good and bad slytherins/Disappointment and Responsibility

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 175017

va32h:

I have a very different interpretation of that scene with young
Severus and Lily. When she asks if it makes a difference whether she
is Muggle born or not - there is a very telling pause on Snape's
part, during which he looks at her very longingly. My understanding
is that Snape knows full well that it *does* matter, but because he
has already come to love Lily, it doesn't matter *to him*.

Magpie:
That's exacty how I read it. This is the first sign of Snape's 
problem, that he wants to have it both ways. Lily ultimately tells 
him he can't have it both ways, going along with Pureblood Supremist 
thought but just saying it doesn't apply to her. The first time he's 
given the choice he winds up with the DEs, but he doesn't reject her 
intentionally. The second time, when Lily herself is threatened, he 
chooses Lily and he sticks with that choice. She's what matters to 
him.

> > 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.
> 
> Jen: I don't get why the state of the Malfoys matters there.  
They're 
> in the Great Hall and not fleeing to the hills, a huge change from 
> being in the forest with Voldemort only hours before.  This is an 
> example of the weakness in the argument for the cast-off 
Slytherins.  

Magpie:
I'm not sure which argument of mine this is supposed to counter. 
Pippin said that everyone was sitting together regardless of house, 
and I was compelled to say that the Malfoys--the ones who have 
basically been like the other Slytherins--are naturally sitting by 
themselves and not part of the celebration, they're merely not being 
bothered.

I have not made any argument for "cast off" Slytherins or ignored 
that they are in the Great Hall at all (as JKR's said in an 
interview, they will weasel out of punishment through it). I've said 
that Slytherin house proved itself not too great in these books and 
unsurprisingly their behavior colors the way they fit in with the 
rest of the school. They're not cast off, they're tolerated as long 
as they're not being too bad. What I'm arguing against is the idea 
that there's some big change and coming together in the epilogue. 
Seems to me they're just in one of the probably many long periods 
where Slytherin's not a big problem, but is still the house with the 
reputation for the Dark Arts etc. I'm not giving the story a 
resolution I don't think it had or wanted to have.

Jen:
> When Slytherins are notable for contributing to the defeat of 
> Voldemort, it has no bearing on the story.  When Pansy Parkinson 
and 
> all the Slytherins leave the Great Hall, that's deeply 
significant.  
> Examples are good except when they aren't, and it's a movable 
feast as 
> to which ones matter.

Magpie:
I think this is the way the narrative is set up. Like it or not, the 
Slytherins who help *are* special cases, and still start from a 
different place from other houses. As I said, this has nothing to do 
wtih Slytherin being "cast off." I just don't think I'm the one 
making a distinction between Slytherin and the other houses when the 
author herself has made it perfectly clear in every single book 
including the last one. For me to not say that Slytherin is unique 
among the houses--which does not mean they are all evil--is to deny 
a pretty consistent thing in the story.

Again, I am not dismissing any of the Slytherins who aren't as bad 
as the rest. But I am sticking with what I see as who they are, and 
certain more positive readings about how they've come together at 
the end of the book and no longer have any stigma just seem 
completely uncanonical to me--and not to use an interview for canon, 
but JKR herself I thought confirmed the rather weak resolution 
herself, I thought, when she explained that Slytherin had 
been "diluted" so that it was no longer the bastion of Pureblood 
supremecy, but still had a reputation for dark magic, as we see in 
the epilogue. Just as you think I'm just rejecting Slytherins who 
are good, I think focusing on Harry's "I love you no matter what 
House you're in" answer to his son rather than the fact that it's a 
standard parental response to his son's unsurprising fear of being 
in *that house* is changing what's going on.

I accept all the Slytherins who helped the cause. I also note that 
all of them have also been associated with some degree of Pureblood 
supremacy (unlike almost any of the people from other houses we've 
seen) and that they don't start off as people you can assume are 
with you. We don't have to look for Ravenclaws who did something to 
help--their banner was hanging in the RoR. Sorry, but I can't read 
the story any other way than the way it came across to me 
straightforwardly the first time, that Slytherin did not fight with 
the other houses, but that there were certain individual Slytherins 
for reasons we are given who do not go with their house. Slytherin 
*played* its part in the destruction of Voldemort absolutely. But I 
really can't say that Slytherin did its part very admirably. Given 
the way Slytherin is set up to begin with it actually does need 
something bigger to make a change.

