Ender vs. Harry SPOILERS for Ender's Game (WAS Re: JKR's Intent)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 178883

      

> Betsy Hp:
> It's probably kind of telling (and not so much a surprise <g>), but I 
> saw Draco as reaching out to Harry for at least a good three books.  
> I think it's only by OotP that Draco finally gave up.  (Though I've 
> had to conclude that this was all stuff JKR stuck in by mistake.  She 
> didn't *mean* to make Draco that deep.)

Pippin:

Draco was definitely reaching out to Harry in PS/SS, but he
wanted Harry to be his kind of person. (As many, I suspect,
hoped that Draco was really Harry's kind of person after all.)
Once Draco realized there was no hope of that, he didn't
want to be Harry's friend. 

Betsy Hp: 
> But in the end, yes, the bad guys in Potterverse were no good to the 
> bone, and in Enderverse there weren't really any "bad guys" after 
> all.  

Pippin:
Draco was no good to the bone? As bad as Crabbe, was he? Where
do you get that? 

Betsy Hp:
 figuring out the whys and 
> wherefores was silly (or unrealistic, I guess?) and her protagonist 
> just... won.

Pippin:
Harry could only win because he had the whys and wherefores figured
out. He had magic that Voldemort didn't have, but the only reason he
was able to use  it was because he understood Voldemort. For example,
his understanding of Voldemort allowed him to figure out how 
Voldemort discovered where the tiara was, and why Voldemort would
have hidden it in what would seem to anybody else a ridiculous
place. 

> Betsy Hp:
> Oops, yes.  I forgot about Lily. <g>  But no, a middle name after a 
> guy his kid's never heard of, and an assurance that little Al can 
> *choose* his house isn't my idea of Harry delving deep into the 
> Slytherin mind, seeing they're not that alien after all, and sharing 
> that news with his people.  

Pippin:
How is naming his son after Severus not sharing that news with
his people, and what makes you assume in a world where Harry
Potter is still such hot news that children stare out of train windows
to look at him, that people are unfamiliar with his history? You
can hardly tell Harry's story without mentioning Snape, who in
any case would be famous in his own right as a headmaster. 

That Albus would need  to be reminded of the significance of his 
name despite this is not surprising. Children pick up attitudes from 
all over, and blithely embrace opinions that completely contradict
what they learned from their parents, not always with awareness
that they've done so.  We see Dudley doing this at the beginning
of DH.

Betsy Hp:
The Slytherins are still weird, their 
> designated attributes still not seen as virtues (Severus was 
> *brave*), and they're still not worthy to breed with (as per Ron).  

Pippin:
Ron is *joking*, in poor taste as usual. Only Al's reaction to 
James's teasing seriously implies that there's anything wrong 
with Slytherin House (as opposed to Scorpius, whose name 
implies he may have been indoctrinated with some of his father's 
attitudes.)  

Canon shows that Godric had higher moral standards than 
Salazar, but it does not show that only people with lower
moral standards would choose or be chosen for Slytherin.
Who was  more moral, Peter Pettigrew or Regulus Black?

What Harry's choice of 'not Slytherin' showed is that
morality mattered to him, and that made him different
than Voldemort. But morality mattered to Severus and
Regulus too.  Houses don't make moral choices. People
do. 

Since Harry can freely say that it makes no difference
to him or Ginny whether Al becomes a Slytherin, we can be
sure that at the time of the epilogue, it can't be true that
Harry thinks present day Slytherins have lower moral standards 
than the other houses. If he did, he could say so. Why not
say that he's glad that Al can see Slytherin is a bad house? 

Instead he says that *if* Al believes there's a difference, the
hat will listen to his choice, as it did when Harry was Al's
age. IOW, there was a difference then, but Harry doesn't think
there is a difference now. 

It's clear that in Harry's eyes Slytherins no longer deserve
a shady reputation, and that there was a certain Slytherin
Headmaster who never did. 

We have a brave Ravenclaw  in Luna and a brave Hufflepuff
in Cedric. The argument that Snape's  bravery somehow 
de-Slytherinizes him in Harry's eyes seems  like saying 
anyone who's a good person by mainstream standards 
isn't Slytherin enough. 

That doesn't sound like a House unity position to me. It's more
like calling  a black person who succeeds an oreo.  What would
the Potterverse term be -- a watermelon?

Pippin
who isn't sure what marrying your high school sweetheart
has to do with the nineteen-fifties