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

[Zara]

No: HPFGUIDX 179065

> Betsy Hp:
> Honestly, I think you're straining at details here.  We know Crabbe 
> and Goyle (and Draco as well) were doing something *for* 
Voldemort.  

zgirnius:
Honestly, I think you are ignoring the text here. Voldemort did not 
know what Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle were doing. Are you suggesting he 
once upon a time, between trips hunting the Elder Wand, called 
Vincent Crabbe to himself and said: "If Potter ever comes to the 
school, and the Carrows and Snape go missing, and my forces lay siege 
to the castle, and the other teachers make all the other Slytherins 
leave, you go hide in the castle and bring me Harry Potter", all on 
the off-chance such a set of circumstances might arise? I doubt it, 
because if he had, he would have made it quite clear to Vinnie that 
Potter was on no account to be killed (the instructions the other DEs 
have, viz the conversation of Voldmeort and Snape later in the same 
chapter, the convcersatoin with Lucius in which the statement under 
discussion was made, as well as Draco's statements in the ROR, and 
Snape's at the end of HBP). 

> BetsyHp:
> If 
> a herd of Slyhterins trooped over to his side, Voldemort would 
notice 
> Draco's absence far more than he'd notice Crabbe or Goyle's.

zgirnius:
Aha! We have now moved down from a definitive statement that I must 
accept ALL the Slytherins fought for Voldemort, to the suggestion 
that perhaps you will settle if I agree a 'herd' of them showed up. 

If Crabbe and Goyle had orders, as you suggest above, then Voldemort 
*does* know them as well as Draco, and would certainly note their 
absence, since their presence would constitute disobedience. 

> Betsy Hp:
> And finally, when is this statement of Voldemort's ever pointed to 
as 
> a lie by the text?  Harry doesn't think to himself, "But 
Voldemort's 
> lying because Crabbe and Goyle weren't there either!" 

zgirnius:
Nor does Harry think to himself "Mercy me! All the Slytherins will be 
fighting my friends!!" He gives Ron and Hermione a precis of what he 
learned, that omits this "fact". He is not in there to evaluate the 
truthfulness of Voldemort's dealings with his subordinates, he is 
there for specific information - where Voldemort is and what he is 
doing. Harry perceives Voldemort's train of thought before Lucius 
addresses him, which is related to Horcruxes, not Lucius and his 
worries. During the conversation, however, we get no further such 
cues from Voldemort. And nowhere in the whole episode of Harry 
watching Voldemort, do we get any reaction by Harry himself. 

> BetsyHp:
 And he never 
> says, "But Voldemort's lying, I haven't seen one Slytherin student 
> fighting!"  Which, IMO, means that Voldemort wasn't lying, JKR 
never 
> meant for us to parse his statement to such depth, and as far as 
> she's concerned, Slytherin students of a certain age were fighting 
> alongside Voldemort.

zgirnius:
We have now moved from a herd arriving at the camp, to students of a 
certain age actually fighting. (This is good, I *really* hope Rowling 
would have made Harry notice if ickle firsties were fighting and 
dying for Voldemort, or standing around to witness his murder). The 
absence of Crabbe, Goyle, and Draco makes a sizable dent in the 
contingent of "Slytherins of a certain age", I would point out.

> Betsy Hp:
> If JKR was cleverly laying clues (that she never revealed) that all 
> of the stuff about Slytherin was a lie, she'd have included a role 
> call with the battle.  She doesn't.  

zgirnius:
When did a single, one-line statement become "all of the stuff"? Note 
noone is saying there were Slytherins in the ROR, and noone is 
denying they all left when McGonagall told them to. What is being 
debated is one single fact about them - whether we must accept it as 
a canon fact, that Slytherin students fought for Voldemort in the 
Battle of Hogwarts.

Nor have I seen the assertion that the statement by Voldemort was a 
deliberately constructed puzzle by Rowling which some are too dense 
to grasp. My own position is that your argument takes a single line 
of dialogue which is included primarily for the purpose of character 
development for the Malfoy family, and tries, unconvincingly, to make 
a federal case against Slytherin students out of it.

As I see it, Voldemort lied or exaggerated because it pleased him to 
make Lucius suffer. And it worked as intended, and that was that. We 
have seen Voldemort has this motive, and we have been told about it, 
on assorted occasions since "Spinner's End" in HBP. We do not need 
evidence highlighted for us by Harry to entertain the suspicion that 
Voldemort might be lying on any given occasion. He was already 
accomplished in that art as a boy in a Muggle orphanage.

Statements by characters in fiction are not "facts" until disproved. 
They are statements by characters, period, and we the readers decide 
whether or not to believe them, based on how we understand those 
characters, and what supporting/contradictory evidence there is. 

I see no supporting evidence, which I consider telling in itself. The 
image of Hogwarts students fighting Hogwarts students in a deadly 
battle is a powerful one, yet we are not shown it. Against the 
statement, we have the one fact that contradicts it, discussed above. 
And we have the puzzling question of Slughorn, who it is implied led 
his students to safety in the Hog's Head. Aberforth, who witnessed 
the hundreds of kids trooping through his pub, states that children 
of Death Eaters were sent into safety, whioch suggests Slytherins got 
as far as the pub before doing...whatever. 

Further, the battle is already raging when Aberforth turns up, but 
students who joined Voldemort would need to come back from Hogsmeade 
to the Forest on foot or by broom, which means that 'joining' here 
could mean 'showing up at the DE camp after the battle has been 
joined at the castle'. Actually, for Voldemort to know, that's how it 
would have to be, as he is sitting out the fighting in the Shack, a 
fact Harry *does* remark on.

Thus, if Rowling wants me to believe from this that Slytherins fought 
(rather than some fraction of them maybe sitting in the Forest 
waiting for their mommies and daddies), she *really* needs to show 
me, or at least have someone tell me. Voldemort does not, since the 
statement under discussion is made before the final battle. And noone 
else does later. No named or unnamed dead bodies in Slytherin school 
uniform appear, no named or unnamed Slytherin students are seen 
battling their classmates, nothing.