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

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 173400

> Ken:

> 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.

Magpie:
I totally agree with this. But as I said I wasn't looking for a 
*rapid* resolution to the split. That seems a bit of a straw man, as 
if it's either a rapid resolution with a big tea party at the end 
with the Slytherins or else this epilogue must indeed represent giant 
steps forward. I don't think either is the case. What I would need 
would be a step that indicated a move towards resolution, and that's 
what I didn't get. I completely understand the way you're reading the 
last scene, but to me it's just that--a reading of one scene set 
years in the future, not a moment in the story where the difficult 
Problem of Slytherin is addressed. I've got no problem believing that 
everybody isn't going around wanting to get rid of Slytherins--I'm 
not claiming that's what they're doing. I just don't see the 
underlying problems addressed seriously, and it doesn't seem like 
something that can get fixed by just assuming it cleared up on its 
own. 

Ken:

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.

Magpie:
I actually couldn't imagine either the Harry or Ron  know in previous 
canon, if they grew up and became fathers, reacting any other way 
nineteen years earlier no matter what happened with Voldemort. Harry 
wasn't ever Mrs. Black, and Weasleys never blasted people off their 
family trees for marrying the wrong person (and have always been the 
Purebloods who thought blood heritage was stupid). Again, I'm not 
claiming that underneath Ron and Harry really want to kill the 
Malfoys or anything, I'm just saying this isn't a problem I can 
assume just got fixed because the epilogue isn't virulently anti-
Slytherin. 

Ken: 
> 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.

Magpie:
It could have been--but as it was I thought JKR was making a point of 
leaving it out. I read that line and thought part of the point was 
that the Malfoys didn't have a place there like everyone else did,  
but that they weren't enough to bother about. Iow, I didn't think it 
was just an oversight that Harry didn't go over to them, I thought it 
summed up their position accurately.  

Ken:
> 
> 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.

Magpie:
As I said somewhere else, I think Harry's reaction to Draco in the 
epilogue and Draco's return reaction is explicitly earned in the 
preceding chapters. The two of them could never have seen each other 
since that day and it would make sense. Harry was never calling for 
Slytherin to be kicked out of school. His enemies might have been 
mostly Slytherin, but Slytherin wasn't his enemy. Now that Tom Riddle 
is gone I think Slytherin has lost a lot of its scaryiness and I 
think Harry's reaction to his son is perfectly fitting for that new 
world.

But like I said, I just don't think this kind of division just goes 
away. It can get better, and not be so hostile, but it still seems 
like the same division JKR described in that interview. Even the big 
step that took 20 years in this scene has Malfoy stared at from a 
distance. The exchange, like the Malfoys in the Great Hall, seems to 
accurately reflect the story that happened in the previous chapter 
that took place 19 years earlier. 

Ken:
I think it is pretty much true that as Harry goes, so goes the WW.

Magpie:
Which way do you mean this? That people are watching Harry and when 
they see him staring at Malfoy some ways away and not attacking him 
they change their thinking on Slytherin? Or just that Harry as our 
pov character is showing us the trend of the WW? Harry's own views 
have often been at odds with the WW.

Though for me, that's not even the point. You create a big division 
and a problem like Slytherin, and then you avoid solving it, it's not 
solved. As a reader of the story, if you didn't show me somethng this 
central, you can't tell it to me as an afterthought--or hint it at 
me, since that's basically what we're talking about. I have excepted 
the changes in Harry and Ron's attitude that I did see in the main 
story, and those changes seem accurately reflected 19 years later on 
the platform. That seemed as far as the author was going.

-m