good and bad slytherins/Disappointment and Responsibility

[prep0strus]

No: HPFGUIDX 175139

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "justcarol67" <justcarol67 at ...>
wrote:

> 
> It's not Snape's perspective. it's the Pensieve, which is objective.
> Neither James nor Sirius says anything about the Dark Arts or blood
> prejudice. All we have is James's expressed desire to be in his
> father's House, which he associates with bravery, Severus's desire to
> be in Slytherin, which he associates with brains, James's sneers at
> Slytherin for no specified reason, and Sirius's hesitation between his
> parents' House and his new friend and his choice of the new friend and
> his preferred House (no doubt detected by the Sorting Hat later).
> 


Prep0strus:

I do have to be careful with my word choices on here. Yes, it is not
Snape's 'perspective'. However, it IS his memory. And his choice to
show it to Harry.  We don't see many memories of Snape and his
Slytherin cohorts, practicing dark magic and most likely torturing
younger Griffendors and talking of joining up with Voldemorte, do we?
 Much as we judge JKR by the scenes she chooses to show us, so while
we WANT a nice Slytherin, the conspicuous absence of one in the
stories means we have to invent one or accept that there isn't one, we
can also note the editing that Snape is able to do.  He is telling his
story.  And he would not be present for every conversation James had
condemning dark magic.  We do have, as you conveniently have brought
up, the canon stating James always hated dark magic.  What I meant,
rather than perspective, is that it is in the presence of Snape, and a
small clip at that.


> Carol responds:
> 
> We don't have any canon for Sorius' reasons for joining the Order of
> the Phoenix, only his Gryffindor banners an posters of Muggle
> artificat, which seem to represent adolescent rebellion, in contrast
> to the "good son's" Slytherin banners and artifacts. (Lots of irony
> going on in both portrayals, but I don't want to get into that here.)
> What we don't know is whether Sirius's principles ever changed.


Prep0strus:

That's an interesting statement. We don't know whether his principles
changed.  That depends on how you look at it.  If his principles were
always to reject the dark arts, reject his family's pure-blood
superiority mentality, and want to fight evil, well, then I think his
principles didn't change.  If, as a child, he accepted his family's
hatred of muggleborns and seemingly comfort with the dark arts, then I
think it's clear his principles DID change.



Carol:
> Perhaps he was indoctrinated in gryffindor values as Severus was
> indoctrinated in Gryffindor ones. All we have that I can recall is his
> statement about James's opposition to the Dark Arts (not in evidence
> in the scene in which they're all eleven-year-olds, as I'll show in a
> moment) and his telling his mother's portrait to shut up. We also see
> him pointing out to Harry that his favorite cousin, Andromeda, has
> been burned off the tapestry for marrying a Muggle-born, and his
> hatred of his cousin Bellatrix. But all of that is the adult Sirius,
> after the deaths of the Potters and Pettigrew's betrayal and his own
> imprisonment. What I don't see, in either the child Sirius in "The
> Prince's Tale" or the adolescent Sirius helping to ambush Severus
> Snape (who is reviewing the test questions after a DADA OWL), is any
> sign of principles. The closest we get is "toerag" James saying that
> *he* would never call Lily a Mudblood).
> 

Prep0strus:

That really depends on your definition of principles, doesn't it?  It
seems Sirius would never use the term mudblood. His friends wouldn't
accept it. I think that's a pretty strong principle.  And he wouldn't
use the dark arts.  Another fairly strong principle.  And he accepts
and defends the societal outcast Lupin, another strong principle for a
boy not brought up in the most principled family.

What we see is his bullying of Severus Snape, and from what I see in
the scenes including him, he is not an nice, innocent boy.  If he
could, he would do the same to the Griffindors.  that doesn't make
their bullying more acceptable, but Snape isn't an entirely innocent
victim.  He's a boy practicing dark arts and engaging in prejudice. 
And for Sirius to become the man we see at the end, he had to have
joined the order and fought against Voldemorte before losing his
friend or being locked up.  He may be a rash and arrogant, but he was
also quite principled.


