The House System was Re: Chapter Discussion: Goblet of Fire Ch. 4: Back

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 191483

Otto:
> This is part of the "house" system which is a model of the English Prep school system which divides people by "class and origin" assuming that people will "be happier with their own kind" but at the same time that leads to the attitude of "What can you expect, they're not our kind dear."

Pippin:
It's possible to see the house system as a metaphor for all kinds of social divisions, but according to Professor Binns in CoS, the Four Founders were "the greatest witches and wizards of their age."  Helga Hufflepuff may have had sympathy for "plumbers and tradesmen"  but she wasn't one of them. 

JKR puts people from all classes and walks of life in each of the Houses, and shows us that, within their Houses at least, they all get along. That's the positive side of the House system. Though we could wish that this nice harmony would spread about at Hogwarts, it's the inter-House rivalry that makes it possible. Unfortunately, while people will intuitively submerge their differences in the face of a common enemy, it takes conscious effort to join together for the common good. That's what Dumbledore was asking for when he made his plea for unity. 

Hogwarts did not achieve as much House Unity as many of us hoped, but it was still enough to defeat Voldemort. If they hadn't experienced within their own Houses that such cooperation is possible, would they have succeeded at all?

Otto:
. My opinion on what I read in the text, was
that in the final battle there was pretty much a mass desertion of Slytherin to
the other side, or, if they did not join the enemy, they pretty much stacked
arms. Slughorn's running around trumpeting "We did our part!" sounds a bit too
strained for me.

Pippin:
First, it was Phineas Nigellus, not Slughorn, who said, "And let it be noted that Slytherin House played its part. Let our contribution not be forgotten!" A small point, but important because Phineas has no reason to call attention to Slytherin's part if it wasn't largely a noble one, and nothing personal at stake if Slytherin's reputation rises. 

And it does rise, enough that nineteen years later young James knows he will get in trouble if he uses "Slytherin" as a slur, and Harry is able to say that if Al becomes a Slytherin it will make no difference to the family. Harry and Draco aren't friends, but  apparently they've realized they're better off not being enemies.

Al of course is still  worried that being Sorted to Slytherin means there is something dreadfully wrong with you -- but Harry understands that it's nothing that isn't wrong with everyone. Voldemort was able to subvert the entire Ministry, not just Slytherin House.

 As we can see from recent events, institutional corruption doesn't consist of everyone doing unspeakable acts. It consists of a few people doing unspeakable acts, while everyone else pretends, like Percy Weasley,  that nothing really bad is happening. 

But back to the question of the final battle. 

Although *we* don't know what part was played by the rest of the Slytherins in the final battle, we can assume that the characters do. And whatever it was, it was enough to change Harry's opinion, not to mention McGonagall's. Does it make sense that Slughorn's entire House deserted en masse,  but he himself was trusted to lead an army back to Hogwarts and fight side by side against Voldemort with Shacklebolt and Minerva herself?

Isn't it more likely that Minerva realized that she'd given in to a moment of paranoid hysteria, and Slughorn, who had never been a Voldemort supporter, wasn't going to become one now? 

Was it reasonable concern or paranoid hysteria that made Harry's friends draw their wands on their classmates, including eleven year old kids, because of a one remark made by a frightened teenage girl? 

 Rowling does not tell us, at least in the book itself. In an interview she said that the Slytherin students come back with Slughorn. That pleased no one, of course -- people who wanted to like the Slytherins felt cheated of their big scene, while those who didn't like them felt free not to believe her. It was maddening. 

But I believe I  finally understand what she was getting at.  

What she did was leave  the reader in Harry's position as it was when he tried to determine whether Dumbledore was making the right decisions about Snape. 

Harry's intuition told him Snape could not be trusted, though by OOP, Harry was wise enough to realize that this was mostly because he hated Snape. But Dumbledore claimed to know, for reasons that he was not willing to share with Harry, that Snape had genuinely come back to the Hogwarts side, and was now no more a Death Eater than Dumbledore himself.

It's easy to override your intuition when it's contradicted by obvious facts. The tricky thing, the thing which is right rather than easy,  is to doubt your intuition when the facts are obscure. 

Pippin