To kill or not to kill and resolutions of the storylineWAS :Re: Disarming spell

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 185498

 
> Magpie:
> Is this an interpretation that reads "Slughorn and Charlie Weasley 
> returned with the friends and family of the remaining students" as 
> one that adds Slytherins to the mix? Because if it is I have to say 
> imo it does not hold water.
<snip>
It's like reading the line in HBP that says something like "the next 
> group was all Hufflepuffs" or to describe a group of kids who show
up  to try out for Gryffindor Quidditch and saying "But Harry wouldn't
 recognize them all as Hufflepuffs...there must have been 
> Slytherins/Ravenclaws/Gryffindors there too." It's just how the 
> narrator tells us what's going on.

Pippin:
But there's a very significant difference between saying a group
that's described as all Hufflepuffs must exclude Slytherins (which I
accept), and saying that "friends of every Hogwarts student who had
remained to fight" must exclude Slytherins. That implies that the
categories "Slytherin" and "friends of every Hogwarts student" are
mutually exclusive. 

But if Harry (and the narrator)  meant that, then they ignored
everything they'd learned about Lily and Snape.

Of course that is what bias does to people -- it makes them ignore the
truth and assume things which are, on evidence, either false or
unproven. JKR set a trap for the biased reader, IMO, just as she did
when she introduced the QWC players  in a way which made it possible
to suppose they were all male. Only this time, she exposed her devices
in an interview instead of  in the pronouns.

Magpie:
> 
> Slughorn comes back and Slughorn is mentioned. He's one of several 
> special Slytherin cases who are moved, due to love of someone else, 
> to oppose Voldemort. 
> 
Pippin: 
This becomes a self-referential argument: Slytherins aren't friends of
the others because they didn't fight for Hogwarts, and we know they
didn't fight for Hogwarts because they're not friends.

> Magpie:
> It seems like that's just dependent on what one would call 
> redemption. <snip> They've never been all bad. They just aren't
really worthy of the term "good" either. Their morally
challenged--more so  than any other House, and seem to be Sorted on
that quality.
> 

Pippin:
But the book is very clear on what it calls evil: killing, committed
for personal gain and without remorse. Torture and involuntary
servitude, also  hard to forgive. It isn't a special case, as it turns
out, for a Slytherin to be opposed to those things. Nor is it a
special case for a non-Slytherin to be complicit in them.

Nobody in the books wanted the people they cared about to be killed or
tortured or made to serve against their will.  But Voldemort (and
Grindelwald) put forward the idea that  it was okay for the people you
didn't care about. That was the evil the Slytherins (and eventually
the rest of the WW) had to be redeemed from. 

The general breakdown of the moral order affected everyone, even its
defenders, which is the place where, IMO, JKR parts company with the
standard fantasy narrative. The good folk of Narnia and Middle-earth
may be lulled into complacency or tempted or tricked into folly, but
they cannot be made to glory in doing wrong.

But in Rowling's world the moral order of society must be restored or
even the purest soul will not be able to guard its owner from
corruption. And when it's restored, it isn't restored to an ideal
state but only to one slightly better than it was. 
 

Pippin