Slytherins: selfish, not evil + Ariana raped?

[sk8maven]

No: HPFGUIDX 174213

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Bart Lidofsky <bartl at ...> wrote:
> It was more than a mental block; it was an extremely deep
> psychological wounding. Now, my opinion may be colored having spent
> a number of years working with abused children, but I can tell you
> that a simple beating, even a bad one, would not have this effect
> unless there was brain injury involved (with most of the children
> with whom I worked, brain injury WAS involved).

We don't get any details. Maybe the little brutes knocked her against
a wall or into a rock (or threw rocks AT her) or something which would
cause concussion at the very least and possibly a fractured skull.
That could certainly cause brain damage with all the attendant
consequences.

Bart:
> However, one factor I had not considered until now was that this
> took place in the mid-19th century

Wizards may be longer-lived than Muggles, but not THAT much
longer-lived. Work it backward from Dumbledore's defeat of Grindelwald
and capture of his wand - in 1945, as we are explicitly told more than
once. He delayed that meeting for "five years" after Ariana died. She
died quite young (16? 20? Check the details). There's simply no way
the attack that disastrously damaged her can be pushed back past about
the 1920's.

The Slytherin thing is one of my dissatisfactions with DH as well. Not
even "one or two" Slytherin banners looking "forlorn and out of place"
among the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw ones in the Room of
Requirement? None of the other Slytherins looked at Pansy with shock
and/or disgust when she suggested handing Harry over? The only detail
we get about the Slytherin exodus is Blaise Zabini nearly trampling
other kids in his rush to get out of there? NO subtle little touches
to add moral complexity in a few words?

I think the story got away from JKR somewhere around Book 4, and she
had to stuff it all back in Book 7...and there was so much to stuff by
that time that a lot of detail simply got lost.

It's not the best book of the series, even though it ought to have
been and needed to be.

Maven