Failed Friendships (was:Re:Draco, Narcissa and Harry)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 179896

> Betsy Hp:
> Yes, I totally agree that one of the (many!) bad things about 
> Slytherin is their bigotry.  But I didn't get the sense that Harry 
> (or Gryffindor) was too concerned about challenging that bigotry.  

Pippin:
Harry and Gryffindor do not challenge Slytherin's beliefs, they
challenged Slytherin and Voldemort's attempts to enforce them on
everybody. This was what the original rift was about according to
Binns in CoS 9. Slytherin wanted Hogwarts to be for purebloods
only, he disliked taking students of Muggle parentage because
he believed they were untrustworthy. This was his opinion, and 
though I disagree with it, he had a right to have it, IMO, and
evidently the other founders agreed.

It may have seemed at the time that he had a point. Education of 
Muggleborn wizards in the pre-Hogwarts era was no doubt 
highly uneven. It would  have been hard to tell whether any 
problems came from nature or nurture. 

According to the hat, all the founders were partial to certain
students and this was the origin of the house system. Slytherin
had the power to select students for his own house on any basis
he liked. But trouble arose, according to Binns, because  Slytherin    
wanted Muggleborns banned from the school as a whole and Gryffindor
opposed him.  The hat says that all the founders began to seek 
power for themselves and to fear each other. 

Although canon does not go into details it's clear to me why the
compromise broke down. Each founder thought that 
his/her own students would naturally prove superior -- when 
that  didn't happen, they began to suspect each other of deceit, and
that led both to more deceit and to aggressive measures to counter 
deceitfulness. 

When Slytherin left, peace returned --apparently the others, including 
Slytherin's students, preferred the compromise originally invented by the 
Founders to open strife. But distrust of Slytherin House remained. The
problem, as I see it, is that while courage, cunning, loyalty and wisdom
do confer advantages, there was, contrary to what Slytherin thought,
no innate advantage in being pureblooded.  In so far as Slytherins
are dedicated to maintaining a false belief, they're  dysfunctional.

There is no doubt that canon presents courage as the superior
quality in a leader and that therefore only the brave can be trusted
with power. But it also shows that courage without loyalty 
is Pettigrew, courage with out wisdom is Sirius at his worst, 
courage without cunning is helpless against a more powerful foe,
like James at then end. So the qualities of all the Houses (except
pure blood) are shown to be necessary, while Luna, Cedric 
and many Slytherins show that courage cannot be defined by House 
alone. 

As for what the corridor fights are about, I seem to recall Draco
insulting Harry's mother on account of her birth, telling Hermione 
not to touch his hand because  he'd just washed it, telling Harry
there was a wrong sort and he'd be wise not to associate with it,
and so on. 

It's true nobody's contesting Draco's right to hang out with other
purebloods if he wants to. Canon doesn't see separate but equal
as a big problem if it's voluntary, though it may be hard for some of us 
with a melting pot mythology to embrace that point of view.

Pippin