DH: Slytherins and attitudes toward them

[Eric Oppen]

No: HPFGUIDX 173630

I've noticed that some of my Learned Friends (apologies; I get the list in 
digest form and don't always note who says what) feel that equating the 
DE-dominated MoM after the coup with Slytherins, and refer to the ones who 
persecuted Muggleborns as "Slytherins."

Er---how do we KNOW?  AFAICR, nobody has ever seen a single line of canon 
saying that Darling Dolores Umbridge was a Slytherin.  She could have been 
Hufflepuff for all we know!  (I've actually seen an interesting case made 
that Dolores was a Hufflepuff---she's clearly a lot more of a follower than 
a leader, and Hufflepuff House seems to be mainly about working together for 
a common goal)  Herself has said in interviews and elsewhere that there 
_were_ DEs from all four Houses.  And nobody at all seems to have had any 
trouble believing that Sirius Black, who _chose_ Gryffindor and broke with 
his all-Slytherin family partly over that little issue, was not only a DE, 
but one of the most fanatical ones of all.  And Peter Pettigrew seems to 
have been despised by his new friends, but that's because he was despicable 
and a turncoat, not because he was a Gryffindor.

Little Albus Severus' fears strike me as more the result of having grown up 
in a family with a very strong Gryffindor tradition---all the Weasleys were 
in Gryffindor, even Percy (who I think would have been far happier in 
another house, particularly once the Twins arrived to make his life hell; 
they'd have had fewer opportunities to plague him if he'd been in, say, 
Hufflepuff---or Slytherin) and both of Harry's hero-parents were 
Gryffindors.  When you have that sort of weight of expectations on your 
shoulders, it's hard to imagine having to do something that different, 
particularly since House rivalries do not seem to be dead.  It's not that 
different from a boy who'd grown up as the son of a professional Army 
officer reacting in horror to the idea of joining the Navy, or even worse, 
the Air Force.

Now, if they held off on Sorting until the kids were sixteen, you might get 
some very interesting results.  A lot of kids from families with strong 
traditions for one house would be begging the hat to put them anywhere BUT 
where their family tradition would dictate:  "Not Gryffindor!  My dad went 
there, and he's totally out of it!  Anywhere but Gryffindor---I don't want 
to be uncool!"