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

[Ken Hutchinson]

No: HPFGUIDX 173398

> 
> Magpie:
> I think I'm just looking realistically at what the book said to me. 
> If you start off with this house of antagonists, and consistently 
> show them being a certain way, and in the end make that sort of a 
> side issue, I just don't see why there's any reason I should write 
> in an ending where integrating Slytherin into the school is the 
> outcome. It's like just assuming that everybody likes werewolves or 
> that Goblins can now carry wands just because that would be good.
> 
> The epilogue takes place 19 years after the events of the book, and 
> the most we've got to show for it is a platitude Harry gives in 
> response to his son being worried he'll wind up in Slytherin, having 
> iirc been teased by his brother that he would do so. That 
> establishes something about Slytherin there. Harry does not respond 
> with his new ideas about how good Slytherin is--nor should he, 
> because there aren't any. He says, "If you're in Slytherin, that 
> would be Slytherin's gain. And you're named after a Slytherin who 
> was very brave--the quality of the house the rest of your family is 
> Sorted for. Oh, but if it really matters, I've never told anyone, 
> but I also worried about being Slytherin as a boy but the hat lets 
> you choose against it." 
> 

Ken:

What you see in the book is of course 100% true for you. This is true
of all readers and all books and I am sure it drives all authors 
absolutely nuts. Isaac Asimov claimed that an English professor who
was teaching his novels in a class once told him not to presume that 
just because he wrote the books that he understood what they meant.
I can see both sides of that argument. But maybe if you listen to the 
books again they will tell you something different.

I have to say that in my opinion the problems with Slytherin house were
real and not a matter of stereotyping or prejudice by the other houses.
Otherwise I could see a more rapid resolution to the split. Harry at one
time had nothing good to say about Slytherin. In the epilogue he seems
to still recognize a rivalry but to me there does not seem to be any force
behind this. Yes, James is teasing Albus but James knows that he and
his father are both Princeton men, not Yale men. I'm not sure there is 
anything to it beyond that. Harry isn't reacting the way Mrs Black did
when Sirius became a Gryffindor and at one time I think he would have.
I see this as a big change. And Ron teases Rose not about marrying 
a Slytherin or even a Malfoy, but a pureblood. In other words Slytherin
is ok, even the Malfoys are tolerable, it is the thing that Voldemort 
tried to pervert to justify his overlordship, blood purity, that has a bad
name in the post Voldemort WW. And even then it is a joke.

I do wish that when Harry noticed the Malfoy's standing in the great hall
looking like they weren't sure they belonged that he had gone to them 
and made sure they felt like they belonged. While she wasn't the only 
one Narcissa truly saved the day. I think that an explicit gesture of 
appreciation by Harry at that point would have been a good touch and 
perhaps that is something like what you were hoping to see.

The thing is that in the epilogue we tend to see Harry as he always was,
the snot nosed kid from Gryffindor. That is no longer true. I doubt there
is a more admired, more famous, or more influential wizard alive than
the 37 year old father of three we see standing on a train platform with 
his high school sweetheart. Because of that the changes we see in his 
attitudes towards old rivals that you feel are too mild to imply the 
resolution you hoped for are of much larger import than you give them 
credit. I think it is pretty much true that as Harry goes, so goes the WW.

Ken