Slughorn favoritism/ Snape as Neville's teacher LONG

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 168581

Alla: 
> Where I differ I suspect ( I can be wrong) is I also think that 
> Slughorn does not want just **any** people in the position of power. 
> He wants talented, skilled, gifted, pick your word kids in the 
> position of power, who will of course remember his networking skills. 

Pippin:
Actually, Harry notes that everyone who's in the train compartment
party seems to have been invited because they were well-connected
except Ginny and Harry himself. People like Arthur, who aren't
connected and don't have "flair" but do have talent (flying car) are
overlooked. What talents do  Cormac and Blaise have aside from
their connections?

While Neville, who is worth ten of Blaise and Cormac, gets an
invite because of his famous parents, but is then snubbed for his lack
of flair, despite his outstanding talent in herbology.

Alla: 
> I did not see him asking Crabbe and Goyle to join his club for 
> example.

Pippin:
It is implied that their fathers were outed as DE's in Rita Skeeter's 
article in OOP. By the way, what we don't know is what Slughorn
would have done if Voldemort's servants had found him. And
we know that people who secretly served Voldemort in VW I,
such as Malfoy and Nott,  were part of the Slug Club and must 
have found it very useful.

For each of Snape's faults as a teacher, which I admit he had, we have
been shown a respected teacher at Hogwarts who had the same
faults, only more so. There are teachers who were scarier, crueller
and more unfair than Snape was, only not to Harry. If Harry can
fix the whole culture, more power to him, but punishing Snape
alone would be like Hermione punishing the master of the one slave 
whose problems touch her most and thinking she has solved the 
House Elf problem.

Like it or not, Snape was  behaving as well as most Hogwarts
teachers. I'm not going to claim he showed maturity or moral vision
on any absolute scale, but he had as much as most of his counterparts.
This is, after all, a culture where practical joke shops are a roaring
success, a public official writes laws with intentional loopholes 
favoring his own interests, and 'proper wizard feeling'  is a synonym for
anti-Muggle sentiment. 

I  think Snape has a moral vision that could be summed up in the
royal Scots motto "Nemo me impune lacessit," roughly "No one provokes
me without harm."  He seems to make no allowances for 
provocations that are unintentional or may not exist anywhere 
except in his own mind,  and that, I am sure, is deficient in Rowling's 
world view. But what amuses me is that those who want to see Snape 
suffer for his treatment of Harry and the murder of Albus Dumbledore
seem to be adopting the same standard.


Pippin