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

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 185617

Montavilla47 wrote:
> <snip>
> Because, honestly, I doubt that we'd be reflecting on that at all,
if it weren't for a vocal minority of fans who felt that the
Slytherins needed to come back at the end (and that JKR didn't
actually write them coming back).
<snip>
> 
> Again, if it weren't for the vocal minority, we'd simply read that
passage as McGonagall justly expelling the dangerous, traitorous,
racist element from the school.  

Carol responds:

Maybe you'd read it that way, but without ever having read anyone
else's reaction, I was appalled by McGonagall's behavior (much as I'd
been appalled by her calling Harry's Crucio gallant and following it
up with an Imperius of her own). Even though not one slytherin
supports Pansy, Mcgonagall dismisses the whole lot of them on the
assumption that they're dangerous, having already informed slughorn
that she would kill any Slytherin student who fought for Voldemort.
That some of the Slytherins might actually want to support Hogwarts
never enters her mind. *She* sees them all as "dangerous" and
"traitorous" (I'm not sure that "racist" enters into the equation
since McGonagall has never expressed a view one way or another on
Pure-blood supremacy, which, in any case, is not race). The reader,
however, does not necessarily share her views (which, IMO, are shaped
by her belief that Headmaster Snape is a murderer and therefore the
students who admire him or were Sorted into the same House are
potential murderers).

Carol, who thinks that a "vocal minority" has nothing to do with it
and suspects that *many* readers on their own were appalled by
McGonagall's "Housist" assumptions