Slytherin as villains / Ender vs. Harry SPOILERS for Ender's Game

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 179025

> > >>Betsy Hp:
> > > <snip>
> > > I'm sorry, but I just cannot get past the fact that when the 
big
> > > battle came Slytherin left and joined the enemy. <snip>
> 
> > >>Carol responds;
> > But, Betsy, as we've tried to show you, this statement is not a
> > *fact.* It's your *interpretation*, and it appears to be a 
minority
> > view. There's no evidence to support the truth of the statement 
(it
> > could be one of many false statements made by characters that are
> > never directly contradicted) and all sorts of evidence that it 
may 
> > be false.
> > <snip>
> 
> Betsy Hp:
> Honestly, IMO no one has presented any *evidence* to show that 
> Voldemort's statement here is false.  There's been a lot of extra-
> textual *reasons* a reader could choose to see this statement as 
> false.  But there's no moment in the text where JKR *explicitly* 
> tells us Voldemort was lying to Lucius here.  And frankly, if this 
> were a lie, it's a massive one.  It's the sort of reveal that 
should 
> shake Harry preconceptions to the core.  That we never get that 
> moment (Slytherins *aren't* all baddies?!?) means that JKR didn't 
> write it which means it doesn't make any sort of story-telling 
sense 
> that Voldemort is lying in this scene.

Magpie:
Just felt compelled to throw out there that I don't know if this is 
the minority view since it seems the most obvious to me. The 
Slytherins all leave and don't defend the castle, as Voldemort 
wanted. They're doing what he wants, abandoning the school to him. 
It would never have occurred to me to think Voldemort was lying--why 
would he be lying? Lucius doesn't care what the other Slytherins are 
doing, he cares that he knows where the other Slytherins are (safely 
outside the school) and not Draco. Why throw me that information if 
it's not true since there's no reason for me to care where every 
single Slytherin is--unless you're actually planning to overturn it 
later, which doesn't happen. It's both told and shown. I saw them 
leave. I saw the banners. There seems little reason for the narrator 
to come in and say, "No, seriously, the Slytherin kids aren't 
defending the school. Remember when they left before? If you didn't 
see them again it's because they didn't come back."

Betsy:
> Because, quite frankly, IMO Harry *does* let us (and Al) know that 
> Al's not going to end up in Slytherin.  Al's desires play a part 
in 
> the Hat's sorting, Harry tells him.  And Al quite clearly (going 
by 
> his great and sincere fear) does *not* want to be in Slytherin.

Magpie:
That's how it read to me. Slytherins suck throughout the whole 
series. Within the school, they're the trolls, the bullies, the 
bigots and the bad guys. At the end they don't join in protecting 
the school, despite a few Slytherins having helped the good guys in 
spite of themselves, so winding up in the "perhaps we sort too 
early" limbo. 

Can't imagine why any kid, particularly any of these kids in the 
epilogue, wouldn't fear being in that house. And now here's little 
Al with the big green eyes all sincerely and earnestly fearing he'll 
end up in *gasp* Slytherin. The same fear that his big green-eyed 
heroic good little boy daddy had at his age. So Harry assures him 
that he loves him just the way he is, and tells us that he named Al 
after Snape (Harry is noble) and then reminds us of one of the 
morals of the story that Dumbledore already told us--if you're good 
enough to want not to be in Slytherin, you're not Slytherin. Why on 
earth would this kid end up in Slytherin? Even if he didn't know he 
could choose I can't imagine he'd wind up there, since he isn't a 
jerk. Harry made the right decision in saying, "Not Slytherin!" when 
he went under the hat. So would his son. In fact, he already has.

Though it would have been funny if Harry actually had been saddled 
with a Slytherin kid. Imagine him talking to his sullen, ugly son 
Severus who curses people behind their backs and wants to be in 
Slytherin. 

-m