Which house did Moaning Myrtle belong to?

[erinellii]

No: HPFGUIDX 84522

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com,  <nibleswik at y...> wrote:
> Erin:
> > I like to believe she was a Slytherin.
> 
> nibleswik":
> The basilisk only attacked mudbloods. Do you really think a 
mudblood  was in Slytherin? 

Erin: 
Well, Tom Riddle, a halfblood, was.  But I don't actually think that 
the Basalisk attacked "only" mudbloods.  I mean, it attacked a *cat*, 
for gosh sakes.  And I don't think Myrtle was attacked because she 
was a mudblood. 

nibleswik":
Moreover, do you think Salazar Slytherin's creature would attack 
someone from his master's house? I don't see that at all. I don't 
think she can be a Slytherin.

Erin:  
I think she was attacked not because of *who* she was, but more 
because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  She was in the 
bathroom when Tom released the snake.  She actually heard his voice.
He must have feared that she'd be able to identify him.  So she had 
to die.  

Or it could even have been accidental, like he didn't know she was 
there, she just opened the stall door, and BAM! there were the 
basalisk eyes and she was dead.


 
> 
> Erin:
<snip> Namely, the way she haunted Olive Hornsby, the girl who had 
teased  her while she was alive.  The absolute pleasure she takes in 
> telling  Harry of her revenge definitely points towards her being 
placed in Slytherin IMO.
> 
nibleswik:
> I'll say it again. Mean behavior =/= automatic Slytherin. It really 
> doesn't! I mean, of the "taunters" in HP, whose taunting made the 
> biggest impression on you? For me, it was James, a Gryffindor. 
> Slytherin is not the house of the mean! Cunning and ambition have 
> absolutely nothing to do with teasing Olive Hornby. Furthermore, if 
> she's just getting back at Olive for teasing her, that's just like 
> Harry! Harry, Ron, and Hermione relish opportunities to make fun of 
> Malfoy because of how he treats them. And they're all Gryffindors. 
> Ron took "absolute pleasure" in recalling Malfoy's experience as a 
> bouncing ferret. I don't believe Myrtle's behavior points toward 
her being in any particular house.

Erin:
With James I'll agree.  But with HRH, Malfoy ALWAYS starts it.  
Always.  Ron may recall the ferret incident with pleasure while alone 
with Harry and Hermione, but wouldn't bring it up to Malfoy unless 
Malfoy taunted him first.

Maybe Slytherin won't be "the house of the mean" in future canon.  
But as yet, I haven't seen anything to prove that it isn't!  I don't 
want it to be, don't get me wrong.  I think, as many others here do, 
that it would be awful to assume you could separate out the evil kids 
at the age of 11, and that would be it.  But I am increasingly 
getting the feeling that JKR may think it is perfectly alright for 
the WW to do so.


> 
> Erin:
> > The second reason that if she were a Slytherin, she could be THE 
> good  Slytherin that many people on this list believe in. 

>nibleswik: 
> THE good Slytherin? Well, I haven't been on this list for that 
long,  so I may just have missed these discussions, but I believe 
there are many more than one good Slytherin. <snip> And if there is 
only one good Slytherin, if there is THE good Slytherin, might I 
hazard a guess that said Slytherin would be Snape? <snip>

Erin:
 You're right, there may be more than one, but THE good Slytherin is 
believed to be someone in Harry's age group who will join his "team" 
and work with the trio, just like Luna Lovegood from Ravenclaw has 
done.  This will be a way of reconciling the houses.  So Snape isn't 
eligable.  Plus he only became good after he got out of Slytherin. 




> Erin:
> > Also, it seems suspicious to me that so many of the people who 
are now at Hogwarts, namely Dumbledore, McGonagall, Hagrid, and 
> Myrtle, were all there when Tom Riddle was.  <snip>
> 
>nibleswik:
> I don't think that suspicious at all, honestly. I mean, there are 
> natural time progressions -- it's not suspicious if the student at 
a university in 2000 is a tenured professor there in 2040, or even if 
> that's true of ten students. 

Erin:
In a school with a staff (and arguably student body) as small as 
Hogwarts?  I think it unlikely, at least.  I may have misused the 
word suspicious. Read on.

nibleswik:
I imagine JKR arranged the timeline so 
> LV's second coming would be aligned with a time when lots of his 
> classmates and professors would be at Hogwarts. Why do you think 
> it's suspicious?

Erin:
That was really all I meant by suspicious- that JKR had arranged the 
timeline like you said.  And that the fact that 4 people Riddle used 
to know back when he *was* Riddle are at Hogwarts now will turn out 
to be important to the plot.

Erin