Brothergib:
But that is what sets Harry
apart from the rest of us mere mortals. As DD put it (can't remember
the actual quote) the fact that Harry is able to love after
everything that has happened to him is an amazing thing. Harry named
his kid after Snape because he honoured and respected the love that
Snape had shown towards his mother. Harry certainly is the 'better
man'.

Magpie:
Obviously Harry does think that honoring Snape this way is 
appropriate, but I don't think it's because he's in any way better 
than "mere mortals" in being able to forgive and love people. 
(Qualifying it with "after everything that has happened to him" 
implies the same imo.) People have claimed that it would 
be "unrealistic" for Harry and Snape to really reconcile in a scene, 
and I think that's part of the reason for it. Harry honors a dead 
man for his brave deeds, done for Harry's mother and in protection 
of Harry himself, he doesn't love somebody who's just treated him 
badly. 

Hickengruendler:

However, that's what I expected. JKR didn't give us any
major "admirable" Slytherins (in the sense that they are perfect role
models) in the first six books, and I didn't expect them to pop up
suddenly in book 7. In fact, I think I would have found it a cop out.
What I wanted to see were Slytherins, who overcame their flaws and
worked for redemption. And I was satisfied with it thanks to the
portrayal of Regulus, Slughorn and especially Snape.

Magpie:
I agree. I just do still think that the portrayal of these three 
still points to the same issues with Slytherin there has been 
throughout the book. I don't think the author was going for any sort 
of redemption of Slytherin and that's why I don't think she wrote 
it. I'm not trying to be overly negative about the way things ended 
up, just honest about what I read. I don't see this reading any more 
than I saw "Draco is secretly trying to help the Trio at the QWC by 
warning Hermione."

Barbara:
I found the fact that the first person to greet and
welcome Severus into Slytherin was Lucius Malfoy.
(Apparently, the hatred of half born wasn't in Slytherin
yet.) I wonder if that was the reason he favored Draco
so much.

Magpie:
Hatred of the half born wasn't ever in Slytherin in canon. They hate 
Muggle-borns, not Half-bloods, even if presumably they see 
Purebloods as the most superior.

Jen:
Magpie:
> JKR once misquoted this line in an interview as DD saying
> choices "make you" who you are, and that surprised me because
> they're not the same thing. In canon it's consistently the former--
> choices show who you are, because there's not a lot of change.

Jen: In GOF DD says 'it's not what someone is born, but what they
grow to be.'

I don't agree with the intepretation of his COS statement as a
Calvinist thought. Choice isn't an inborn trait and abilities have
at least *some* component of genetic predisposition. So if
Dumbledore's saying choice is more important to show what a person
truly is than abilites, he's making a statement consistent with the
one in GOF (when he said choice was more important than blood).


Magpie:
Dumbledore has always made a distinction between what you are born 
meaning your bloodline, and the choices who show who you really are. 
The person you grow to be does not conflict with the way I see the 
characters working. Sirius was born into a Slytherin, Pureblood 
supremist family, but by 11 was already showing by his choices he 
was a different person. Draco, unlike Sirius, shared his family's 
weaknesses. Where you're born or who you're born to does not decide 
your character, but I do think your character does. You show who you 
are.

I suspect this all may be seen as being just "choosing to have 
negative readings," but I'm just describing what I see. The more 
redemptive readings feel to me like more of a stretch, a "fixing" of 
canon to get in the stuff I thought should be there that doesn't 
hold up for me. I don't think I have an overly negative view of 
Slytherin--I've never claimed that there's an intense hatred at the 
end of the book, or that Slytherins are all evil. To me it just 
seems like describing the house as I see it ultimately in canon: 
it's the problem house and the author doesn't seem to be doing 
anything to counter that idea. It seems to me that she's certainly 
used the Slytherins in a certain way, and she's included ones who 
collude with the good side. But no, they just really don't seem any 
different from the way they were at the beginning of the series--
that's pretty much where the books end up in general for me, at the 
beginning of the series with a new generation. The difference being 
that the threat of Voldemort and Death Eaters has gone.

-m