chapter discussions, SS/PS, chapter 5, Diagon Alley

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 187919

 
> Alla:
> 
> I am not sure I understand, do you think that author agrees with Dumbledore here or not? Because this is book 7 and not book 1 and I would think that if the idea was to show that Slytherin house is just as the same as any other house in Hogwarts and has his good qualities and bad qualities, it is really strange to make Dumbledore say it.


Pippin:

Do you think the author agrees with Draco that Hagrid is a kind of savage who gets drunk every so often? It turns out to be  true, but it's not the whole story. The Prince's Tale comes late in Book Seven, but  it's not the whole story either. There are still significant developments to come.

Dumbledore is not the hero. Harry is the hero, and he is the one who says that it makes no difference to him if his son is a Slytherin. Do you think the author agrees with that?

I agree that Dumbledore was suggesting that Slytherin was not a good choice for Snape, and Snape is thinking "If I hadn't gone into Slytherin, I could have had a different life." And that could be true as far as it goes. But Slughorn's return makes it a copout. Snape didn't have to be in a different house to reject pureblood fanaticism, dark arts or disloyalty to Hogwarts, or to find examples of friendship and bravery.  

I don't entirely like the way Slughorn operates, but he was never a criminal, he remained a friend of Lily's to the day she died,  he's a respected and valuable member of the WW, and no one suggests that he should have been in another house. 

It was clearly Slughorn who obtained the reinforcements and led them back to the castle, to a battle that seemed far from winnable, considering that the castle defenders were outnumbered and Voldemort had just announced Harry was dead.  I ask, as I did with Draco, what you think a decent person would have done in this situation that Slughorn did not do?

Whether the  Slytherin students followed Sluggie or not is a question of choosing what to believe. But clearly they had that choice, and so, back in the day, did Snape. He could have chosen to be the sort of Slytherin that Slughorn would be proud of instead of sticking to his little Death Eater friends.

Pippin