Slytherins come back WAS: Re: My Most Annoying Character/Now Rowling's control

[Mike]

No: HPFGUIDX 180390

> Betsy Hp:
> Exactly.  The truth about Snape has no real affect on Harry.  
> Instead of DH being about their relationship (a relationship I 
> *thought* had been shaping the series)  <snip>

Mike:
This was a real problem in the series. The obvious antagonist was 
Voldemort. His appearance in PS/SS was creapy and scary, but not 
fully realized. We knew he wasn't done for, but he wasn't powerful 
enough to not be overcome by an 11-year-old Harry. Then he's 
invisible for two books. The build up to his reincarnation in GoF
was both inevitable and a terrifying thought that it could happen.

Who wasn't terrified (for Harry) of the Voldemort in the Graveyard? 
Likewise, who didn't feel a terrible sense of foreboding for Snape 
when Dumbledore asked him if he was prepared? Harry had escaped 
mostly through luck, and here Snape was going back into the lion's 
den. Voldemort was at his scariest back then.

Then two more books of nothing. Yeah, I know, Harry gets the visions 
in OotP and there is the battle in the MoM Atrium, but those were 
more like cameos than in your face scary.

By the time we got to DH, I wasn't that scared of Voldemort, for 
Harry. Chapter One of DH reiterates Voldemort's cruelty and the DE's 
obsequious servitude, but I had stopped thinking of him as this all 
powerful being. He did have a few new tricks up his sleeve - flying, 
the Nagini!Bagshot gag me moment - but he just wasn't that scary 
anymore. In fact, he exhibited a level of ignorance that reduced his 
build up to this ultimate villian into a mustache twirling Snidely 
Whiplash.

Was that intentional by JKR? I can't say, but if it was, it caused 
Voldemort and thus the story to lose some of it's lustre for me. And 
that was a shame. 



> Betsy Hp:
> But because Harry no longer cared much about Snape or Draco, it 
> meant that he no longer cared about Slytherin.  <snip>

Mike:
Yes, Slytherin had naturally replaced the mostly absent Voldemort as 
the main antagonist for Harry. How could they not? Then all of a 
sudden, in DH, Slytherin doesn't matter any more. We're back to 
worrying about Voldemort and his Horcruxes. It doesn't flow, not 
after we'd been treated to so much Snape, Draco and even Narcissa and 
Bellatrix. Sure, they're all tied to LV, but their characters were 
fleshed out so much more, in the here and now, than his was.

Again, was this a mistake? It feels like one, to me.



> Betsy Hp:
> I honestly think that this sidelining of all things Slytherin was
> a massive story-telling mistake on JKR's part.  She'd put too much
> into making them the big antagonist for Harry to suddenly say they
> didn't matter.  Which I think is made apparent by all these
> attempts to ret-con them back into a place of importance. <snip>

Mike:
I agree with you Betsy, again. I expected so much more out of or 
directed towards Snape and Draco. The reduction of Snape to a 
footnote and what felt like the dropping of Draco's story altogether 
was my major disappointment in DH.

I still liked the book overall, I knew that Harry-Voldemort was *the* 
big story that JKR was telling and she did a good job in that 
respect. As I said, I wish LV had remained the scary guy he was in 
GoF, but that was really the fault of the two previous books as much 
as it was a problem with DH.

I also had no delusions that Slytherin was anything other than the 
bad guy house, so I wasn't looking for any redemption. (I don't mean 
anyone here was delusional, heh, I mean I was certain in my mind what 
JKR was doing with Slytherin.) But that didn't mean I expected, as 
Betsy put it, "all things Slytherin" to fall off the table in favor 
of following Harry's story.



> Betsy Hp:
> Heh.  In some ways, I think the subject line best reflects my 
> thoughts as I read DH:  "Slytherin!  Come back!" <bg>

Mike:
My sentiments would be more along the lines of: Slytherin, go away!, 
as in, I never liked you guys and I still don't. 

But she shouldn't have built up their story for six books if she was 
going to just kick them off the Hogwarts Express before it pulled 
into Hogsmeade Station.

Mike