Slytherin's Reputation was Re: CHAPDISC: DH, EPILOGUE

[littleleahstill]

No: HPFGUIDX 185610

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "k12listmomma" 
<k12listmomma at ...> wrote:
> The 
> history of Harry Potter, though, does not show Syltherins 
attempting to help 
> murder Voldemort to end the bloodshed; we do not witness 
Syltherins hiding 
> Mudbloods to spare their lives. So, by extention, we do blame all 
> Syltherins, not having an example to see that this "one" or "two" 
were 
> different. That's the story Rowling wrote, like it or not. As I 
said, I 
> really wish she had given us that one or two special Syltherins 
who bravely 
> fought Voldemort at great expense to their own safety- maybe 
that's what she 
> tried to do with Snape, but failed.
> 
> Shelley
>

Leah:

Why do you think she failed with Snape?  He was working for 
Dumbledore and obeying Dumbledore's orders. Dumbledore knew 
Voldemort could not be assassinated until his Horcruxes were 
destroyed so there was no point in ordering Snape or anyone else to 
kill him until that was done.  Snape was an Order member whose job 
it was (given to him by Dumbledore) to spy on Voldemort. That 
necessarily involved not openly fighting him. Dumbledore said that 
Snape acted for the Order at great personal risk.  The personal 
expense to Snape was his death in the Shrieking Shack, continuing to 
lie to and occlude against Voldemort so that he went into battle 
against the true master of the Elder Wand. 

What about Slughorn? Wasn't fighting Voldemort at the Battle of 
Hogwarts brave and didn't it put Slughorn at personal risk?

As to hiding Mudbloods, we know that Snape said he had saved all 
that he could. We don't know exactly what he meant by this, but if 
he was saving people whom he could have watched die, I would assume 
that involved people targeted by the Death Eaters, and that probably 
included Muggleborns.  We don't know how Snape saved these people, 
but I see no reason to doubt his word that he did.  One assumes that 
too involved a fair amount of personal risk.

And how many people from *any* House do we see actually fighting 
Voldemort? The Death Eaters in the first 'war' and at the beginning 
of the second act more like a terrorist organisation -pretty hard to 
fight openly.  We hear that the the Aurors under Barty Crouch Snr 
acted against the Death Eaters. We don't know what House Barty was 
in, we don't know the identity, let alone the Houses of most of the 
Aurors.  We do know that the Order fought against Voldemort. But the 
Order was itself a paramilitary organisation, whose membership 
appeared to be selected by Dumbledore. Do we know if he invited any 
Slytherins (apart from Snape) to join?.  Do we know if he didn't? - 
we don't know the House affiliation of all the members.  It looks 
really as if a fairly small proportion of the population were 
involved on either side.  And few people seem to have known that 
Voldemort was Tom Riddle ex-Slytherin, so why should the majority of 
Slytherins feel they had special obligation to deal with him?

Leah