Realistic Resolutions - WAS: Slytherins come back

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 180729

> Mike:
> But as Fudge and Scrimgeour allowed in "The Other Minister", the 
> other side can do magic too. Unless the DEs Imperiused the entire 
> ministry staff, and that's not the way I read that, there sure 
> seemed to be a lot of timid sheep in the WW. 
> 
> Harry sees a dozen witches and wizards stuffing envelopes for the 
> Muggle-Born Registration Commission. So they can't plead ignorance
> at what's going on under their noses, unlike some of the scenarios 
> Alla painted for us with Stalinist Russia. Even if they're not 
> particularly adept at fighting, they outnumber Dolores 12:1. Surely 
> they could overpower her. 

Pippin:
But they can't overpower dementors or inferi, nor can they maintain
wizarding secrecy if Voldemort uses his full power in London. As
long as people are more afraid of those things than they are of 
Voldemort's regime, he has an advantage. In Stalin's time, many 
were more afraid of Hitler or of  resurrected Czarism than they were
of him. 

Mike:
<snip>
> Scrimgeour was killed for crissakes! Are they that blind and stupid 
> that they can't figure out what's happening around them? 

Pippin:
Why didn't the passsengers of three 9/11 planes rise up against
their hijackers? Because they'd been trained to believe that the
way to safeguard lives was to cooperate. Unlike the people on the
fourth plane, they never had a chance to learn otherwise. 

*We* can see a Final Solution looming ahead for the Muggleborn,
but the WW has been isolated from the Muggle world. They don't
have our perspective. During the nine years between Hitler's 
rise to power and the implementation of the final solution, many 
Germans, Jews and non-Jews alike, believed  that if the Jews
kept their heads down, things would get better eventually. 
It always had in the past. 

I can see the Order walking a fine line between doing enough so
that people would not feel they had to take things into their own
hands and provoking Voldemort into wholesale retaliation. IMO,
they trusted that Dumbledore's plan would defeat LV without a 
mass uprising and so it did, with a lot fewer casualties on either
side.  

Mike:
She needed the Ministry to fall and didn't have time to show 
> all the people being indoctrinated to the other side.

Pippin:
I think Umbridge's regime at Hogwarts showed us how
difficult launching an effective resistance would be. Harry's
group was far down the learning curve, but grown wizards
who weren't members of the Order wouldn't be much better
off. Although Neville scrawled "Join Dumbledore's army" on
the walls, he wasn't actually accepting new members into
the RoR. He didn't know who to trust. Anybody, even Order
members, could be confunded or imperius'd into betraying
their dearest blood.  The Order had the same 
problem. 
 
> > > Betsy Hp:
> > > Seriously, for me, Draco and Snape were the "face" of Slytherin.
> 
> >> Betsy Hp:
> That JKR chose to not have Harry deal with the antagonists the 
> series *had* been setting up, <snip>
> 
> For six books, I'd say the Slytherin question was just that: the
> question. <<
> 
> Mike:
> That's the thing for me too. Voldemort was set up as the ultimate 
> monster to be defeated, but he was in the background for too much of 
> the series. Snape, and eventually Draco, took center stage as Harry's 
> main antagonists. 

Pippin:
But only in Harry's imagination were they a real threat to him. That's
the Slytherin question as it's put in canon. "Perhaps it was Harry's
imagination, after all he'd heard about Slytherin, but he thought 
they looked an unpleasant lot." Apart from Voldemort, Harry's real 
enemy, his only real antagonist, is his own imagination. 

Snape was never a real threat to Harry -- with Harry at his mercy
the worst he ever delivered was a stinging hex. Similarly, Draco 
never did anything worse to Harry than break his nose. 

