Danger in designating an "Other" / Bad magic

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 174242

> > Carol:
> >As for Theo, at least he didn't become a
> > Death Eater like his father as Draco did or fight to avenge his 
arrest
> > (and death?). I'd say there's hope for his redemption or rather 
his
> > future since he doesn't appear to have committed any crimes.
> 
> Montavilla47:
> I agree.  There's hope for Theo.  I think there's hope for all of
> them.  But, at the end of the battle, all it is is hope.  A 
glimmer.
> A *chance* that not all Slytherins are Voldemort's lackies.

Magpie:
Actually, I don't see how there's hope for Theo to be redeemed or do 
anything, since the story is over. If you leave aside JKR's notes on 
him that she included on her website, which was the most we ever 
even heard about him, we've got a boy whose dad is a DE, and once or 
twice he's shown talking to Draco. Other than that he's just another 
one of the crowd of Slytherins who submit to Voldemort and don't do 
anything good--which is statement enough, it seems to me. He's not 
actively doing anything bad; he's almost a non-entity in canon, but 
a Slytherin non-entity, so not working for good.

 
> > Carol:
> > But to generalize from Slytherins sitting out the battle to 
Slytherin
> > = evil seems a big jump to me. 
Sure, the students from other Houses
> > turn on Pansy Parkinson, but unlike her, they see Harry 
(rightly) as
> > the WW's only hope. We can't expect Pansy, who has always seen 
Harry
> > as someone to laugh at, along with his "Mudblood" and "blood 
traitor"
> > friends, to suddenly change her view of Harry. And we didn't see 
the
> > rest of the Slytherin table cheering her or melodramatically 
crying
> > "Seize him!"
> 
> Montavilla47:
> I'm not saying that Slytherins are evil.  I'm saying that we are 
not given
> any--even the smallest, meanest crumb of a clue that they aren't.  
No,
> we don't see her table cheer her on.  We don't see the Slytherins 
react
> at all.  So, we can interpret that to mean that maybe they aren't 
in 
> agreement with her--but if any were in disagreement, the time to 
> say so would be immediately afterwards, when 3/4s of the school 
have
> voted.  That no one does so is a lost opportunity to suggest a 
glimmer
> of non-Voldemortness in the Slytherins.

Magpie:
Exactly. It's not that all the Slytherins are always being 
aggressively evil. But that says very little positive about them as 
a group. All of them leaving in this scene was a pretty powerful 
image to me--and Voldemort refers to it later as them coming to him. 
I don't see how not standing up for Harry isn't a bad thing in 
itself. They don't even get the little nod Lupin gets of looking 
uncomfortable while he doesn't step in to protect Snape. The fact 
that McGonagall orders it doesn't seem to make much difference, 
especially since it seemed set up beforehand that McGonagall was 
giving Slytherin a chance and saying if they blew it this is what 
she'd do.

 
> Carol:
> > This scene occurs *130 pages* before Harry publicly vindicates 
Snape,
> >  who has been killed three hours before according to LV. Until 
Harry
> > makes that speech, the students from the other three Houses 
thought
> > their erstwhile headmaster was a murderer and a Death Eater and 
that
> > his House was the Death Eater's House. Harry's speech is 
undoubtedly a
> > wake-up call for students, staff members, and ordinary citizens 
who
> > three hours before thought there was no such thing as a good 
Slytherin.
> 
> Montavilla47:
> Exactly.  That's the wake-up call for everyone.  I believe that's 
why JKR 
> keeps out any hint that the Slytherin students harbor anything but 
support
> for Voldemort and his evil ways.  To give us a "good" Slytherin 
before
> that moment would take away from the shock of learning that Snape 
was.

