Slytherin House - LONG

[Katie]

No: HPFGUIDX 177507

So, I am rereading the whole shebang all over again, and I have come 
to the conclusion that Slytherin House was never supposed to be part 
of the Hogwarts community at large. I have to say, it was never 
glaring until DH and all this discussion at HPfGU about the prejudice 
against Slytherins, but it's very obvious to me now that Slytherin 
House was set up to be the bad guys from day one and there was little 
to no hope of them becoming part of the larger community.

Which, by the way, I am totally fine with. Usually, in literature, 
there is a bad guy, and Slytherins are it in these books. In 
rereading the books for the first time since DH, I can see so much 
more clearly that the Slytherins were really bad - not just 
misunderstood - but bad people. The occasional Slytherin was ok, but 
by and large, no, they are not good people and they are not going to 
turn out to be good people...which begs the logical question, Why 
have Slytherin House at all? Why have a house inside an institution 
of learning that is detrimental to that institution and is set up 
from the get-go to produce dark wizards? 

That's where my problem lies with the plot. I don't mind having a 
population of dark wizards that are just evil, with no real reason 
why. That's reality - some folks are just bad. Fine.

However, it's not really reasonable to welcome all those dark wizards 
into a school with normal people and put them in a house that will 
only encourage those dark tendencies. I guess that never really 
bothered me before I knew how it would all turn out. I guess I had 
more hope that Slytherin would turn it all around...but they didn't, 
and know I can see clearly JKR's intentions with the House. I believe 
we all saw Slytherins as much more ambiguous than she did. I 
certainly saw room for goodness and room for improvement on my first 
80 reads! : ) But after DH, this reread is very different. It's 
different on mant levels, not just Slytherin, but that one is most 
glaring in my mind at the moment. Because when the Slytherins were 
just kind of bullies and jerks, but not BAD, that was understandable. 
Now that I see the deliberateness of making them evil...I don't 
understand why Hogwarts just didn't get rid of Slytherin House after 
Salazar Slytherin split. 

Some canon on what I mean about the deliberateness:

SS, Collector's Edition, page 77, Draco: "...but I know I'll be in 
Slytherin, all our family have been..." THEN on page 110, "I've heard 
of his family," said Ron darkly. "They were some of the first to come 
back to our side after You-Know-Who disappeared...Malfoy's father 
didn't need an excuse to go over to the Dark Side."

Linking Malfoys with generations of Slytherins and they're 
all "Dark." Pretty obvious.

Same book, page 119, "Perhaps it was Harry's imagination, after all 
he'd heard about Slytherin, but he thought they looked like an 
unpleasant lot."

CoS, Amer. Ed., page 15O and 151, Prof. Binns, "A rift began to grow 
between Slytherin and the others. Slytherin wanted to be more 
*selective* about the students admitted to Hogwarts. He believed that 
magical learning should be kept within all-magic families...Slytheri, 
according to the legend, sealed the Chamber of Secrets so that none 
would be able to open it until his own true heir arrived at the 
school. The heir alone would be able to unseal the Chamber of 
Secrets, unleash the horror within, and use it to purge the school of 
all who were unworthy to study magic."


I was surprised to find such strong language and history against 
Slytherin House...I hadn't really noticed it before. I know that 
sounds ridiculous, but in my own mind, there was an ambiguity about 
Slytherin House that allowed me to see these events in a more 
sympathetic light. Now, I see that any ambiguity was really only in 
my own mind, and JKR meant for the Slytherins to be evil from day 
one. 

So, that being said, I don't think there's a lot of basis for an 
argument about Slytherin House's loyalties and McGonagall's actions 
in DH. Far from being odd or out of place, I think that moment was 
brewing from the start...at least in JKR's mind. I also have to 
reiterate that I find it strange for Slytherin House to even be a 
part of the school at all, seeing them in the light of DH and the new 
slant I have on them. Why not get rid of the House after Slytherin 
departed?

Ok, my hand is cramping. That's all for now, Katie