It is therefore appropriate that Harry resolves these imaginary
issues in his own mind. Harry's main issue with the real Snape 
was resolved in HBP with the "no need to call me Sir" remark. 
Snape never again attempted to humiliate Harry in public. Harry 
was no longer to be cowed by cruel words, detentions, points lost
or grades withheld, and Snape knew it. Oh, he still laid into
Harry when he got the chance, but that was venting in
private.


Mike:
> Draco was Harry's generation. Draco was the face of the Voldemort 
> supporter for his age bracket. Don't we need something more than him 
> making distasteful faces and hemming and hawing over identifying the 
> Trio to know that he was wrong to support Voldy and had learned that? 

Pippin:
Harry's mistake about Draco was to think he had it in him to be
a mighty warrior. To have him turn into one would mean that
Harry hadn't been wrong. 

Dudley has a real change of heart and so Harry's earlier assessment
of Dudley does not look biased. The old Dudley really would have 
set a booby trap for Harry. But the old Draco never had it in him to
be a fighter. 

Still, I wouldn't say that Draco didn't change. He proved himself, if only
to the hapless Goyle. Who would have saved Goyle if Draco
hadn't? Harry found Draco because Draco screamed, but
he would never have found the unconscious Goyle in time. And
if we don't care that Goyle was saved, then we've had our consciousness
raised a bit:  it's not as easy to think every life is worth 
saving as the innocent believe. 

> 
> > Betsy Hp:
> > Hm, I'd say Snape died a slave, honestly.  He certainly wasn't his 
> > own man.  And I don't think Draco was ever really freed either.

Pippin:
The difference between service in loyalty and service in slavery is
choice. Snape's choices were his own. Dumbledore did not make
him feel defiled, that was Snape's own very Slytherin devotion to
purity, the devotion that drew him to Lily in the first place.


> Mike:
> 
> Where does that leave Slytherin house? It's now up to them to realize 
> that their founder and his decendant shaped a false credo for their 
> followers and house. That pure-bloodism is a hateful and destructive 
> dogma undeserving of holding status in their house. They have to see 
> how Voldemort exploited them by feeding this false credo to his 
> followers to their and his destruction. 

Pippin:
Hear! Hear! It is for Slytherins to develop a more advanced concept
of the values Salazar exalted: family and purity. Family
needs no defense, although it gets one when Harry sends Lupin
packing. As for purity, why is it Slytherins who are most moved 
by bad conscience? Because they are the ones to
whom defilement matters most. If they learn to seek purity of 
soul rather than purity of blood, they could become the most
moral of the houses.


Mike:
> You may also not like that house elves are still slaves. But a few 
> points here: Did any other elf besides the oddball Dobby refer to the 
> condition as slavery? Dumbledore spoke to this issue, but wasn't he 
> specifically addressing one elf? He spoke in platitudes about their 
> condition, but he not only didn't raise a finger to change their 
> condition, he employed hundreds of them as headmaster. Hermione 
> raised the issue, but wasn't she shown to be wrongheaded in her 
> original assessment and goal? 

Pippin:
Only half-wrong. She was right to want better conditions for the
Elves. She  succeeded in getting them for Kreacher and in getting
Ron involved in their welfare. But as with Slytherin, it is for the
Elves to decide what their goals are, worthy or not. Wizards 
need to lift the enchantments that make House Elves punish
themselves, but that is a long term goal, like the cure for
lycanthropy. 

Mike:
<snip>
> 
> Were there unresolved story lines, unsolved mysteries, plot holes 
> left open? Sure! You want a big one that I just thought of? Why 
> didn't Quirrell just "Accio Philosphers Stone" when he knew it was in 
> Harry's pocket?

Pippin:
This was resolved in OOP. Harry's seeker reflexes would have been
too quick, as they were when he kept hold of the prophecy. In
any case Quirrell does not seem to have had his wand out. Once
he was burned I'm sure he lacked the concentration for wandless
magic. 

But as Tolkien said, it is "unexplored vistas" that make a story
world seem real. 

Pippin
Thanking those who referenced the Kingsley canon for her.