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

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 173255

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Jen Reese" <stevejjen at ...> wrote:
>
> 
> Jen: Like you, I expected there to be some move toward unity and 
> wondered not only why it didn't happen but why the insistence on 
> showing just how far-fetched that idea was?  

Call this hopeless fanwanking, but I got the impression that what was
being shown was how bad things had gotten in wizarding society.  I was
frankly a little taken aback by Phineus Nigellus calling Hermione a
Mudblood, for one thing, although he's of an earlier generation--a
former Headmaster, still carrying on that kind of idiocy?

It was telling how quickly people in the Ministry went over to the
Muggle-born Registration idea, too.  So clearly the rot runs deep in
wizarding society.

But Slughorn did strike me as different, in how he fought for Hogwarts
and in how he'd behaved when he was a professor.  So what I drew out
of this was an argument for how Voldemort's ascension and networking
had done a lot of damage to Slytherin House.  Nineteen years later,
when there's been some purging done (not indicated so overtly in the
book but noted in interview, so I'll run with it), things have a
chance to be different.  Expecting mass revelations in the middle of
battle is good melodrama, but I can see why JKR didn't go with it.

-Nora shrugs and throws this one out there