Scapegoating Slytherin (was:Punishing Draco (was:Re: Snape, Hagrid and Animals)

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 143889

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "horridporrid03" 
<horridporrid03 at y...> wrote:

> Betsy Hp:
> See, I think the Slytherins are seen as the "bad" house *within the 
> Potterverse*, but I don't think that view is shared by JKR.  For 
> one, not all Muggle murderers are Slytherin.  Actually, the biggest 
> known Muggle murderer, number-wise, is a Gryffindor. 

Not even canonically: Voldemort is responsible for the bridge 
collapse (or a minion), and that killed more people.  Even going on 
what ancedotes we have in the text, you get to stack that up against 
Lucius "always up for a spot of Muggle torture" Malfoy...

> I have believed, pretty much from my first reading of PS/SS that 
> the so-called sins of Slytherin are really in the eye of the 
> beholder.

All?  Oh, my.  I think she's saying that they're needed and not all 
bad, but she's hardly extremely complimentary:

"...I suppose it's that craving for unity and wholeness that means 
that they keep that quarter of the school that **maybe does not 
encapsulate the most generous and noble qualities**, in the hope, in 
the very Dumbledore-esque hope that they will achieve union, and they 
will achieve harmony."

Emphasis is mine, but that's not what you say if you consider their 
qualities to be of equal 'quality' with the others.  She's said 
before that courage is the quality that she values the most highly, 
but that's obvious, isn't it?

-Nora yawns and takes off to sleep...