Carol:
> But I'm not talking about the SWM. I'm talking about the first
> encounter between Sirius, James, and Severus on the Hogwarts Express.
> 
> A little canon then (and I really am wondering why so few people are
> quoting it at this point).
> 
> "'You'd better be in Slytherin,' said Snape, encouraged that she
> [Lily] had brightened a little.
> 
> "'Slytherin?' One of the boys sharing the compartment, who had shown
> no interest in Snape or Lily at all until that point, looked around at
> the word, and Harry . . .  saw his father, slight, black-haired like
> Snape, but with that indefinable air of being well cared for, even
> adored, that Snape so conspicuously lacked.
> 
> "'Who wants to be in Slytherin? I think I'd leave, wouldn't you?'
> james asked the boy lounging on the seat opposite him. . . [BTW,
> James's words precisely echo Draco's sneer about Hufflepuff in SS/PS:
> "Imagine being Sorted into Hufflepuff. I think I'd leave, wouldn't
> you?" SS Am. ed. 77).]
> 
> "Sirius did not smile. 'My whole family have been in Slytherin,' he
said.
> 
> "'Blimey,' said James. 'And I thought you seemed all right!'"
> 
> "Sirius grinned. 'Maybe I'll break the tradition. Where are you
> heading, f you've got the choice?'
> 
> "James held up an invisible sword. 'Gryffindor, where dwell the brave
> at heart. Like my dad"" (DH Am. ed. 671).


Prep0strus:

But you cut off the scene before snape makes a disparaging noise and
sneers at him, insulting their choice as well.  Snape, we've seen, was
not a pleasant child.  He liked Lily a lot.  But talked just as
nastily about Petunia as James and Sirius did of him.  And his disdain
for the other boys is the same as theirs for him.  He was smaller, and
they had each other, but his instincts were the same.


Carol: 
> 
> Just as Severus appears to have been told by his witch mother that
> Slytherin (surely her old House) is a House for "brains, not brawn"
> (as Severus says on the next page), James has been told by his
> gryffindor father that Gryffindor is the House for "the brave at heart."

Prep0strus:

And, I maintain, though there is no canon to quote, that James (and
Sirius, and possibly Snape - it doesn't seem like he was as clued into
the WW as them, though more than Lily) also would know of the politics
of the world.  I find it very difficult to swallow that they would go
to school not knowing what Slytherins were doing in the adult world. 
What beliefs they were espousing.  The students in Harry's time knew
what had happened 11 years before.  they knew Harry. They  knew
Voldemorte.  And they knew the names of the Death Eaters - and that
they were Slytherins.  They did not go into that choice blind, and
thinking only of their friends.  These kids have knowledge of the world.


Carol:
> Sirius, who has been brought up with Slytherin values, has a choice.
> Stay with his new friend, who sneers at Slytherin, or stay with family
> tradition and lose his new friend.
> 
> He chooses James over his family, not because of any rejection of the
> Dark Arts or pure-blood prejudice but because he'd rather be friends
> with the "cool" James than the "little oddball" who thinks that
> Slytherin is for brains, not brawn. sirius makes his choice with his
> next remark, "Where're you going to go, seeing as you're neither?"
> 
> And as Lily suggests to Severus that they find another compartment,
> James tries to trip Severus and Sirius [I think] calls out, "See ya,
> Snivellus!" (672).
> 
> Not one of these eleven-year-olds is acting on principle. All are
> basing their views of the Houses on what they've been told (Lily, the
> sole Muggle-born, is the only one with no preconceptions) and Sirius,
> the only one making a choice, does so because James is "cooler" than
> Severus. (I'm remeinded of Harry's wish to be seen with someone "cool"
> rather than with Neville and Luna in OoP.)
> 


Prep0strus:

On this, I think we simply disagree.  I do not believe that the hat is
so pointless that it simply accepts whatever house you 'want' to be
in.  There have to be some Hufflepuffs who want to be Griffindors when
they arrive, but are simply not brave enough, or Griffindors who just
aren't smart enough for Ravenclaw.  But if it were simply about what
you wanted, you could check a box, mail it in, and that would be that.
 No need for the magical hat.

