]

No: HPFGUIDX 71187

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "greatelderone"
<greatelderone at y...> wrote:
> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "bibphile" <bibphile at y...> 
> wrote:
> 
> > I think the elimination of just Slytherin house would be a bad 
> > thing. ...
> > 
> 

> That was a bad thing? I think you are forgetting that Slytherin had 
> plans to purge the school of non-purebloods with the Basilisk and 
> also that he was heavily responsible for all that crap about 
> purebloods being better than the rest
> 
> "greatelderone"

bboy_mn:

Tom Riddle said that Slytherin was some psychotic mud-blood purging
Nazi, but all Slytherin ever said is that he didn't trust Muggles and
Muggle-borns. Keep in mind that this was a time during which there was
a lot of pursecution of wizards, so he had good reason not to trust
them in general.

While Slytherin certainly favored pure-blood, we have no way of
knowing that Tom Riddle and others didn't take Slytherin's basic
philosophy and blow it up way out of proportion relative to what was
originally intended. That wouldn't be the first time in history that a
relatively benevolent philosophy was preverted to suit the wicked ends
of some would be dictator, or radical fundamentalist. 

As far as the houses, I think even if the house system is abolished,
the school will still retain the house designations, they will simply
stop sorting the students by personality.

Even today, English school use the house system, but it more resembles
the USA college dormitory system. In the USA, 'dormitory' frequently
refers to the building in which students reside as well as the rooms
themselves. In the US, dormitory and residents hall are
interchangable. (note: in Britain, 'dormitory' only refers to a single
room)

The school has a certain number of students to house, and they have
four locations to house them in. I speculate that, in a sense,
Slytherin House would become Slytherin Student Residents Hall. 

Residents halls are always named after school, state, or national
historical figures, and I think that having over 1,000 years of
history behind them would make the school reluctant to lose the use of
the names of the four founders. So, once again, personality related
houses would simply become named residences halls in which students
are placed based on a uniform random distribution of student into
housing based on residence hall capacity.

Just a thought.

bboy_mn