Slytherins come back WAS: Re: My Most Annoying Character

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 180125

Alla wrote:
> 
> Oh, very good one of those readers, hehe. But you said that you only
assumed it after your first read? Meaning that when you reread and 
did not find the explicit words there you changed your mind?
> 
> If I understood you correctly, this is not quite what I am talking
about.  I am talking about reader who read what JKR wrote as vague
enough (what Carol said) to fill in the blanks that way.
> 
> I mean, there are plenty of places in canon where I fill in the 
blanks as I see fit. Sometimes it is in line with JKR's intent, 
sometimes probably not. But I think that as long as some reasons for
filling in the blanks are in the text are there, it is totally 
reasonable. <snip>

Carol responds:
I agree. Setting aside JKR's statement of her intention (I don't trust
any author's "intention," and JKR's memory of what she wrote, or
intended, is as bad as her math), Phineas Nigellus's statement makes
no sense unless at least *some* Slytherin students (in my own mind,
those include Theo, Blaise, and Daphne Greengrass, future
sister-in-law of Draco Malfoy)), fought on Hogwarts's side in the battle.

Alla:
> Another thing – how Dumbledore knew what occurred in GH? I filled in
the blanks at some point that Snape told him all about it, but when 
it was disproved, I absolutely thought that there was some kind of 
spell on the house to let him know. I assumed it at least couple
months before JKR said so and would have think that way whether she 
would say it or not.

Carol:
Where did you read that, Alla? Can you provide a link? I always
assumed that his sudden remembrance that the Potters were hiding in
Godric's Hollow told him that the Fidelius charm had been broken and
that the Potters were in danger or dead, and that he used the silvery
instruments in his office to determine what had happened. (Of course,
I also thought that snape had come rushing in to tell DD that his Dark
Mark had given him excruciating pain and then disappeared. Alas, I was
wrong on that point.)
> 
Alla:
> I think the same way about Slytherins coming back. <snip> I do not
see a need for JKR to explicitly mention it whether she does or not.
<snip>

Carol responds:
Same here, for the reasons I gave earlier. It makes more sense for
Slughorn to lead (or appear "at the head of" his own students than any
others). And Harry's quick glimpse of a crowd of adults and young
people certainly doesn't preclude that interpretation. Had the
narrator said, "Not a single Slytherin was among them," it would be
different. (I do wish, though, that she'd mentioned Theo Nott or
Blaise Zabini by name, and it would be delicious to see Blaise's
notoriously beautiful and presumably murderous mother fighting the DEs.)

Alla: 
> JKR showed me that Slytherins are not all bad people regardless of 
whether she wrote the words that some students come back with 
Slughorn. I see no problems filling in the blanks that some of them  did.

Carol:

I agree. (Of course, I already believed, most of the time, that Snape
was essentially good despite his acerbic personality and sardonic wit.)

Carol, who found the Scorpius Hyperion reference on JKR's website and
takes it as a sign of hope for Scorpius, along with the fact that
Draco did not marry Pansy Parkinson (whom we can hope remained
unmarried, along with Gregory Goyle)