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

[Lee Kaiwen]

No: HPFGUIDX 180571

> Magpie:
> The moment just doesn't read as ambiguous to me in any way.
> 
> Carol:
> Not *to you*, but it does read as ambiguous to others. 

> not only because those kids had no way to contact their parents, 
 > nor did Slughorn

No? I would think apparation and the power of two would guarantee word 
would spread almost instantaneously. All it takes is one student 
apparating back home to raise the alarm, and within a matter of minutes 
parents would be apparating back and forth across Great Britain before 
descending en masse on Hogwarts. I don't have the text in front of me, 
but I'm sure at least an hour had passed between the Slytherins' 
dismissal and Slughorn's return.

> At any rate, let's look again at the canon that we're interpreting
> differently, not to prove that you're wrong and I'm right but to show
> that both interpretations (and that's all they are) are valid.

For myself, that it is technically possible to squeeze returning 
Slytherins in between the lines of the text just isn't good enough. A 
point this important deserves more than just an ambiguous turn of 
phrase. How difficult would it have been for JKR to have inserted "and 
half the seventh year Slytherins" into her description? Imagine the 
difference those six words would have made? This just isn't, to my mind, 
a point that deserves to be left to inference.

CJ