Motivations for Joining DEs - Pure blood and Propaganda

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 140975

> Elyse: So how come Voldemort was able to masquerade around as a 
> pureblood? Okay, even if he wasnt faking it, how can he go around 
> telling DE's that he is pureblood? 

Magpie:

Pretty easily, it seems to be, given that Lord Voldemort isn't his 
real name.  Bellatrix doesn't know he's Tom Riddle, so she couldn't 
look anything up (there is no Wizarding titled aristocracy either, 
so "Lord Voldemort" wouldn't be an inherited thing).  He probably 
presented himself as a mysterious figure, one who speaks 
Parseltongue etc. and hates Muggleborns and Muggles and people like 
Bellatrix naturally assumed he was Pureblood.  Or at least had two 
magical parents.  It's not like Voldemort allows people to openly 
question him and he does have an impressive pedigree in his way as 
the actual Heir of Slytherin.  

Snape is still using his real name, and certainly when he was at 
school it would be known he wasn't a Pureblood just as it was known 
with Tom Riddle.  In Harry's class peoples' blood history is often 
given as a basic fact like hair color.    

> Elyse: I snipped a little, but they were excellent points, and I 
> cant really refute them. I just imagined that Slytherin was a 
> predominantly pureblood house since the Sorting hat keeps harping 
on
> about how Slytherin wanted to teach those whose ancestry is purest 
> and from what weve seen of the Chamber of Secrets, Salazar 
Slytherin 
> was a lunatic when it came to "purging the school of those who 
were 
> unworthy  of learning magic".

Magpie:
The hat doesn't really give that definition for Slytherin until 
fifth year that I remember (the same year Hufflepuff becomes 
the "all the rest house"), though even in second year their password 
is "Pureblood."  (One wonders what other Slytherin passwords are if 
that's a sample!)  

But still, the issue of half-bloods has always been tricky.  Harry 
has *never* experienced any problems from being a half-blood.  
Hermione gets called a Mudblood by Draco and the Basilisk goes after 
Muggleborns, but that doesn't seem to be an issue with Harry except 
when Dumbledore points out that Voldemort chose him as a half-blood 
over Pureblooded Neville despite his own prejudices.  Malfoy never 
questions Harry's blood and he's our main example of Pureblood Mania.

The thing about half-bloods is that they do, at least, have some 
familial ties to the WW.  I can imagine that Slytherin himself would 
see that.  In OotP the Pureblood issue becomes a family one where we 
learn that the old Purebloods are they are all related to each 
other, so a half-blood would be very different there than a 
Muggleborn who has no ties to the Wizarding World at all and is all-
Muggle by birth.  

The fact that Voldemort himself is a half-blood to me suggests this 
is something like reality where we should never assume that even a 
Muggleborn couldn't show up in a mask, though it does seem to make 
sense that a full Muggleborn wouldn't be Sorted into Slytherin.  I 
don't agree with a common fandom idea that Snape was ostracized in 
Slytherin because he was a half-blood or that his half-blood status 
had to keep him from embracing Voldemort's ideology so that it 
couldn't have been a factor in his joining the DEs.  We have been 
told by Sirius that Snape went round with a gang of Slytherins--and 
in this case I see no reason that Sirius would be lying--and those 
Slytherins were Purebloods and future DEs.  I think they made a 
place for Snape in their group knowing full well he was a half-
blood.  People are weird, and in our world racists make exceptions 
for individuals a lot.

-m