No progress for Slytherin? (Was: Slytherins: selfish, not evil)

[Ken Hutchinson]

No: HPFGUIDX 173251

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "sistermagpie"
<sistermagpie at ...> wrote:
> 
> I think the Slytherin who would be most remembered would be Pansy 
> Parkinson. 
> 

Somehow I think Tom Riddle will be remembered more than Pansy
Parkinson. Some see the glass half full, others half empty, as an
engineer I tend to see the glass as being twice as big as it needs to
be. You seem determined to see the glass as bone dry. I think that is
your choice more than the author's intention or an over active
imagination on my part. Slytherin has a real problem and in spite of
that problem there were Slytherins who, however late, however
begrudgingly, were able to make the right choices. That is the basis
of reconciliation. I cannot hold the students of Slytherin house at
the time of the final battle to the same standards as I hold other
houses since, like the Hitler Youth or Young Pioneers, they were only
doing as they had been taught. The oldest of them are only approaching
the age where the best of us begin to question the wisdom of our
elders and to rise above their limitations.

In my view it is not the house system that is problematic, it is not
the age at which the students are sorted that is problematic, it is
the criteria by which they are sorted. Every house needs the brave,
the ambitious, the wise, and the team player. The hat should abandon
the founder's prejudices and make sure that each house gets some of each. 

The final events and the epilogue tell me that healing is taking
place. True healing of such a deep divide will take a generation or
two. The kind of instant resolution you seem to have been expecting
would have been a contrived and unsatisfying conclusion for my taste.
I choked a bit over Kreacher's sudden conversion, the thing that won
me over there was his "once more for luck, Master?" line. What was
ultimately believable in one elf would have been unacceptably
saccharine in the whole of Slytherin house. It will take time to heal
the split that was started by Slytherin himself. 

Ken