Dumbledore the parselmouth?

[Rachel Crofut]

No: HPFGUIDX 151208


Jen:
> >Considered it, yes, but I somehow doubt it, considering how dark JK
> >has made it out to be.  That is also why it matters if DD is able to
> >talk to snakes.  It is what Voldemort is famous for, and is quite
> >often throughout the books referred to as the mark of a dark wizard.


Jazmyn:

>On WHOSE word do we have for this?  Ron's?  Ron has been shown
>repeatedly ignorant before of his own world, so why should we take his
>world for it that its the mark of a dark wizard?  Hermione?  She gets
>all her facts from books and as we have seen from Lockhart's books, many
>things in WW books might be taken with a grain of salt.  If so, why
>isn't Harry a dark wizard just for the ability to speak it?
>
>I think there are no 'absolutes' in the WW and a lot of people who
>'assume' things based on circumstantial and flimsy evidence.  Its like
>trying to claim all blond people are unintelligent to claim that all
>wizards who speak or understand parselmouth are automatically evil, dark
>wizards.  And even if Dumbledore only understands the speech through use
>of magic and doesn't speak it, does not mean he is suddenly evil.
>People spend so much time looking at black and white, they fail to see
>all the shades of gray between.  The whole world isn't neatly divided
>into good people and death eaters after all.

Rachel:
Ignoring the "Fudge is a DE" argument, when we consider MOM Fudge it is 
apparant that, indeed, the world isn't divided between good people and death 
eaters (in fact, it's the people in the middle in Potterverse that seem to 
cause a lot of difficulty!).  Ron is often mistaken when presenting 
information on the WW, however I would suggest that since the two most 
famous parselmouths in WW history, Slytherin and Voldemort, are almost 
automatically connected with being "bad" or "evil" (not always correctly - I 
would argue that Slytherin was not evil, just had a thing for purebloods) 
would tie such a rare gift as Parseltongue to being evil.  We see through 
Harry's ability to speak parseltongue that this gift does not always mean 
evil (although, yes, he has been tainted by it through the AK curse).  Other 
people have mentioned the quote that states just because a wizard doesn't 
use dark magic doesn't mean he can't.  I, for one, do not that DD is an 
"evil wizard".
~ Rachel