OOP Chapters 11-13 Post DH look

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 183016

 
> Carol responds:
> I can't clearly remember my first reaction, either, but I think it was
> a vague hope that the Gryffindors would get over their prejudice
> against slytherin (and vice versa). It was similar to my (even more
> unfulfilled) hope at the end of GoF that Beauxbatons and Durmstrang
> would contribute something important to the fight against Voldemort.
> So much for "international magical cooperation" and any good coming
> out of the TWT.
> 

Pippin:

So um, defying Voldemort is only "something important" when the
Slytherin students aren't doing it?<g> 

If Madame Maxime hadn't gone with Hagrid, he'd have died. If Hagrid
hadn't brought back Grawp, Hogwarts wouldn't be  standing. Fleur
fights in the last battle, IIRC, besides helping to run the safe house
at Shell Cottage.

Durmstrang seems mostly to stay out of the fight, but that's far
more than one would have expected given what Draco and Sirius had to
say about the place in GoF. One could say much the same about
Slytherin House. 

I don't clearly remember my first reaction to the song -- my first
reading of OOP was a feverish all-nighter--but I did think Harry was
going to have to deal with his prejudices at some point. (Not "get
over" them, which is probably not possible. One can learn to to avoid
explicitly prejudiced actions, but implicit prejudice, the kind that
depends on a lifetime of subconscious associations, is hard to avoid.)

At some point that morphed into an expectation that Harry would unite
the Houses -- but in retrospect that was a false hope based more on
the events of The Little White Horse than anything actually in canon.
I mistook the Hat's song as a call to adventure, when it actually
isn't structured that way. The Hat is addressing itself to Hogwarts as
a whole, Slytherins included. 



Pippin