Dark Book

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 177069

> Jen:  Yeah...but even reading the scene emphasizing a different angle 
> didn't keep me from noticing JKR's choice there.  I have a very 
> distinct memory of being thrown out of the story in my first read-
> through of the Great Hall scene - 'Really?  *None* of the Slytherins 
> stood up?  Why did JKR write the moment like that?'  

Pippin:
On first reading the naive reader can assume that they're all traitors
and cowards and cheer their departure, or at least be relieved by
it.  The reader who was expecting at least some of them to
support Harry is surprised, and still more surprised when the
Slytherins suffer no consequences from their seeming treachery.

The Slytherins are essentially static except for Crabbe's rebellion
against Draco, so it must be Harry who changes his expectations.

Harry has been living with the moral system of a fairy
tale. Goodness is associated with his survival and evil with
the forces attempting to destroy him. But in this book
the fairytale system is outgrown. 

It is replaced, IMO, with the moral system of the romance
narrative:

Goodness is associated with the family, evil with the
forces trying to tear it apart. 


In accepting  that he must die to defeat Voldemort, Harry  
accepts that he can no longer view good and evil 
through the lens of his own survival. In becoming 
Teddy's godfather he had already accepted responsibility for 
the next generation, now he must fulfill it. 

Those who accompany him in the forest are those who 
died for him in the same way, for the same cause.

Not Snape, who never repented of his desire to destroy
Harry's family, and not Tonks, who gave her life for
her husband's sake not her child's. The family
is a greater good than the self, the child a greater
good than the parent.

The reader must be meant to reassess the Slytherins'
behavior through Harry's new moral vision. What matters is
not his personal survival but that families not be torn apart.

McGonagall demanded that the Slytherins decide where their
loyalties lie: with Voldemort or with Hogwarts. But the
Slytherins cannot fight Voldemort without fighting their
own families or each other. A Hogwarts which turns
families against each other is no longer acting for the
greater good. Hogwarts was made for the students,
not the students for Hogwarts.

McGonagall thought she was acting in the best interest
of the school, but she made the same mistake that she
saw Augusta making with Neville -- she didn't appreciate
what she had and tried to make it into what she thought 
she should have. It is a sin that runs through canon. 

Jen:
  She honestly didn't think her 
> Slytherin characters would fight Voldemort - why? 

Pippin:
We know some of them would have defended Harry,
judging by their behavior in GoF, despite his hating
them on sight every day of his Hogwarts career.

But the school had forfeited their loyalty.

McGonagall insulted them and denied them her trust,
not at all  what Dumbledore would have done. He told
the Durmstrang students they would always be welcome
at Hogwarts although he knew that they came from a school
where the Dark Arts were taught and Muggleborns
were excluded, and a former DE was their headmaster.

But also, the Slytherins were in no better position to see
the big picture than Kreacher was. The Carrows
would have been nice to them, and a Hogwarts
where the Dark Arts were taught and Muggleborns
were excluded is what they'd always been told 
Hogwarts should be.

Pippin