Slytherins come back WAS: Re: My Most Annoying Character

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 180166

Magpie wrote:
> <snip>
> Slytherins going against what their first inclination
was--individual Slytherins who have a reason to do that. In this case
we're not only inventing individual reasons for characters we don't
know, we're inventing the characters doing it in the first place
because according to canon they don't do it. They leave. The only
mention of those Slytherins after they leave is Voldemort talking
about Slytherins other than Draco joining him. Then we have a scene
where completely different people are described joining the battle
later. If we were told that the Slytherins returned *then* we'd be
filling in. As it is we're not filling in, we're re-writing. Why would
I put them at the battle when the author made a point of telling me
they weren't at the battle?

Carol responds:

We know, however, that Voldemort is lying. Neither Crabbe nor Goyle,
the Slytherins most loyal to Voldemort, returned to fight in the
battle. They went to the RoR, where Crabbe was killed and Goyle
knocked out. The others went, on McGonagall's orders, with Slughorn to
the Hog's Head. We don't know what happened from there, but they
certainly didn't show up to fight for Voldemort or they'd have been in
the camp with the DEs. As for who showed up with Slughorn, not one
single individual student is identified, nor would Harry know whose
parents are whose. We only have his quick general impression, which is
that the parents of "every" student who fought against Voldemort
showed up, along with the people of Hogsmeade. Harry is only guessing
at what he briefly glimpses, and he has no way of knowing who is whom. 
> 
> Alla:
> > And of course Phinelius' words as some people remarked make little
or no sense if they did not. To me anyways.
> 
> Magpie:
> They made perfect sense to me the first time--as they must since
Slytherin students are not written as returning to fight in the book.
Slytherin played an important part in the destruction of Voldemort
without any return of the Slytherin students. Snape alone made a huge
contribution.

Carol responds:
I certainly don't dispute Snape's contribution, or Slughorn's, or the
dead Regulus's, or even, in a small way, Portrait!Phineas's own. But
he's speaking of Slytherin House in a way that seems to me to refer to
living Slytherins, to students as well as faculty members, living and
dead (and a dead boy who inspired the House-Elves to join the fight).
You're entitled to your own interpretation, but it certainly is not
the only possible way to view that ambiguous description, especially
since not a single person in the group that follows Slughorn and
Charlie is identified by name. (Both fat Slughorn, in his emerald
pajamas, and red-haired Charlie Weasley, would have been familiar to
Harry and instantly recognizable. But the parents of his fellow
students would not, nor, given his track record, would the students
themselves mixed in among the crowd.) Who's to say that the citizens
of Hogsmeade didn't include former Slytherins among them? And
logically, the parents who followed would not be those of the students
who stayed to fight but those of the students, Slytherins among them,
who went to the Hog's Head. (Harry, not known for logic, would not, of
course, have arrived at this conclusion. We only have what "seemed"
and "what looked like"--words that show Harry's hurried impression of
a chaotic scene, made more chaotic seconds later by the entrance of
the House-Elves. He does not stay to identify the new arrivals.
Instead, he hurries off, invisible, to find Voldemort. When he reaches
the Great Hall, the center of the battle, we get specific names, but
(aside from Slughorn), they are all Death Eaters, Order members, or DA
members--people Harry knows and has reason to love or hate.

Carol, who thinks that JKR "intended" for Slughorn to lead the
Slytherins back and for readers to understand that he did so from
Phineas Nigellus's words but concedes that her "intention" didn't make
it to the page because of Harry's limited point of view, enabling or
forcing the reader to provide his or her own interpretation