Prophecy Pub/Less Than The Meanest Ghost/Black Family Tree

[nrenka]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at q...> 
wrote:

> Pippin:
> Heh heh. That presupposes you know what the theme is. And Muggleborn
> Slytherins are no longer an entirely fanonical concept.
> Slughorn declares that he used to tell Lily she ought to have been 
> in his House. (HBP ch 4)
> 
> While he's not the Hat, and it's not proof that Muggleborns are
> eligible, he was head of Slytherin, and ought to know who was 
> eligible and who wasn't.

But English modals are so delightfully ambiguous, much more so than 
the German system which currently plagues me.  One can say that to 
someone while knowing full well that it both is and was a complete 
impossibility.  I say to people "Oh, you ought to (or more likely I 
say 'should have' because 'ought' is less common, I think, in 
vernacular American English) have come" even when I know full well 
that it was utterly impossible for them to have.

Maybe even *especially* when I know that they absolutely could not 
have come.

> I remind you (again) that Slytherin was noted for his disregard of 
> rules. Certainly there are loads of Slytherins who aren't "of great 
> cunning" so why couldn't the Hat be just as flexible about pure 
> blood?

Well, still going with the scanty canon that we have, it was the 
blood issue which broke the whole alliance of Founders down, wasn't 
it?  Be it safety or the hints that Salazar just thought pure blood 
was innately better, that's what we have to go on.  I agree, of 
course, that this theme could gain additional information to the 
point where we really have to rethink it, where a different angle is 
revealed as always having been possible in the incomplete knowledge 
that we have.  But as of right now I'm going with what canon we have 
(and the continued importance of the blood theme and how people treat 
it), rather than the inclination to paint Salazar in as kindly and 
flexible a light as one can.

-Nora loves her some subjective modals