Family Loyalty/Death Eater Numbers/Slytherin Loyalty/Xeno. Lovegood

[or.phan_ann]

No: HPFGUIDX 177608

> Catlady wrote:
>> or.phan_ann wrote in
>> <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/177449>:
>> 
>> << The Wizarding World is only too keen on sweeping dirty secrets
>> under the carpet: consider the number of Death Eaters who went   
>> free, and the fact that there were known to be at least some at  
>> large. (The tip of an iceberg, that one.) >>
> 
> You had just mentioned "such a small [community] as the Wizarding
> World", which gave me that idea that, in addition to their habit of
> hiding rather than lancing abscesses, such a smalll community needs
> all its workers and gene pool and therefore can't afford to exile a
> large number of people no matter how much they deserve it.

Ann:
We don't know how many loyal human followers Voldemort had - I'm not
counting those who were Imperiused or blackmailed or whatever, like
Ludo Bagman (or as I see him, anyway.) But it doesn't seem to have
been that many. GoF Chapter 34 mentions at the very beginning that
Harry is outnumbered "at least thirty to one". Both the rituals that
precede this - each Death Eater kissing Voldemort's robes, and a
personal inspection of the troops - imply that there are dozens
present, not hundreds. So thirty-odd have escaped Azkaban one way or
another (Karkaroff turned Crouch's evidence in chapter 30), and there
must be a few more who are either afraid to return, dead, or caught
short as Snape was; say forty, or fifty at the absolute most. (It's
odd that so many can turn up at such short notice, anyway; let's chalk
this one up to Expedience.)

Now, how much material damage to the Wizarding World would putting
that lot in Azkaban do? It would make the postwar reconstruction
harder, yes, but isn't saying the Ministry "couldn't have afforded it"
going a bit too far? 

About Slytherins: Loyalty does seem to be a fundamental Slytherin
trait. Consider Slughorn, the nearest thing we have IMO to a
stereotypical House member; how, exactly would his network of friends
work without a strong sense of loyalty? Putting the Slug before
official Ministry policy in this way is exactly what Snape and
Narcissa Malfoy do. In their case it's romantic and parental love, but
the principle's the same. Andromeda we don't know about (presumably
she loved her family), but it looks like "family-and-friends above the
law" is quintessential Slytherin. This ties into the patronage system
LJ user Pharnabazus came up with (http://pharnabazus.livejournal.com/,
and scroll down, if you haven't seen it before). This quality coupled
with ambition is probably one reason why the Wizarding World's so
corrupt - everyone in power's willing to bend the rules for a friend...

It's also exactly what Xenophilius Lovegood does, of course, and I've
had him pegged as a Slytherin as a while. He's solitary, so presumably
neither a Gryffindor nor a Hufflepuff. He's not, I think, as
intelligent as his daughter, because he's apparently invented his
monsters and conspiracies out of whole cloth, rather than being taught
about them since birth. she may be gullible, but he's self-deluding. I
think this is a perversion of the Slytherin quality of ambition; in
short, he doesn't have what it takes to reach the top of the tree, so
he's grown his own and climbed right up - and he does seem to be at
the top; that Quibbler needs writers, after all. He really thinks it's
better to reign in an artificial Hell than serve in Heaven, and I'd
call that his main moral failing. Certainly I don't blame him for
trying to rat out the Trio in exchange for Luna.

Ann, who likes Slughorn, and does ramble on rather, doesn't she?