good and bad slytherins/Disappointment and Responsibility

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 174993

> > Prep0strus:
>
> > But more importantly, are there any ADMIRABLE slytherins? Any
> > likable? Any one would like to emulate?
> >
>
> Hickengruendler:
>
> What about Mrs Tonks? Granted, she is a very minor character, but
she
> married a Muggleborn, much to her family's displeasure. This
> definitely shows some positive character traits.
>
> Snape's mother, too, was a Slytherin, who in spite of any pureblood
> biases in the house married a Muggleborn. Granted, it's hard to
call
> her admirable, since she seemed to have been a very phlegmatic
woman,
> who let herself bullied by her husband, in spite of the fact, that
> she was the witch. (On the other hand, it does show, that she was
> unwilling to use her powers against someone, who doesn't have them,
> which is a virtue Hagrid or the Weasley twins did not share).

Magpie:
These examples suddenly made me think of Monty Python and the Holy
Grain: "...and also, Sir Not Appearing in this Film."

Pippin:
Did Harry know this all along? I don't think so -- didn't he say,
back in PS/SS that Neville was worth ten of Malfoy because Neville
was a Gryffindor and Malfoy was in "stinking Slytherin" ? And yet
at the end of it all he says this "It doesn't matter to us. But if it
matters to you, you'll be able to choose Gryffindor over Slytherin."

Sounds like rather a major shift in Harry's thinking.

Magpie:
Doesn't sound like much of a shift to me at all, to be honest. It's a
change, but I think the same change would have happened without any
Snape--much of it comes from context to begin with. Harry at 11 is
responding to his friend telling him a mean Slytherin told him he
wasn't brave enough for Gryffindor. "You're worth twelve of him--he
couldn't even make Gryffindor, he's in stinkin' Slytherin!" is a
normal response. Harry the father responding to a son afraid of being
a "stinkin' Slytherin" says equally appropriately, "If you're in
Slytherin, son, Slytherin would be lucky to have you. Your mother and
I love you no matter what house you're in." That's not a major
shift, it's an 11-year-old bucking up his friend when involved in the
rivalry directly, and a father bucking up his son decades after he
stopped identifying anybody by their school house.

Pippin:
Of course
we're not told how it happened, um except for Harry getting to
walk a mile in Snape's black boots in HBP, masquerading as the
Halfblood Prince, trying to find proof that his classmates are
messing with something way over their heads, and nearly getting
expelled for it, being accused of messing with Dark Magic,
thinking his best friend will drop him if he finds out who Harry
fancies, etc.

Magpie:
Well, yeah. I think we can all follow it and fill it in, but I've no
idea what Harry went through, really. He experienced most of those
things while we were in his head and he went on feeling the same way.
A lot of care went into exactly how Harry hated Snape even after
briefly feeling sorry for him etc. The change from hate to
dispassionate respect I fill in on my own.

Pippin:
As to the other Slytherins...

Voldemort claims that the Slytherins who left the school joined him.

But he is a notorious liar.

Magpie:
There's no reason for Voldemort to be lying in that scene iirc, and
he's confirming what we all just saw anyway with no contradiction
anywhere. The three Slytherins we see we know are acting on their own
(with Crabbe the one taking charge)--we know Voldemort isn't sending
them to do anything, but that's another reason it doesn't sound like
Voldemort is lying. He really doesn't know where Draco is.

Pippin:
Some of them might even have had sneaky plans, ala Regulus. They
might have even come back with Slughorn, polyjuiced or in disguise.

Magpie:
*blinks* So maybe we're supposed to write a different story ourselves
when they did involving Polyjuice and disguise? They're not there! If
a sneaky scheme falls in the forest and the writer didn't write any
of it down, it didn't make a sound. She went to the trouble of
showing the table empty.

Pippin:
JKR doesn't make it easy for us, because in RL it's not easy. There
are
always going to be occasions when people *apparently* fit the labels
and stereotypes.

Magpie:
This goes beyond not making it easy for us. This is her not writing
something and expecting the audience to fill in something else.
However hard life is, JKR doesn't usually make reading that hard--in
fact, she seems to discourage this kind of filling in stuff to make
things say something completely different than what she wrote. There
are no other Slytherins for me to look at. If she writes
Slytherins "apparently" fitting the stereotype and the ones who don't
are hidden in disguise, under invisibility cloaks and Polyjuiced,
they don't exist.

Pippin:
And there are genuine, deeply felt differences between
cultures that are not going to be wiped away by everybody standing
in a circle singing the WW equivalent of Kumbayah.

Magpie:
Well, yeah. But I don't think anybody's advocating Kumbayah. These
aren't cultures, it's a school of people ostensibly in the same
culture. JKR didn't have to take on this problem in her story, but I
don't believe that means it's because it's impossible that any
progress could be made. If she wanted more progress, I think she
could have done it.

Pippin:
We should take heart,
JKR seems to be saying, from brief glimpses of how things could be:
the
chastened wizard, Fudge, led forward by the goblin and the house elf
at
the end of OOP. Or the moment in DH when "nobody was sitting according
to House anymore." Including Draco Malfoy.

Magpie:
I believe Draco Malfoy is huddled with his parents not being
bothered, but not part of the celebration.

-m