Alchemy, the Epilogue and Slytherin (long)

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 176646

Magpie wrote:
> <big snip> 
> Harry's line to AS to me says that he loves his son no matter what
house he's in. He says nothing particularly positive about Slytherin
the house--nor can he, because the story didn't give him anything
positive to say. The most he can say is that there have historically
been some Slytherins who are impressive, one of whom Harry has named
his child after for some reason. <snip>

Carol responds:
For some reason? I thought that it was clearly to honor the courage of
a man he had misunderstood and wrongly hated, a man who died providing
Harry with the information he needed to defeat Voldemort.

And surely, having impressive Slytherins to honor is a big step
forward for Slytherin House (especially if Snape gets a portrait in
the headmaster's office and a posthumous Order of Merlin First Class
prominently displayed in the trophy room). Sure, the house still needs
some work (let's hope that passwords like "pure-blood" are now
magically prohibited), but at least it's no longer the house of
budding Death Eaters. In fact, aside from Draco (and possibly Crabbe
and Goyle) the last DE it produced was probably another improbable
hero, Regulus Black.

If no Slytherin kids fought against Voldemort, at least none fought
*for* him (setting aside Crabbe's attempt to capture or kill Harry and
whatever Draco was trying to do--stop him, it seemed to me). And
that's Pansy Parkinson's fault for speaking up and making McGonagall
and the other students assume that any Slytherin who remained behind
must be loyal to Voldemort. Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw had no part in
the first Order, IIRC, and only a small part (Tonks as Hufflepuff
accoridng to an interview) in the second one, but they moved from
absolute neutrality to a partial alliance with those Gryffindors who
supported Harry in OoP through DH. (As of DH, we're looking only at
seventh years, sixth years old enough to fight, and former Gryffindors
who are of age. None of the younger kids from any houses fight except
for Colin Creevey, who must be nearly seventeen in any case and
shouldn't even be there as he's a Muggle-born. That's about ten
seventh-year Slytherins and maybe seven or eight sixth-year Slytherins
who could have joined the fight. Of those, we can account for three
(Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle). The others seem to have obeyed McGonagall
and left the school with the younger students from all the houses and
those older Gryffindors, Ravenclaws, and Hufflepuffs who didn't want
to fight (admittedly, a small number, perhaps ten or fifteen altogether.

At any rate, the forced neutrality of the older Slytherins is not a
legitimate basis for judging them as evil. (We might judge Zacharias
Smith, a Hufflepuff DA who ran like a coward rather harshly, but we
didn't see, say, Theo Nott or Blaise Zabini engaging in similar
behavior. And, wholly irrelevantly, I don't blame Zacharias for not
wanting to join "friends" who hit him with bat-bogey hexes. Anyone
besides me think that Ginny lost the DA an ally with her behavior in
HBP?) Similarly, the neutrality of the Malfoys (Voldemort's own fault
for his abuse of them) is at least a step up from their loyal support
of Voldemort before Lucius's fall from grace.

Sorry--carried away by my thoughts here. I realize that much of what
I've written doesn't follow from Harry's naming his son Albus Severus,
but I was remembering points you made in earlier posts.
> 
Magpie:
>Having Harry say in a scene from 19 years later, in response to his
children telling us that Slytherin is *still the bad house in their
generation* that his son shouldn't worry about being a Slytherin
because his parents love him no matter what, and that he is named
after a Slytherin who was brave (the quality of Gryffindor), but if
he's really worried he can just tell the hat he doesn't want Slytherin
just as Harry himself has been praised for doing throughout the story
says *something* to me, it just doesn't say Slytherin and Gryffindor
are on their way to uniting. I still so no reason on earth any good
person in this universe would *want* to be in Slytherin.

Carol:
But Harry *doesn't* say or even imply that Slytherin is "still the bad
house in their generation." All we have is an older brother teasing a
younger one about being in a rival house. Maybe James II doesn't think
that teasing his brother about being in Ravenclaw (a house for wit or
intelligence) or Hufflepuff (a house for loyalty or hard work) would
have the same effect. And who knows how much little Albus knows about
the houses' history? All he knows is that dad was a Gryffindor, Mum
was a Gryffindor, Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione were Gryffindors, Uncle
Bill and Uncle George, and heck, even Uncle Percy and the Uncle Fred
he never knew were Gryffindors--everyone he knows (even Teddy Lupin?)
was sorted into Gryffindor, and he's probably heard a lot about how
important it is to beat Slytherin at Quidditch. But Ron's teasing of
Rose about marrying a pure-blood probably goes over his head. In any
case, being a pure-blood can't be a criterion for being in Slytherin
since both Tom Riddle and Severus Snape were half-bloods (as was
Harry, who could have been placed there). It seems to me that the
teasing is just a good-natured remnant of the old prejudice and hatred
that we saw in Harry's generation and his father's.