And while you believe that Sirius was open to the idea of Griffindor
simply because James was 'cool', I think there has to be more than
that.  Coming from the family that he does, he should already have a
predisposition to dislike and mistrust Griffindors.  But maybe seeing
a fun James and a strange Severus makes him question what he's been
told.  Maybe he starts hearing from the boys on the train more of the
horrors attributed to dark magic, rather than the draws of it.  And
the hat sees someone who can be brave and strong rather than ambitious
and self serving.  Shoot, maybe he's not clever enough for Slytherin!
(though I doubt that - we're told again and again how talented, which
in the WW seems to equate to smarts, James and Sirius are)  But he has
the potential to be someone fighting for a cause he believes in.


Carol:
> Sirius never loses his air of arrogant superiority, so like
> Bellatrix's. Even their deaths show a kinship (except that he's an
> Order member and she's a murderous DE). Both Dumbledore and hermione
> criticize his attitude toward house-elves, which in DH is unfavorably
> contrasted with his Slytherin brother's.
> 

Prep0strus:  His attitude toward KREACHER, not house-elves in general.
 I think it's misleading to take his treatment of kreacher and expand
that to how he would treat all elves.  Kreacher was, throughout
Sirius's experience, always spouting evil and hatred.  But, having
said that, Ron would be just as cruel to Kreacher, and just as
dismissive of other house elves.  


Carol:
> The adult Sirius does state that James always opposed the Dark Arts,
> but, if so, that opposition plays no part in this scene. Nor does
> pure-blood supremacy. In fact, James and Sirius are the pure-bloods
> pitted against the Half-blood and his Muggle-born friend.
> 
> Had Sirius not met James and liked him, perhaps appreciating his
> self-confidence bordering on arrogance or an air of mischievousness
> like that of the Weasley Twins, he would have had no more reason than
> his brother Regulus to question his family's view that he belonged in
> Slytherin.
> 
> Carol, standing by her position that we are dealing here with the
> uninformed opinions of eleven-year-olds and not with principle
>


Prep0strus:

Maybe that is true.  In which case, I have to respect James all the
more, though you continue to preface his name with 'toe-rag', if by
force of personality alone, he was able to take someone who, but for
his influence, would have been a murderous Death Eater.  But I think
it's a little bit of both sides.  Sirius, somehow, was predisposed to
turn against the familial tradition of muggle hating and dark loving,
and he managed to meet a Griffindor who he could get along with that
would help him from straying to the evil side.  Maybe his contact with
his favorite cousin, who would have similar tendencies to stray from
the family platform, helped make him who he was, ready to reject so
much potential for evil.  But he, like Snape, comes from a family
predisposed for Slytherin and evil, and he doesn't go down that path.
 I don't believe that 11 year old whim governs that.

And, I think we can compare to Snape.  Snape had someone, even before
school, who was a good influence on him.  Lily, with no prejudices, no
preconceived notions, is friends with Snape.  and she remains his
friend throughout school, throughout being in different houses.  but
her friendship, which extends even to defending him to members of her
house, is not enough to keep him from practicing the dark arts, from
falling in with a crowd that dislikes her based on her blood, and from
pursuing evil.

And I want to know if there is canon for the marauders being bullying
jerks outside of their relationship with Snape. Now, there is no
denying they were bullies.  And that they were arrogant.  But I can't
recall anything to make me think they would pick on anyone simply for
being smaller or weaker than them, or even being of a different house.
 I think they have a specific vendetta against snape, or perhaps
slytherins.  And while this doesn't excuse their bullying, I think
maybe it can show them in a better light.  I'd like to think of them
as defending younger members of all houses from bullying near-death
eater slytherins, and speaking up for the rights of muggleborns - not
to mention werewolves.  and half-giants.  hagrid seems to have quite a
good impression of James as well.

~Adam (~Prep0strus), who continues to believe that simply being who
they were, James, Sirius, & Lupin showed more strength of character
than Snape could ever hope of achieving.