To kill or not to kill and resolutions of the storyline/ Slytherins

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 185613

Pippin: 
> The Slytherins are grouped together with Slughorn here and expected to
> act in concert with him. Slytherin House as a whole will decide on its
> loyalties. Which it does, when Slughorn returns. The Slytherins who
> stood to honor Harry in GoF were nameless and faceless. Harry never
> bothered to find out who they were, so how would he, or the narrator,
> identify them now?

Magpie:
But Slughorn has already been singled out as one of the different 
Slytherins--one that is still associated with its Pureblood ideology, 
but who has loved a Gryffindor and so has a main loyalty to her (though 
he always needs a little push to stick his neck out). (He's not 
expected to act in concert with them, necessarily.) I don't see how the 
description of some Slytherins not specifically showing they're against 
Harry in GoF matters much in the end. Certainly not to the extent that 
I'm shocked they didn't return to fight for him in DH. I'm not 
surprised he didn't specifically find out who they were. There is no 
story where they actually stood against Voldemort or trusted 
Dumbledore. They didn't necessarily join Voldemort, but I've no reason 
to think they did much of note otherwise. 

You make a distinction elsewhere between believing in an ideology and 
being killers--but I don't see where everyone has ignored that 
distinction. Slytherin has not been presented as a House full of 
killers. There's other negative qualities they have too. Maybe it's a 
shame that Harry never reached out to them or tried to make them 
allies. But it's not surprising he didn't. And they didn't reach out to 
him either, or do much else to disassociate themselves from their bad 
reputation. In the end they didn't seem needed for victory. The ones 
who acted for the other side did so because they loved somebody. It's a 
consistent saving grace, imo. 

-m