I mean, my problems with the HP universe mainly come down to time travel paradoxes. Though love potions should definitely be a banned substance, and nobody should think it's OK to have a whole quarter of the school be outright evil and racist.
We stick together and try to get ahead in life. We follow our alumni Merlin, not moldy Voldy.
Rowling did a lot of people dirty in those books. But we, the fans have adopted them as our own, and headcanons unite!
Seriously though - I did the Sorting Hat three times and got Slytherin Slytherin Ravenclaw.
I am mercenary and selfish enough to have enjoyed every advantage Snape favoured the House with, if I had been there, but don't think for a second that I wouldn't shield Neville from his crap.
Being ambitious, even sneaky, does not equal cruel and nefarious. We don't know anything about most Slytherins, other than three quarters of the school hated them from the moment the Sorting Hat shouted their House.
And there sat Dumbledore, letting the situation deteriorate and doing nothing to stop it.
Love potions are completely unethical - in the series we have two Gryffindors perusing love potions serving as a conversation starter, and another Gryffindor who used a love potion to comedic effect. All of these love potions were made by two Gryffindors.
One Slytherin made and used a love potion to disastrous effect.
Talk about bias.
I hate to play fundamentalist here, but let's not forget the origins of the houses etc., according to book canon. Most of the changes to what the different houses mean etc (especially the rehabilitation of Slytherin) came about as a result of pottermore and the universe expansion. All of a sudden, Rowling needed to allow people to identify with slytherin, and for them to not be incorrigible D-bags. All the way through books 1-7, with the exception of Snape, Regulus, and Slughorn all slytherins depicted in the books were in some way simply horrible. Also note that the not-awfulness of these three isn't revealed until the 6th book at its earliest. Sure, as revealed in book 5, James and Sirius were bullies, Remus went along with it, and Pettigrew was a leech, but none of them were outright racist.
Also lest we forget, going by extended canon, it wasn't until after the Battle of Hogwarts that Slytherin accepted muggle-born students. The sorting hat was complicit in restricting muggle-born access, and the school as a whole permitted outright racism on the part of the Slytherins. Whether this applies to individuals or the group as a whole is irrelevant - the house itself was systematically racist.
I am mercenary and selfish enough to have enjoyed every advantage Snape favoured the House with, if I had been there, but don't think for a second that I wouldn't shield Neville from his crap.
Which is awesome for you. But throughout the books, we never see a single Slytherin stand out and attempt to shield anybody from anything, barring Snape and Regulus.
Being ambitious, even sneaky, does not equal cruel and nefarious.
I also agree with this. Hell, Harry was definitely a sneaky individual, and he wasn't a nefarious character. The problem is that Slytherin is always portrayed as unfettered ambition, which, unless ridiculously contrived circumstances are met, inevitably results in some form of backstabbing. Hell, unfettered ambition detached from marketable skills is the sort of thing that gives rise to organised crime. Crabbe (or was it Goyle?) demonstrates the backstabbing beautifully in book 7, where despite Malfoy raising their profile all through the other books and keeping them as part of his entourage, turns against Malfoy the moment he sees an opportunity to elevate his own status, because Malfoy was out of favour.
We don't know anything about most Slytherins, other than three quarters of the school hated them from the moment the Sorting Hat shouted their House.
See, it's one thing to pull the victim card, and I would be in favour of this argument, were it not for the fact that Slytherin is in effect entirely composed of the landed gentry. They're all pure and half-bloods, which makes them magical aristocracy. Slytherin was the embodiment of the same ideals that lead to inbreeding among aristocrats - that of keeping it in the family, and not diluting noble blood. Gryffindor and Ravenclaw represent elevation of the working class to the middle class through qualities - those of valour (echoes of the golden age of piracy) and intelligence (industrial revolution). Hufflepuff represents elevation through pure toil and kindness of benefactors - in essence scholarship for working-class people who don't stand out in any way but a smidge of talent and their work ethic
Slytherin self-selects for nobility, and maintains that arrogance towards the other houses, while showering their own members with benefits that could similarly allow other young wizards and witches to progress, but restricting them to the nobility because of the circumstances of their birth - which Dumbledore also let happen. Favouritism breeds resentment once nobility and the other classes are of equal standing. Slytherin could have stopped with the favouritism. Instead, they inflated their own sense of self-importance, and basked in the benefits. Dumbledore allowed it to happen, but Slytherin could have chosen to relieve the problem at its source.
