Dark Book

[littleleahstill]

No: HPFGUIDX 177035

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Carol" <justcarol67 at ...> 
wrote:
> We can *hope* that they find friendship 
> > instead of enmity, but there's really no indication that'll 
happen.
> <snip>
> 
> Carol responds:
> Happy to oblige.
> 
> James Potter to Sirius black at age eleven: "Who wants to be in
> Slytherin? I think I'd leave, wouldn't you?" (DH Am. ed. 670)),
> virtually the same words that Draco Malfoy says to Harry regarding
> Hufflepuff in SS/PS.
> 
> Harry Potter at 37 to Albus *Severus* Potter, age eleven, in 
response
> to "what if I'm in Slytherin?":
> 
> "--then Slytherin House will have gained and excellent student, 
won't
> it? It doesn't matter to us" (758).
> 
> It *doesn't matter* to his Gryffindor parents whether he's placed 
in
> Gryffindor or not. It's okay to be in Slytherin, the house to which
> the bravest man Harry ever knew belonged.

Leah:

So far, so good, and if it had been left there, I would agree with 
you.  But, Harry goes on to say that if it matters to Albus Severus 
he can choose to be in Gryffindor, which seems to me to undermine 
the previous statement.  What's the child going to 
choose - the house of a brave dead man who is only a name to the 
boy, the house about which his brother has been teasing him 
unmercifully all the way to Kings Cross and for some time before, or 
the house of his parents, and all his grandparents, and his older 
brother?  I know where my money would go and it's not on the snake.  
Gryffindor is this child's 'natural' house, and let's face it, 
Dumbledore has implied that it should have been the house of the man 
who makes Slytherin ok in Harry's eyes.  In fact, Slytherin is 
tolerated in as much as it has produced a man who displayed to an 
exemplary level a 'natural' Gryffindor characteristic. 

To me it comes over as telling a child that it will still be loved 
if it does badly in important exams, and that X who was a wonderful 
person, also did badly in exams, but that the child's revised hard 
etc and will probably do very well. 


> Carol, who thinks it's also significant that James Potter starts 
out
> as a bully and that we're supposed to contrast his lifelong 
prejudice
> against Slytherin with the tolerance of his enlightened son

Leah:

Yes, there's been some progress, but really just enough for Harry to 
tolerate a son in Slytherin, for very personal reasons.  Is that as 
much as can be expected?  Slytherin gets an ok(ish) and Snape gets 
an aside in a word of reassurance to a scared child.  Do we see 
Harry putting a stop to his elder's son's teasing, giving James Jnr 
(who sounds in all ways a chip off the old block) any dressing down 
about the bravest man Harry ever knew?  No, we don't. 

I get this disconnect throughout DH, as if the author feels she 
ought to write something in a particular way but quite can't believe 
it, as if the moral point has been made, but the reality is 
something else, and it's the reality which is good. 

To diverge slightly, the treatment of James is a case in point.  
There's nothing in DH that removes the 'bully' stigma from James. 
Instead, 'The Prince's Tale' strongly reinforces it,when we see 
James and Sirius being vile to a boy whose only fault, as they can 
see it, is wanting to be sorted into Slytherin, on the mistaken 
information that it's the house for brains.   Yet, a few pages 
later, there are James and Sirius accompanying Harry on his death 
march, and later, Harry's eldest son, (who might well have been his 
only son) bears James' name.  I understand the reality of Harry 
wanting to be with his father, to acknowledge his father, however 
flawed, but to me there's no resolution of the dichotomy inherent in 
the two views.

Leah            
>