Twist JKR? (was:Re: Dumbledore's pleading...)

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 141600

Betsy:

> > (Have you read Magpie's post on Slytherin?  She points out that by 
> > rejecting Slytherin, Hogwarts has, in a sense, not allowed 
> > Slytherins to contribute to the school.  Something that obviously 
> > needs to change.  It's here:
> > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/141348 )
> 
> I don't particularly buy the construction of agency with Hogwarts 
> ganging up on/rejecting Slytherin.  They're not the oppressed, 
> they're The Man, in infancy.  So I read it more as self-isolation 
> than that.  YMMV.

Magpie:

Actually, to speak for the post in question, I did not suggest that 
kind of agency (because I don't see things that way either).  I said 
that symbolically, the hat's story about Slytherin is important for 
the final victory.  He says all the founders were fighting until 
Slytherin left (which is self-isolation right there), but that this 
has still left the school broken.  In the last two books, the books 
where the Sorting Hat gives this warning, the three houses coming 
together or huge protections put up around the school are all weakened 
by the fact that Slytherin, the rogue house, is working against those 
protections.  It's not so simplistic as the other three houses being 
mean to Slytherin and so the poor Slytherins aren't allowed to be a 
part of it.  It's just that this is the situation and, according to 
the hat, it must be fixed (on both sides) if the school is to stand. 
Having Slytherin as a common enemy is not the best way to glue the 
school together.

This, to me, is beginning in HBP with Harry's pov on Slytherin not 
completely turning around but being different than it ever has been 
before, and Draco going through a year-long arc that ends with him 
ready to consider a change of perspective himself.  As Dumbledore 
stressed in the tower, it wasn't just about things not working out, it 
was about those pesky choices again.  Things actually do work out the 
way he'd hoped to a certain extent.  When his plan works and he's 
there with the wand and a helpless Dumbledore, things get interesting.

-m