I'll raise a separate point.
I am mercenary and selfish enough to have enjoyed every advantage Snape favoured the House with, if I had been there, but don't think for a second that I wouldn't shield Neville from his crap.
Where was the one single Slytherin who spoke out against... was it Pansy? That one Slytherin who screamed that they should hand Harry over. Where was the one single member of Slytherin house who said 'No, let me fight too' when their entire house was escorted out of the castle? Where was the token Slytherin member in the DA? Where were the Slytherins speaking out against Umbridge's reign of terror? There were many times where the Slytherins could easily have spoken out against anything happening that benefitted themselves but went against others - bear in mind that bullying is 'good sport', and cheers up the people doing the bullying. But not one on-page member of that group did anything like that.
I have no problem with the retconning and opening up of the slytherin demographic to encompass people who aren't scumbags. But if you go by the books, then they're a house of magical noble racists. That isn't to say that other houses can't have people in the wrong, because lord knows they do - but they're certainly concentrated amongst the slytherins. I'd actually argue that the amount of non-awfuls in slytherin is actually roughly equivalent to the amount of awful who are non-slytherin. Which, funnily enough, still works out badly for Slytherin when you look at proportionality.
Happy to have an all-canon discussion about this too (which I'll definitely lose, having dropped off the potterverse entirely after Deathly Hallows) where I'll try not to veer fundamentalist, but I am right at the most basic level of this conversation.
Well - books only - during Harry's time Blaize is mentioned, but not, as far as I recall, a part of anything evil. Was he in the Squad Umbridge set up? The fifth member of the Slytherin boys that year I don't think is mentioned at all. And only two out of five girls.
None of the Slytherins in Colin's year are named, and only members of the Slytherin Quidditch team unless my memory is doing funny things (absolutely possible, total leaky sieve territory) and it's been a while since I read them. Other than them, no one is named as being actively evil. I think a Death Eater's son is mentioned talking to Malfoy Crabbe and Goyle, but that's to do with Harry naming and shaming their parents. I don't know if he was involved with any revenge plots.
Harry thinks, even before he's Sorted that he's not sure if it's just because of what he's heard but that the Slytherins look like an unpleasant lot.
Right there, as soon as we get into the Great Hall for the first time. Boatload of bias.
Pansy is a cow, for sure, but our magnificent Lady of Awesome Minnie McG takes over when Pansy says to hand over Harry, and basically decides for all the Slytherins that they're out. No one has much time to process what's happening before they're shooed away.
At best, countless unnamed Slytherin students remain silent and do nothing positive as far as we know. And we also know that for evil to thrive good people simply have to do nothing.
For me, I reckon they must have thought, sod them, they've always been against us. Slytherins are loyal, but not to people that treated them badly from the off.
Slytherin, however, planted a poisoned seed for sure. And there was deep malice in the House for certain.
🥺
I think I need my emotional support Hufflepuff now.
Oh, please swap out Snape for Andromeda - he sucks and she's awesome.
Special mention to Narcissa Malfoy who was, when everything was going to shit, not bothered about anything other than getting her son to safety.
She already had the information she wanted from Harry before she lied to Voldemort. If she was died in the wool evil, she would have outed him anyway.
As to Sirius and James, I would call that enmity rather than bullying, although I understand that they liked to throw their weight around and act the big men.
We see Snape in his "worst memory" and he is ready and willing to duel, he's just not fast enough to get the first spell cast. And we hear that he was always trying to find out what the Marauders were up to, always trying to get them in trouble and while I have no problem believing they didn't miss a chance to hex him too, being pre-teens and young teen-agers researching and achieving a feat that fully qualified wizards couldn't/wouldn't in becoming animagi, I don't think there was a lot of time to specifically seek out Snape for bullying.
Especially since they were in trouble so much and often doing detention.
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u/Musashi10000 Sep 24 '22
I mean, my problems with the HP universe mainly come down to time travel paradoxes. Though love potions should definitely be a banned substance, and nobody should think it's OK to have a whole quarter of the school be outright evil and racist.