[HPforGrownups] extra! extra! "Sorting Hat, never wrong" (wasRe: Sorting Hat as Horcrux?

[Magpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 143429


> a_svirn:
> There is nothing particularly Gryffindorish about all of the above.
> It's not like Gryffs have a patent on loyalty, vengeance and being a
> man. As for winning glory it sounds like a worthy ambition for a
> Slyth.

Magpie:

No, they don't have a patent on it.  That's part of my point.

> a_svirn:
> True. And he has finally acquired a third dimension. But I still say
> he's grown into a fine Slytherin.

Magpie:

Yes--I'm not making a case for him growing into a Gryffindor.  He's still 
Slytherin and Harry is still Gryffindor, but that does not make them 
completely alien to each other.

> a_svirn:
> Actually, it was Dumbledore life that was threatened on the Tower.
> And like Pettigrew Draco had done Voldemort's bidding all along,
> which is why he was surrounded by DE in the first place. It is true
> that Dumbledore had given him a choice, but he didn't make one:
> Snape did it for him.

Magpie:

He didn't make a choice except for not to act.  (His life and his family's 
lives have been threatened if he does not kill Dumbledore.)  But Dumbledore 
gave him a choice after Malfoy got to that place on the Tower. That was the 
moment when Malfoy is confronted with the whole concept of bad faith (after 
beginning to understand mortality as a concept) and the concept of choosing 
himself to kill or not to kill.  He began to lower his wand, that's the only 
hint of what he might have done. But he didn't choose definitively one way 
or another--Snape killed Dumbledore and he ran away.  He postponed making 
his own choice.  But that is still a very different story than Pettigrew's, 
putting him in a different position for the final book.

-m