Slughorn makes me uneasy

[delwynmarch]

No: HPFGUIDX 138324

Betsy,

I hear your very good points about Slughorn's victims being too
physically old for him to be paralleled to a RL pedophile. However, I
already agreed that Slughorn is not a *sexual* predator, so the fact
that his victims are sexually mature is irrelevant. What is relevant
is that they are emotionally, mentally and especially magically still
very young. They are not untrained and innocent children anymore, but
they are not fully trained nor adult either. So I still think there is
something pedophily-like in the way the old, experienced, powerful
wizard collects young souls and maneuvers them to his own ends. But as
you described it, it's more of a "vibe" than a direct, straightforward
parallel, unlike Greyback for example. Let's just say that Slughorn is
someone I would be wary of letting my teenage child get *too* close
to, not for his physical safety, but for his emotional one, and even
more his magical one in the case of a wizard.

Betsy Hp wrote:
"I'm assuming that his Christmas party was made up of Slug club
members, and everyone at the party seemed to be having a grand time. 
And people were sending him gifts and autographed pictures, so I'm
thinking he was well liked.  As to Snape, well he attended the party
and he didn't kill Slughorn for throwing an arm around him so in
Snape-speak, Slughorn's a bud. <g>"

Del replies:
LOL! 

But see, to me, the fact that his alumni still gravitate around
Slughorn doesn't necessarily mean that they are comfortable around
him. First, there's the fact that many of them *owe* him something for
where they are, so they might be there just out of politeness. And
second, when I see how harshly he drops anyone he loses interest in,
I'm not sure there isn't a silent threat at work behind the scenes:
"I'll help you if you're nice with me, but I can destroy your career
if you annoy me". That's the other side of using power to help people:
you can also use it to destroy them, and I'm not sure old Sluggy would
be beyond doing something so petty.

Betsy Hp wrote:
"I was just saying that I don't think there's anything that speaks to
Slughorn being a Death Eater sympathizer.  I think he's much more on
Dumbledore's side."

Del replies:
>From what we see when DD and Harry go to hire him, Slughorn is on only
one side: his own. Remember that one of his objections to being a
teacher again is that he didn't want to be seen as supporting the
Order of the Phoenix! Harry had to point out to him that most teachers
at Hogwarts are not members, that the two matters are completely separate.

Betsy Hp wrote:
"Maybe Voldemort *did* think the war would only last one more year. 
He was winning at the time. There's no reason to think Voldemort was
thinking long term."

Del replies:
The war had already been going on for 10 years, so I'd say there was
no reason to think that LV was thinking short term ;-)

Betsy Hp wrote:
"Yeah, but not *that* well known a pureblood.  He wasn't of Black
caliber, IOW.  (Or at least the Potters have never been spoken of as
that sort of family.)

(snip)

Slughorn isn't interested in mere money.  He wants connections and
interesting talents."

Del replies:
I wouldn't assume that the Potters weren't connected simply because
they weren't hung up on the pureblood thing and they weren't
power-hungry snobs. Remember in OoP, when Draco tries to pretend that
his father is well-connected to the OWL examiners, and Neville says
that in fact it's his own grandmother who is a friend of Griselda
Marchbanks'? Just because the Potters were less showy doesn't mean
they had less power. Even poor, blood-traitor, Muggle-fond Arthur
Weasley can pull some strings, so I'd bet the Potters had their own
not-so-negligeable influence.

Del before:
"he was a Quidditch star,"
 
Betsy Hp answered:
"Not enough of one.  I don't recall that he was recruited by various
quidditch teams."

Del replies:
Correction: we know that James didn't *accept* any hypothetical offer.
But we don't know that he didn't *receive* any offer to become a pro.
Not to mention that this was a war time: we don't know how much of a
Quidditch League was left.

Betsy Hp wrote:
"He was popular and smart, but at a school level.  Slughorn seems to 
look beyond school talents for a promising WW career.  I bet James
could have pulled Hermione caliber grades if he hadn't spent so much
energy pranking, but it doesn't sound like he did."

Del replies:
I always got the impression that both James and Sirius had brilliant
grades. They are always talked of as having been excellent students.

Del before:
"he became Head Boy,"

Betsy Hp answered:
"After a major personal turn around that seems to have surprised 
everyone and occured only in his sixth year. "

Del replies:
But sixth year is *precisely* the year when Slughorn seems to make his
moves on students...

Betsy Hp wrote:
"Well no, but Hogwarts isn't the fount of *all* wizarding knowledge."

Del replies:
Actually, it *is* the fount of most wizarding knowledge. There doesn't
seem to be any kind of wizard university. Any further knowledge after
Hogwarts is apparently attained by professional training,
apprenticeship: Auror, Healer, etc... IOW one has to truly delve into
a matter to know more about it. Now, as I said in my previous post, I
can understand that DD did delve into the Dark Arts. But I still don't
see why Slughorn would have done so. Slughorn is a Potion Master, not
a specialist of Charms and Curses. He doesn't seem to have ever been
*that* interested in the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, he's
much more interested in the spinning of his web. And he seems to have
spent most of his life teaching at Hogwarts. So who told him about
horcruxes, when, and *why*?

