Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

[marcmagus]

Well, I'm done. Everything else below the cut.

Interesting how all my thoughts are about Slytherins...

• Snape! He did it, all of it, to honor Lily's dying wish? That's it? The whole thing was basically just a giant guilt-trip laid by Dumbledore? And then he just . . . dies, with a whimper. He doesn't really do much of anything all book.
• I'm also disappointed in Draco. I was hoping we might be set up for some kind of moment of redemption, but I think the best we got was that he didn't actually do anything actively evil after he was pretty much defeated and powerless.
• And finally, the whole of Slytherin House?! Not a single one of them makes any gesture to take a stand for what's right, or to protect the school, or anything? What's with that crap? It seems what we're left with, at the end of the day, is that nobody sorted into Slytherin can ever become a real hero. It's so hollow.

Yeah, that's the bottom line. Being Slytherin might not make you automatically evil, but apparently it prevents you from being actively good. At best, you can be some sort of reluctant hero, guilted into it because someone died. I wanted something both more and less interesting, where House wasn't such a determinant of both personality and path. Oh, well.

And I really enjoyed reading it. I just wanted more from it.

Oh, wait, one more. Why has nobody who was alive back then ever made any mention of, passing reference to, or even obvious omission of the apparently well-known friendship between Lily and Snape. Since she apparently did know he existed, after all, and people were aware enough of their friendship to give her a hard time about it, why does it feel like it, well, never existed until this book got written?

Comments

[kiddens.livejournal.com]

I didn't read the clearing of the Slytherin table as being as unlikely as you say. Off hand, I would guess there must only be about 10 members of each house who would be old enough to stay and within Slytherin, you've got 3 who are actively pro-Voldemort. Of the other 7 or so, they've been pressured for years to be anti-Harry Potter, so any of them staying doesn't make much sense. Also, McGonnagal doesn't exactly encourage the Slytherins to stay with her dismissal of the house. I got confused about Slughorn. He does stay, doesn't he? However, both of these things aside, you're treating this as if the sorting process is random. People sorted into Slytherin are interested in Power above all else. It makes sense that few of them would be willing to stick their necks out in a reasonably hopeless battle. Personality and path determines house, not the other way around.

I read Draco's inability to identify Harry at the Malfoy Manor and him trying to contain the situation in the Room of Requirement as both being partially redeeming. I do agree that he could have done more.

[marcmagus]

Hmmm...are there really that few? It should be all of the Seventh Years and some fraction of the Sixth Years. I don't know what the student count is. But regardless of the numbers...

It's not that I think it's random. If it were random, you'd expect relatively equal numbers volunteering to help fight, tempered by years of being encouraged to act like your House peers and a herd effect when the moment came. So a lot, but not all, Gryffindor, moderate numbers of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, and a small, but probably non-zero number of Slytherin. And you might expect to see Death-Eater hopefuls among the other Houses. Which, actually, might have been interesting, come to think of it.

But Slytherin being sorted on a drive for power shouldn't automatically mean nobody would stay and fight. It's not the house of cowardice. Hell, none of those people even thinks, "This Voldemort guy is a crazy killing asshole; if nobody does something about him I or somebody I care about's going to get dead soon. This might be the only chance to do something about it; maybe I should join while there's a chance, and I can always defect or go hide if it looks like it's going to shit and he's going to win." Just one Slytherin saying, "You cowardly bitch, willing to sell out Harry hoping to save your own skin. Well, I'm better than that." That's all I wanted. So the message wouldn't be so clearly "Gryffindor are all heroes, Slytherin are all villains (unless, maybe, when they grow up, there's some major angst and a manipulative guy ," when that's so not the case.

I agree...Draco had the beginnings of a redemptive arc. It just would have been nice if she'd actually gotten around to writing the rest of it, rather than abandoning him. (I'm not sure I agree about Malfoy Manor, though . . . he may have just been being sullen and uncooperative. Although it could have become a first step toward turning it around. *sigh*)