good and bad slytherins/Disappointment and Responsibility

[Ceridwen]

No: HPFGUIDX 175166

Prep0strus:
> > > 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.  *(snip)*

Lanval:
> > And please, just because James gets on Severus, and appears to be 
a bit of a spoiled brat, in no way means that he was less-than-
loveable to the rest of the world.

Debbie:
> Actually, this is part of my problem. I don't find either one to be 
loveable, as 11-year-olds, as 15-year-olds, or as 21-year-olds. The 
Lily who wrote the letter to Sirius from Godric's Hollow sounds as 
though she's been corrupted by James and Sirius (with its airy tone 
and unnecessary dig at Petunia). James seems just as cocky as ever. 
This is a bit off the topic of Sirius, but JKR has completely failed 
to convince me that after Lily's principled rejection of Snape she 
would substitute his tormentors (and Sirius remained Snape's 
tormentor until his death, so this was not an adolescent thing) as 
her best male friends, and in the case of James, her lover and 
husband.

Ceridwen:
Snape doesn't seem to use 'Mudblood' before going off to Hogwarts.  
He seems to have fallen in with a bad crowd by being Sorted into 
Slytherin.  He's a bit arrogant about being a Wizard when Petunia is 
just a Muggle, but she started the disparagement at the playground by 
loftily pointing out his shortcomings - that Snape boy who lives at 
Spinner's End.  Petunia doesn't like Snape from the beginning.  He 
gets back at her by pointing out *her* shortcomings.

James was an arrogant snob.  He doesn't like Slytherin, he laughs at 
Snape for wanting to be Sorted into it, and drags Sirius along.  Not 
that Sirius needed much dragging.  He already liked James, and wanted 
his approval.  So he says that maybe he'll buck family tradition - by 
the way, where are you going again?  And, wonder of wonders, he's 
Sorted into Gryffindor.  Just as James wanted to be.

Some people have speculated that Snape was corrupted by being Sorted 
into Slytherin.  Prefect Lucius Malfoy greets him at the Slytherin 
table, and we hear him using the word 'Mudblood' in SWM.  Lily also 
implies that he uses it a lot, against others, not against her.  He's 
all right with the unnamed awful things his housemates do to other 
students.  He's heading down a dark and futile road.  This, by some, 
is laid at Slytherin House's door.

So, why not Sirius, and even Lily, being corrupted to Gryffindor 
values and prejudices?  They go to all classes with their housemates, 
while they only have certain classes with other houses.  They eat 
with them.  They sleep in the same dorms.  They spend time in the 
same common room.  Quidditch and House Points competitions encourage 
an 'us against them' mentality.  They're thrown together with 
housemates more than with students from any other house.  When the 
housemates are arrogant take-charge types, charismatic people like 
James, they learn to agree with their stated principles.  Who wants 
to be ostracized from their residence?

We see Sirius backing down on the train when James doesn't flinch.  
Sirius states that his entire family has been Sorted into Slytherin.  
Instead of James saying something like, "I shouldn't have said that 
about Slytherin", or, "I didn't mean to insult your family", he says 
he *thought* Sirius was all right.  Sirius, who obviously liked 
James's company, says he may buck tradition, then asks where James 
thinks he'll be Sorted.  To this point, he's been in a family that 
admires Slytherin traits.  He's lived with Pureblood ideology.  At 
eleven, he may want to get around his parents, assert his 
independence, but not on ideological grounds.  Sirius is a rebel 
against what he knows.  James's so-far unexplored grass is greener, 
in his eyes.

Why not Lily?  She had no idea about the WW, except for what Snape 
told her.  She was ripe for induction into principles of her house 
and housemates.  The books show Muggleborns slowly assimilating into 
the WW, leaving their Muggle families behind them.  Why not Lily?  
Since kids see things in stark contrast, without mitigating shades of 
gray, the values she learns in Gryffindor, including contempt of 
Slytherin House, become hers wholeheartedly.  She's surrounded by 
this all day, every day, for ten months of the year.  The little time 
spent with Snape at home, even before school, was nothing compared to 
the total imersion of Hogwarts.  She was not only enticed away from 
her Muggle family, but from her friends outside of her school house.  
In the end, we get a Lily who makes fun of a gift her sister gave her.

If house exerts an influence, then all houses, not just Slytherin, 
exert an influence, in my opinion.

Ceridwen.