Scapegoating Slytherin - The Moral Majority

[a_svirn]

No: HPFGUIDX 144445

>Betsy Hp:
><snip>Sounds pretty hostile to me. I don't think the Slytherins in 
>the
>class could miss that she angered Snape.

a_svirn:
You can hardly call it hostility, not by her usual standards. She 
was hostile with Hagrid and Trelawney, with Snape she was just 
showing her whip hand.  Nevertheless, she took care to present him 
with a carrot afterwards. Her overall verdict was positive after 
all. 

Betsy Hp:
I think Draco does think highly of Snape.
<snip>
I'm not sure how the rest of Slytherin feels about him (my use
of "beloved" was a bit of a joke) but I'm sure they think positively
about him. And I'm deeply sure they'd not appreciate him being
treated badly by an outsider like Umbridge.

a_svirn:
Maybe. Or maybe he was just sucking up to him. You never can tell. 
And if Slytherins were offended by the way Umbridge treated their 
head of the house they had a very strange way of showing it. 

>Betsy Hp:
>I'm always leery of assigning the Slytherins with a surfeit of
>negative human emotions or desires. Smacks of a sort of racism, IMO.

a_svirn:
I hope, it wasn't an accusation. 

>Betsy Hp:
>I also doubt Umbridge would allow anyone to sit meekly
>off to the side. You were with her or against her. The other
>houses were against her, and banded together so she couldn't 
>isolate
>and destroy them. Slytherin stood alone. So they joined her.

a_svirn:
On the contrary, that's what Umbridge wanted from her students in 
the first place – to sit meekly at their desks and take notes from 
their handbooks.

And what do you mean "isolate and destroy houses"? It wasn't her 
intention. Her intention was to get rid of Dumbledore and Harry 
Potter, because she saw them as a threat. She also wanted to get 
Hogwarts under the total control of the Ministry. To that end she 
introduced a police regime in the school, and Slytherins (not all of 
them, certainly) were only too eager to help her in this endeavour. 
The picture you drew – all houses ganged up on Slytherin – is 
certainly dramatic but not correct. DA was mostly Gryffindor, and in 
any event they could care less about Slytherin, they ganged up on 
Umbridge. Moreover, they did it in secret, so Slyths had no reason 
to feel "isolated" up until the Marietta's debacle. And that 
happened towards the end. 

>Betsy Hp:
>Actually, it was quite cunning of them.

a_svirn:
Was it though? Personally, I think they were too hasty to ally 
themselves to Umbridge. To wait and see whether she had it in her to 
hold her own against Dumbledore and Co would be a much more 
Slytherin thing to do, I believe. 


Betsy Hp:
Draco is the Slytherin prefect of his year.

a_svirn:
So was Ron. You can hardly call him a leader, though. 

>Betsy Hp:
>He's respected and
>liked (I believe) by Blaise, who has been established as somewhat
>picky about his company.

a_svirn:
I got the opposite impression. Looks like Blaise doesn't think much 
of Draco's abilities. 

>Betsy Hp:
>Draco gets some major ideas from Hermione in HBP. A fact he
>completely acknowledges. So he's crediting her abilities there.

a_svirn:
Well that certainly encouraging that he's lived up to his devious 
Slytherin reputation enough to learn from the enemy instead of 
repeating the same mistakes all over again, but I don't see how it 
makes him less bigoted. 


>Betsy Hp:
>And I think Dumbledore's chiding about calling Hermione a mudblood
>may have made an impact.

a_svirn
Again, not noticeably. 

>Betsy Hp:
>Because calling Hermione a mudblood was not a natural instinct for
>Darco. In the first book he completely ignored her, choosing to
>pick on Neville Longbottom (the pureblood) instead.

a_svirn:
Well, it's usual for bullies to pick on the weakest. The twins did 
the same. 


>Betsy Hp:
>But it wasn't until Draco's father said, "Look, there's a mudblood!
>Go get her!" that Draco turned on Hermione. And even then, Hermione
>tended to be his only target for those sort of attacks.

a_svirn:
But his bigotry is not only about using m-word on Hermione. The 
first time we saw him in PS he presented us with the essence of the 
pureblood prejudices: that only those with an acceptable parentage 
should be allowed to attend Hogwarts (in other words allowed to be 
wizards), and that muggle-borns are all riff-raff, and not good 
enough. Nor Hermione is only representative of the riff-raff he 
picks on. Hagrid also offends his refines sensibilities, for 
instance. 

>Betsy Hp:
>I'm just saying that I don't
>think his bigotry is unassailable. Especially after receiving such
>a big shock to his belief system in HBP.

a_svirn:
It would be interesting to see what he'll make of his HBP 
adventures. His adoration of the Dark Lord has certainly abated, but 
for this to affect all his beliefs? It didn't work that way with his 
father. And who knows to what conclusion Draco will arrive in the 
end? Probably, he'll decide that it was the greatest mistake to 
throw his lot with a half-blood upstart.