The good Slytherin

[hickengruendler]

No: HPFGUIDX 130910

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "horridporrid03" 
<horridporrid03 at y...> wrote:
 
> 
> >>Karen: 
> >If there is a good Sltherin, I think Viktor Krum is it.  He comes 
> from Durmstrang, which appears to be a school full of Syltherins - 
> they are taught to use the Dark Arts, not just to defend themselves 
> against them, their Headmaster is a Deatheater and they all 
> naturally gravitated to the Slytherin table in the great hall.  VK, 
> however says many times that he likes Hogwarts and it's nicer than 
> Durmstrang.<
> 
> Betsy Hp:
> It's a theory.  One I'd find particularly disappointing myself. (Of 
> course I have high hopes Draco will be the "good Slytherin" so take 
> this for what it's worth. <g>)  For one thing Krum is not a 
Hogwarts 
> graduate, for another he's not Harry's peer, and most importantly 
> he's not a Slytherin.

Hickengruendler:

I agree, there's a huge difference between being a Slytherin and 
being a Durmstrang. Durmstrang is a school in Eastern Europe, and 
despite of it's bad reputation, I think it's fair to say that many 
students, who go there, chose it for purely geographical reasons. 
Many students probably went there because it's closest to their home. 
It would be ridiculous if every student from the region would be 
evil, just because they attend the school. Although I must say that I 
also think that Viktor has a particular strong character for 
befriending a Muggle-born, in spite of being taught by Karkaroff and 
his prejudices all those years.

Slytherin on the other hand is a house in Hogwarts. It has it's dark 
reputation, and if we believe Dumbledore when he implied in CoS, that 
the students are sorted not only by their ability, (although I do 
think this plays a part. The Sorting Hat never offered Harry to go to 
Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw, for example), but also by their choice, than 
we must see the Slytherin students as those who do not care about 
it's bad reputation, or at least not enough to reject the house, like 
Harry did. And what Harry IMO has to realize is, that in spite of 
this, those students can turn out to be okay as well. Just because 
someone chose the house with the worst history, does not mean he is 
scum as well. It would be awful if it means that 25% of the wizards 
population in Britain are irredeemably evil, just because they chose 
Slytherins when they were 11. And I'm sure JKR will address this as 
well, because she did not write "The Sorting Hat's New Song" for 
nothing. She even emphasized later during the conversation between 
the Trio and Nearly-Headless Nick, that the Slytherins should not be 
excluded, and she wrote that Gryffindor and Slytherin once had been 
friends.
 
> I also take issue with the idea that all things dark and evil 
should 
> be associated with Slytherin.  It sounds to stereotypical to my 
> mind, and it lays too much on the Slytherin doorstep, IMO.  
> Slytherin wanted students far removed from the Muggle world (which 
> was a threat to wizards and witches at the time of the school 
> founding) and who had ambition and cunning.  None of that reads as 
> particularly evil or even overly dark to me.

Hickengruendler:

Slytherin also plotted to kill Muggleborn-Students and put a Basilisk 
in the Chamber of Secrets. He basically helped killing Moaning 
Myrtle. Maybe we will learn in book 6 that everything was a big 
misunderstanding, and that he put the Basilisk only there for 
studying reasons, but until then I put him in the "evil" category, 
because what we know of him so far is pretty horrible, IMO. And I do 
not think that his possible fear of Muggles justify his actions, if 
they were really like they appear to be.  
 
Hickengruendler