If Harry feared that his son would learn blood prejudice or Dark magic
in Slytherin, surely he would not say, "We'll love you no matter what
house you're in." he would say instead, "Just tell the Sorting Hat
'not Slytherin' and it won't put you there." 

Magpie: 
> Within the last book Slytherin honestly became more like background
word-building to me. The real story was about Harry. Slytherin didn't
matter. <snip>

Carol responds:

Ah. the heart of the matter. First, in HBP, we finally see Slytherins
and former Slytherins as people--Snape concerned about Draco, Narcissa
fearing for her son, Draco learning that being a DE has nothing to do
with "glory" and everything to do with pain and fear, and even
Bellatrix (briefly) showing affection and concern for her sister. We
see Draco lowering his wand a fraction of an inch, unwilling or unable
to kill a helpless old man regardless of the threat of his own and his
family's death. In DH, we see the Malfoys' predicament expanded upon,
with Draco's hesitation and fear and distaste for DE life contrasted
with his father's willingness to hand Harry over to get his old
position under Voldemort back. We get Snape's backstory and his
redemption and Regulus's as well. Slytherin has a face, and it's not
the face we--and Harry--thought it was. 

Look at Harry's assumption about Regulus ("'And he made you drink the
potion?' said Harry, disgusted," DH Am. ed. 196) contrasted with the
reality of Regulus's terrible sacrifice. Regulus was a Slytherin and a
DE and Sirius thought he was an idiot; therefore, he must be evil, an
abuser of house-elves like Voldemort and Lucius Malfoy. Wrong. Regulus
gave his life to avenge Kreacher and steal Voldemort's Horcrux. It's
his Gryffindor brother, Sirius, Harry's beloved godfather, who has
treated Kreacher like scum and called him a "little toerag." Not
comparable, admittedly, to beating him or making him drink poison, but
in this instance, it's the seventeen-year-old Slytherin Death Eater
whose a better man than his grown-up Gryffindor brother.

By the same token, Harry learns to feel mercy and compassion for
Draco, saving him and Goyle from the Fiendfyre cast by their corrupted
friend, Crabbe. He learns empathy and respect for the teacher and
protector he's hated for seven years and has sought revenge against
since Dumbledore's death. Thanks to "The Prince's Tale," in
particular, Dumbledore's Slytherin ally, the former Death Eater who
loved Harry's mother and risked everything--life, career, reputation--
for Dumbledore, finally becomes a person whom Harry can understand and
empathize with--too late for any kind of truce between them, but not
too late for Harry to publicly vindicate Snape and reveal him as he
was to Voldemort, who trusted and yet murdered him.

Harry is the pov character. From the very first book, he sees
Slytherin as bad and Snape as evil. The reader with an eye on Snape
can read between the lines in those books and suspect that Harry is
wrong, but aside from learning about the so-called Prank in PoA, we
get few glimpses of the real Snape until OoP, and then HBP tries to
pull the wool over our eyes so that, like Harry, we see Snape as a
traitor and a murderer. But Harry has slowly become less
(figuratively) myopic, less self-centered (like James, whose circle
included only three friends, Harry trusts almost no one outside his
even smaller circle). His understanding extends first to the outsiders
Neville and Luna (not even in his House or his year), then to Draco,
and finally, most important, to Snape.

So, yes, it's Harry's story. It's *his* perception of Slytherin (and
Snape and Draco) that we've been seeing all this time. And finally, at
the end of DH, having seen Snape's memories and the willingness of
Narcissa Malfoy to lie to Voldemort for her son and Draco's own
disillusionment with the DE life and attempts to keep Crabbe from
killing him, he has reached a point where it's okay for his son to be
Sorted into Slytherin. Draco is not his friend, but he is not his
enemy, either. It's okay for Albus Severus to be friends with Scorpius
(and for Ron's daughter Rose to date him some day). And Severus Snape,
the ultimate Slytherin, the man he hated and wanted revenge against,
is in Harry's mind a hero worthy of naming his son after, a headmaster
of Hogwarts who was probably the bravest man Harry ever met.

What are we supposed to think about Slytherin at this point? Exactly
what Harry thinks. His point of view, which JKR (generally) uses for
her third-person narrator, finally matches that of the author herself.
The too-often unreliable narrator is now reliable. It's okay to be in
Slytherin, and Severus Snape, the Slytherin hero, is worthy of
emulation. (Let's hope that Albus Severus can be more openly heroic,
however.)

Carol, who thinks that Harry's point of view is the key to why
Slytherin *appeared* to be unredeemable but turns out to be far
otherwise in DH