Hated DH epilogue

[elmntrymdr]

No: HPFGUIDX 172789


> Leah:
>
> I found that a rather odd critique of Austen actually; Pride and
> Prejudice is a comedy of manners.  I've certainly never read it in
> the expectation that the union of Elizabeth and Darcy is going to
> bring about profound, or indeed any, social change or that
> individual behaviour will be altered by it.
>

These are my feelings exactly.


> And then there's the whole Slytherin problem. From Hagrid in book
> one onwards, Slytherin has been the despised, the evil house; it's
> been reinforced in every book. Even in DH, DD doesn't say, "You've
> been a brave chap,Severus, there must be good in Slytherin",
> it's "we sort too soon", ie. you should have been a Gryffindor, mate
> (and Pettigrew presumably in Slytherin).  As others have pointed
> out, no Slytherin student is named as fighting with Harry.  If
> Slytherin is indeed so corrupt and hopeless, why does it still
> exist? Or why hasn't it been renamed Snape House and reformed?
> We're talking about changing a school system here, not the world.
> Harry's behaviour in the epilogue is totally inconsistent.  He
> whispers to Albus Severus that it won't matter to the Potters if
> their son is in Slytherin. But if Slytherin is what it seems to be,
> it should matter.  On the other hand, if Harry believes that Snape's
> life and death make Slytherin worthy of equal treatment, then why
> does he whisper this, and not shout it out? Why has he allowed one
> son to taunt the other all summer with the threat of being in
> Slytherin, without apparently doing anything to stop him?

However, here I disagree.  I read the moment between Dumbledore and
Snape, and the epilogue, quite differently.  I think that Snape turned
out the way he did as a young adult largely because of the the
influences around him in Slytherin.  Not everyone in Slytherin was
evil, but if the protoDEs befriend you and help form your opinions
from an early age, and most of the decent people either keep quiet or
belong to other houses, the odds of you turning out rotten are pretty
significant.  Maybe thats a stretch, but I felt like Dumbledore was
lamenting the "us vs. them" mentality that starts at such an early age
at Hogwarts and produces a serious barrier between students.  What
would Snape have been like if he had avoided the influence of Malfoy
for another year, if he had made friends who wound up in Gryffendor or
Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff?  He didn't have to wind up in Gryffendor to
be good, but being put into Malfoys path at such a young age didn't
help him any.

Also, I thought the quiet heart-to-heart between Harry and his son
Albus was touching.  Sometimes the things said to you mean more when
they are for your ears only.  And I took his lack of concern about
James' antics as an admission that the "threat" of winding up in
Slytherin wasn't really much of a threat.  There will always be
rivalries between schools, and its difficult to imagine that a
several-hundred-year-old rivalry will disappear, but perhaps its
turning into something more like UCLA/USC instead of Good/Evil.

elmntrymdr