Likeable Regulus (Was: Villain!Dumbledore)

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 177969

zgirnius:
<snip paragraph I agree with>
> As far as positively characterized Slytherins...what is wrong with 
Andromeda Black Tonks again, other than that Harry was reminded of 
Bella by her looks and got off on the wrong foot with her? She and her
husband seem to have a good relationship, and have raised a friendly,
loving daughter. They work for the good by permitting their house to
be used as one of the decoy hiding places. And (seems likely) she
raises also a a happy, well-adjusted grandson after her daughter is
killed in the war.

Carol responds:

Exactly. And if we're counting JKR's interviews and chats as canonical
or semicanonical, we can confirm that Teddy was indeed raised by
Andromeda. The Bloomsbury Online Chat (July 30, 2007) provided the
following tidbits about the Tonks/Lupin family:

1) Teddy was raised by Andromeda.
2) Remus was killed by Dolohov and Tonks by Bellatrix.
3) [Teddy Lupin is] a Metamorphmagus like his mother.

See Leaky's Post-Deathly Hallows Information Page for a link to the
actual interview.

http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/books/postdh

zgirnius: 
> I find, also, that the 'likable' test is one I do not understand.
Likable according to whom? Why is Regulus Black not likable? Because 
Sirius said bad things about him (and those things did not even touch
on likability)? It seems Kreacher liked him. No one else we encounter
offers any opinion. I see no reason to suppose Regulus was unlikable
as a person. Which I guess makes him negatively presented because he
was a Death Eater. Except we have no idea what he did as a Death
Eater, other than loan Voldemort Kreacher and then attempt to destroy
a Horcrux of Voldemort. On balance, going purely from the information
we have, I'd say this moves him into the positive side of the ledger.

Carol responds:

The "likeable" test is, of course, completely subjective since various
readers like Snape, Draco, Slughorn, Regulus, Phineas Nigellus,
Andromeda (to the extent that we see her), and even Lucius and/or
Narcissa. I don't know anyone who likes Bellatrix or Dolohov or Tom
Riddle, but there's nothing to indicate that they were typical
Slytherins, either.

Regarding Regulus, it appears that Slughorn liked him (and never knew
that he'd become a DE) since he would have "liked to collect the pair"
(Regulus and Sirius). Kreacher more than liked him: he idolized him,
bawling inconsolably when he's given "Master Regulus's locket" and
using his name as a rallying cry for the House-Elves. His mother (and
presumably his father) loved him. He was the "good son," the dutiful
son who proudly displayed the colors and emblems of his parents's
Hogwarts house. My impression is that Mrs. Black's loss of sanity
resulted from the death of one son and the seeming treachery and
criminal behavior of the other. (Kreacher thought that Sirius was a
murderer; probably his parents thought the same thing.) Regulus was
the Seeker on his Quidditch team (all of whom are waving out of the
photograph, not sneering). Though not quite as handsome as Sirius, he
had the family's good looks and was probably popular at least within
his own house for the combination of his looks and his Quidditch
abilities. At least, there's nothing to indicate otherwise.

Nor is there anything to indicate that he was unlikeable. His views on
the superiority of Pure-bloods were shared by many people, not all of
them in Slytherin. (Surely Fudge, for example, was in some other
House. He strikes me as a Hufflepuff.) He collected press cuttings of
Voldemort much as another boy might collect them for a Quidditch star
or a famous singer. (No doubt many German boys did much the same thing
when Hitler was a rising politician, not realizing the lengths to
which their hero would go to carry out his views.) He decorated his
walls exactly as Sirius did, except in rival school colors. Even the
sign on his door strikes me as something that a typical teenage boy
would put up. Teenagers like privacy and often want to be left alone.
Even Sirius calls him nothing worse than "stupid idiot" and speculates
that his parents regarded him as "a right little hero" for joining up.
He probably thought, much as Draco did, that he was joining a movement
that would bring him "glory." 

All of this we can gather from a photo, a bedroom preserved as it was
when he left it (setting aside the ravages of time), a photograph, and
the remarks of a few other characters. Add to that his heroic decision
to steal the Horcrux (which he thought that Kreacher could destroy)
and drink the potion himself, sacrificing himself to spare and avenge
Kreacher and, he hoped, make the evil Voldermort mortal) and it's hard
to see anything unlikeable about him. I shed tears for him and for
Kreacher, and I cheered Kreacher's rallying cry, "Fight! Fight! Fight!
for my Master, defender of House-Elves. Fight the Dark Lord in the
name of brave Regulus! Fight!" (DH 734). The first line seems at first
to refer to Harry, but the second makes clear whom he regards as his
true master, as does the locket.

Prep0strus and other readers are, of course, perfectly free to
continue regarding Regulus as unlikeable, but his heroism seems
undeniable. For me, he's "a right little hero," not for joining up but
for rebelling and sacrificing his life for, of all people, a House-Elf
that his brother Sirius wrongly held in contempt. The Gryffindor was
wrong and the Slytherin was right. Give me Regulus over Sirius, the
arrogant bully who never stopped mistrusting Snape, any day.

At any rate, until HBP, except for SWM, Harry sees only the worst side
of Slytherin and hears only bad things about them. That they are
people like himself and his friends (with prejudices and values
different from his own) simply never occurs to him. Draco on the tower
is Harry's first glimpse of a Slytherin who deserves his compassion
(setting aside the equally important discovery that he doesn't want
Draco dead, especially by his hand). Andromeda, though he doesn't
consciously think of her as a Slytherin, provides another glimpse of
Slytherin humanity, as does the unwilling DE!Draco that Harry sees
through the scar connection in DH. 

Regulus's story provides the revelation that a Slytherin can go beyond
pitiable human weakness or the ordinary human love of a mother for her
child to genuine heroism, paving the way for the heroism of another
Slytherin, a man Harry has always misunderstood and hated, Severus
Snape, without whose spying and lying (the epitome of Slytherin
cunning) and risking his life, Dumbledore and Harry together would
probably have failed to defeat Voldemort. And, of course, seeing
Severus's deprived childhood and affection for his mother humanizes
him too and helps Harry to identify with him. Whether that also makes
him likeable to the reader depends on the reader. (I've liked him from
the moment he made that poetic speech about potions that bewitch the
mind and ensnare the senses, but that's just me.) By the end of DH,
Harry can even appreciate Draco's concern for his thuggish friend
Goyle and Narcissa's concern for Draco. They may not be admirable or
likeable, but they're human, and their love has overcome their desire
to side with evil. Human Slytherins, some few of them heroic. That's a
big step forward from the view espoused in the earlier books that all
Slytherins are evil Dark wizards who would kill or torture to support
the pure-blood supremacy agenda. And it's entirely possible that the
new, "diluted" Slytherin, stripped of its pure-blood agenda and any
possibility of a future as a Death Eater, might well produce a student
or two that Harry Potter's children could actually like. My money is
on Scorpius Malfoy, there being no child of Severus Snape or Regulus
Black to fill the bill. If Lily Evans could befriend a Slytherin, why
not her namesake, Lily Potter? 

Carol, trying to think of another hero besides the wily Odysseus who
would have been placed in Slytherin for his cunning had he been born a
wizard in Britain between the founding of Hogwarts and the epilogue of DH