Slytherins come back WAS: Re: My Most Annoying Character

lizzyben04 lizzyben04 at yahoo.com
Sun Dec 30 02:38:54 UTC 2007


No: HPFGUIDX 180118


> Alla:

> I laughed because I thought that for her it may have been obvious 
> that 
> since their Head of the house came back that other Slytherins came 
> back too and she did not feel a need to write it in.
> 
> Now, why would you ask she did not feel a need to do that if we do 
> not 
> see the triumphant return in the book?
> 
> Indeed we do not, but I think that she may not have felt a need to 
> treat it as major issue and just sort of wrote as default position - 
> Slughorn comes back and that means that some of his students do too.
> 
> Like she did not feel that she wanted "triumphant" return to give to 
> Slytherins, just the return behind Slughorn if that makes sense.


lizzyben:

OK, here is the sentence from Deathly Hallows:

""Harry saw Charlie Weasley overtaking Horace Slughorn, who was still
wearing his emerald pyjamas. They seemed to have returned at the head
of what looked like the families and friends of every Hogwarts student
who had remained to fight along with the shopkeeps and homeowners of
Hogsmeade."

Slughorn is leading two groups of people 1.) Friends & families of
every Hogwarts student who had remained to fight. Well, we know that
McGonegal kicked out all of the Slytherin students in the Great Hall,
and not one remained to fight. So, when the text says "friends of
students who remained to fight", that necessarily excludes the
Slytherin students. 2.) Hogsmeade shopkeeps & homeowners - Slytherin
students are not Hogsmeade shopkeepers or homeowners, so they are
excluded from this group as well. 

JKR doesn't add "and some Slytherin students." Or just note that
Slughorn lead a crowd, without noting who was in that crowd. It
would've been very easy to do this, but she didn't. She has Harry
notice exactly who returns, and has him note two non-Slytherin groups
of people. The structure of the sentence precludes Slytherins. It
takes the most torturous interpretation possible to say that the text
says something opposite to what it says. 


Magpie:

It's just weird to me that, as you say, she seems to have no problem
*in the book* of taking the strong position that Slytherins are
genuinely inferior people who are untrustworthy and House Elves are
inferior beings who enjoy being enslaved by superior wizards...but
when that's put to her in an interview she's got another way to put
it--not a way that holds up or is coherent really, imo, but just
something that's a little mushier because the statements the books
make sound kind of harsh.


lizzyben:

What it tells me is that we'll never get a straight answer from JKR
about any of this. She'll just deny that she wrote what she wrote.
Even if she does have a harsh morality, I'd respect it more if she
stood behind that. But this is just ret-coning in response to
criticism, and that seems almost dishonest. While writing DH, how
could she be laughing at the thought of the returning Slytherin
students... and then write the exact opposite? 


lizzyben






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