Slytherin's redemption

[Mari]

No: HPFGUIDX 174042

<snippage of excellent analysis of Slytherin's role in the last two 
books and the unblinkering process that Harry undergoes in order to see 
them clearly>
 
> Carol, who thinks that the blinders are off Harry's eyes at the end of
> the book and he at last sees Slytherin clearly.

Mari:

Carol, I agree with your analysis totally. Like you, when I read HBP 
and DH, I don't see JKR 'copping out' and making Slytherin irremeemably 
evil at all. In fact for me, by the end of DH, if Harry has learned 
anything it is not to assume that people are good or bad based on the 
House they are sorted into or the qualities they start out with. Tom 
Riddle, Severus Snape and himself, as he recognises, all found a home 
at Hogwarts. It was their choices over a long period of time that 
determined their final fates.

 I see all this as an extension on Dumbledore's statement that it is 
our choices, not our abilities, that determine who we are. The beauty 
of it is that the 'villainous' Snape and 'saintly' Dumbledore have both 
been shown, by the end of the series, to have made wrong choices, and 
one of the things JKR explores is the process of reparation, atonement 
or redemption for different people. We all make wrong choices; we all 
have the option to get our feet back on the right path. The 
relationship between Dumbledore and Snape by the end of DH is much more 
complex, multi layered and real as a result of these elements in the 
narrative.