And while we're at it: why were horcruxes a banned subject at
Hogwarts? To be banned implies that someone wanted to teach them. Who,
and when?

Betsy Hp wrote:
"And they both strike me as curious,"

Del replies:
I guess that's where the difference comes from: Slughorn doesn't
strike me as knowledge-curious. He's people-curious, oh yes, but
knowledge? I don't see that.

Betsy Hp wrote:
"The knowledge itself isn't enough to tip Slughorn into the ESE camp
for me.  Especially when he seemed to find horcruxes quite repulsive."

Del replies:
Repulsive?? I completely disagree with you here. Slughorn seems
particularly unfazed by the concept of the horcrux. What bothers him
are the consequences coming from splitting one's soul, and the reduced
existence of one who is kept alive by a horcrux. IOW, he's bothered by
the *uncomfort* inherent from creating a horcrux, which is totally
in-character for him. But the horcruxes in itself don't repulse him at
all. Consider how he talks about them:

"It can't hurt to give you an overview, of course. Just so that you
understand the term"

"It's natural to feel some curiosity about these things... wizards of
a certain calibre have always been drawn to that aspect of magic..."

"But all the same, Tom... keep it quiet, what I've told - that's to
say, what we've discussed. People wouldn't like to think we've been
chatting about Horcruxes. It's a banned subject at Hogwarts, you
know... Dumbledore's particularly fierce about it..."

Slughorn doesn't have any problem with horcruxes. He has a problem
with killing people - though I wonder if his "do I look like a
killer?" is a sign of horror or a sign of guilty conscience,
particularly since Tom had *in no way* implied that Slughorn had ever
tried to create a horcrux-, and with damaging his own soul and living
a half-life.

Re-reading this scene made me wonder whether Slughorn had had a
personal experience with horcruxes. I wouldn't put it past him to have
been interested in them himself in his youth, but to have recoiled
when confronted with the consequences for his own soul - he couldn't
face hurting himself. It could even be that he actually *knew* someone
who had created a horcrux, and who then died and lived a half-life.
That could explain why his face "crumpled" when he got to the point of
what happens when someone with a horcrux dies. Couple that with the
subject being banned at Hogwarts and DD being particularly fierce
about that policy, and it all becomes very interesting indeed...

Oops, sorry, my mind got into overdrive again :-D

Betsy Hp wrote:
"I don't see it that way at all.  Voldemort, in all his creeping
glory, doesn't return until eleven years before Harry's birth, IIRC. 
 And he's fairly quiet for a while."

Del replies:
Not exactly so, I think. I'm not sure we know when LV actually
returned. What we do know is that by the time he is vanquished for the
first time, (paraphrase) "the WW had had precious little to celebrate
for 11 years", which I take it to mean that it had been at war for 10
years before Harry was born. *Ten years*! Ten years of terror, of DE
attacks, of people coming home to find the Dark Mark hovering over
their home, of people not knowing who to trust (not even their own
young children...), of people being put under the Imperius Curse,
being tortured or simply disappearing, of agressive species being
unleashed on to wizards and Muggles alike, and so on. And during *all
that time*, Slughorn did not ONCE mention that "oh, by the way, LV
used to be interested in horcruxes, so maybe, you know..."!? I find
that totally inexcusable. We don't know how many people, how many
Aurors, how many parents, tried to kill LV or to defend their families
from him and were *condemned* to fail because *LV could not be
killed*. Think of James Potter: he had *no chance* of killing LV,
because even if he destroyed his body, his soul would go on.

Betsy Hp wrote:
"He raises up, battles ensue and then he's suddenly killed."

Del replies:
Except that he is NOT killed... If the Aurors had known that LV had
been interested in horcruxes, they could have looked for them and
destroyed them, so that when LV showed up again, he could be destroyed
for good. Instead of that, the whole job is now left to Harry and LV
is just as indestructible as ever in the meantime.

Betsy Hp wrote:
"Slughorn certainly wasn't the only wizard to connect Voldemort to Tom
Riddle.  Only Dumbledore was brave enough to openly speak of it.

(snip)

Oh, a heck of a lot of wizards could connect Tom to Voldemort.  They
chose not to do so.  That's why so many refused, or were reluctant, to
talk to Dumbledore about Tom Riddle."

Del replies:
That's not what DD says. He clearly explained that *very few* people
ever connected the ugly LV to the handsome Tom Riddle. Though now that
I think of it, I'm actually not sure Slughorn made the connection
either, maybe it was DD who told him, very recently. Humph, that would
put a wrench in my accusation that Slughorn deliberately kept silent
about LV's horcruxes, wouldn't it :-) ?

I'll have to think more about it. But I can't help but feel that
something is very much off with Slughorn. Maybe it's the memory of
Crouch!Moody that's influencing me, but I am wary of this new
professor who is presented as being apparently so pleasant and
harmless, and who is yet sometimes described in terms that still make
me uneasy.

Del