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

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 179085

Betsy Hp wrote:
<snip>
> 
> I'd also like to clarify (because you've been attempting to back me
 into a postion I'm not actually holding <g>) that I'm not saying the
masked fighters *must* be Slytherin students (that'd be in the fanfic
realm as well, I think).  I'm saying that by having people fight for
Voldemort who go unnamed and even undescribed lessens the argument
that we can tell who was actually fighting for Voldemort via a roll
call.  We simply don't know.

Carol responds:

Where would the Slytherin students have obtained Death Eater masks on
such short notice? Even Draco, whom we know to be a Death Eater, and
his friends Crabbe and Goyle, whose fathers are Death Eaters and who
allied themselves with the Carrows, don't have such masks or else have
no opportunity to put them on.

With the exception of Stan Shunpike in "The Seven Potters" (apparently
Imperiused) and Pius Thicknesse in "the Battle of Hogwarts"
(definitely Imperiused), the only people whose masks slip are actual
Death Eaters. Greyback and his hangers-on wear DE robes because
they're Snatchers. Obviously, the Slytherins attending Hogwarts are
not Snatchers. Where, then, would they get DE robes and masks? Your
apparent assumption that the of-age Slytherins are all DEs has no
basis in canon. If we see a masked DE, it's always an adult male and,
with the exceptions of Shunpike and Thicknesse, always a real DE.

By the time Harry reaches the DE camp, the Slytherins have evacuated
along with most of the students from the other houses, and it's most
unlikely that Slughorn, Filch, and Aberforth together have allowed any
of them to run off to the battlefield should they be so inclined. Only
Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle have slipped from their ranks undetected, not
to fight but (ostensibly) to capture Harry for Voldemort. Harry
invisibly enters the camp and sees "a crowd of completely silent,
watchful Death Eaters. Some of them were still masked and hooded;
others showed their faces" (DH Am. ed. 702). "Still masked and hooded
from the previous confrontation in "The Battle of Hogwarts." In
contrast, most of the students "shepherded to the Great Hall by
teachers and prefects" are wearing "traveling cloaks over their
pajamas" (603)--clothing that would be rather easy for Harry to spot
among the DEs, masked or unmasked. Note that this detail is mentioned
again a few pages later: "The *four* long House tables were lined with
disheveled students, some in traveling cloaks, others in dressing
gowns" (608)--not one in a DE robe, hood, and mask, or carrying such a
thing with them to put on when it comes time to fight for the Dark
Lord's cause. And all of these humdreds of students except the handful
who stay behind to fight for Hogwarts are shepherded to the RoR by
teachers and prefects. Only Draco, Crabbe, Goyle, and apparently Colin
Creevey (who shouldn't be in school at all) fall out of line. There is
no way for the horde of Slytherins, or even just the of-age
Slytherins, who evacuate *first* to go back through three other Houses
to the front doors to join Voldemort. And Mrs. Longbottom seals the
door of the passage from the Hog's Head so that no one can come that
way (624).

At any rate, the Death Eaters are either unmasked and recognizable
(Yaxley. Dolohov, Rookwood, et al.) or masked DEs who wore their masks
and robes to the battle as the Slytherin students could not possibly
have done. Harry notes, in addition to the masked and unmasked DEs
(the latter including the Malfoys, Rowle, Dolohov, Yaxley, Bellatrix,
and the wannabe DE Greyback), two giants, Nagini, the bound Hagrid,
and Voldemort himself (702). He does not notice any students in
pajamas and traveling cloaks. Had Pansy, Theo Nott, or Blaise Zabini
been present, he would have recognized them and the narrator would
have recorded their presence.

Carol, who thinks that if a single Slytherin student had been present
in the DE camp or in the battle, JKR would have informed us, just as
she informed us of the whereabouts of the only known student DE,
Draco, and his two pro-Voldemort cronies