Magpie:
It didn't read like it was written as a wake-up call about Slytherin 
to me at all. It reveals what was going on with Snape--a wake-up 
call about him. As has been discussed earlier in the post, not all 
Slytherins have been said to support Voldemort. Some support him, 
some just don't oppose him. The ones that do oppose him are almost 
all stories of personal redemption for personal reasons after 
starting out aggressively bad. They show that not all Slytherins are 
so bad, rather than saying, imo, that the opinion we've had of 
Slytherin has been misguided. It's not, after all, as if the good 
guys throughout the books go around persecuting Slytherin all that 
much. Mostly they react to things Slytherin does (sometimes 
overreact, imo, but they're still reacting). I thought Phineas' line 
at the end was another little dig showing him thinking of himself 
first and wanting extra credit for his house (and so himself) when 
it wasn't much deserved. You might get something from Slytherin but 
you could never count on it as you could other houses.

Montavilla: 
> It makes that moment more effective.  It makes Narcissa's moment 
more
> effective.  But it does so at the cost of tying up the set-up for 
House Unity.
> It mitigates the idea of Slytherin having intrinsic value to the 
community.

Magpie:
I agree. And almost all these examples of Slytherins doing the right 
thing is mitigated to begin with by not coming from the same impulse 
as the other people have. The one person who comes closest to an 
impersonal choice for good is Slughorn, who has also been shown to 
be motivated by a passion for Lily Potter and personal fear of the 
DEs who are out to get him and immediately apologizes for his house 
affiliation. This doesn't change that Slughorn fights, but I don't 
see him as vindicating his house much at all since he's so much more 
connected with other people than his house, and even his stand takes 
a bit of doing. Basically, we see how houses do their part--all 
three other houses do it quite easily--and Slytherin is a special 
case. 

Montavilla: 
> Which is something I seem to remember JKR saying years ago when 
> asked about Slytherin.  That they were nasty people, but you can't 
just
> get rid of people because they're nasty, can you?

Magpie:
Yes. Unfortunately it also suggests not only that nasty people are 
stuck that way, but that there's a separation between nasty people 
and ourselves.

Montavilla:
> I hate how bitter this all sounds, because I don't really feel 
bitter.  Maybe
> I invested too much in characters like Draco.  Maybe I invested 
too much
> in the idea that, because the Hat said the Houses needed to unite, 
that 
> there was something intrinsically valuable and necessary in 
Slytherin
> House.  That the battle couldn't be fought without all the Houses.

Magpie:
I know I did. And I admit I was wrong, that things like the Sorting 
Hat's New Song were apparently not going anywhere, because it was 
describing some kind of utopia rather than anything realistic. 
(Though I still think that's an odd idea.) I had absolutely believed 
that there couldn't be a real victory unless this was addressed--and 
that's why it doesn't feel like there's a real victory. 

I think it goes beyond what I wanted and thought should happen, it's 
that even knowing that was never the goal it's not a real victory, 
it's just killing Voldemort. Which is why despite Slytherin proving 
itself bad, I can't completely divorce the good guys from their 
problems either, because they don't consider these other people 
worth the effort and don't look into themselves to see where they go 
wrong either. No effort is made to heal the split, and I'm frankly 
left with the bizarre subtext that people want Slytherin the way 
they are because they're needed this way and it's so satisfying 
fighting this kind of battle.

DG:
A non-aligned Slytherin could certainly see which way the wind was
blowing, and choose to keep his head down, even if he had no ties to
the Death Eaters himself.

Magpie:
Which is not admirable or moral in the way the behavior of other 
characters is. There are times when pragmatic is wrong (and not even 
pragmatic in the long run).

Betsy Hp:
For me it's because the friendship was so obviously one-sided. Lily
got information out of Snape but she was too "lily-white" to fully
care for the dark Slytherin boy. He was beneath her and they both
knew it. (JKR says differently in her interviews, but this is what
DH says, IMO.)

Magpie:
I'm probably going to sound even more negative there, but 
unfortunately I reacted to that stuff in the interview as part of 
what seems to be a pattern of the good guys looking good. Of course 
Lily is wonderful enough that she could have actually fallen in love 
with Snape despite his being ugly, repulsive and bad-tempered. She 
just wound up with the good-looking cool guy because Snape was ugly 
on the *inside.* So he was doubly the fool, and Lily was doubly good.

-m