Mugglenet.com's Harry Potter Should Have Died - Emerson Spartz [8]
And why are they all so ugly? Snape has the unfortunate grease in his hair, Narcissa has a sniffy nose problem that ruins her looks, Flint looks like a troll, and Millicent Bulstrode is fat as a toad and with the face of a hag. Is that just because Harry is so prejudiced or because they really are uglier than everyone else? It’s a funny thing that other kids are seen as all right unless they are overweight like Dudley. Luna Lovegood is odd and likes to stare at people, but Harry knows right away that she is a Ravenclaw, so he never thinks that she is sinister-ugly. Demonizing Slytherins by appearance seems like the cheapest shot of all.
So where are the “good” Slytherins? Regulus Black is heroic, but only in defense of his family. In DH, he first turns Kreacher over to the Dark Lord before changing his mind, and it’s not as if he wants all house-elves to go free. Also, in DH, Lucius and Narcissa want to save Draco, but only out of selfish reasons because they are protecting the last remaining Malfoy. Snape loves Lily Potter, but his love is described as a hopeless obsession with another man’s wife. In J.K.R.’s 2007 Carnegie Hall interview, we learn that even the Hogwarts castle turns against Snape—in spite of the good he tries to do, he doesn’t automatically get a headmaster portrait because the other portraits think he is abandoning his post. Slughorn, another Slytherin, has affection for his past students, even the Gryffindors. But he comes across as a weak social climber and, most demonizing of all, he is the one who plants the evil idea of the century—the multiple Horcruxes—in the brain of Tom Riddle. Furthermore, most of the Slytherins have nothing to do with love and family. Voldemort and Barty Crouch, Jr. admit to killing their own fathers in GoF. Bellatrix kills her cousin Sirius in OotP, and also forgets that she has a husband whenever Voldemort is around. And then there’s the dysfunctional Gaunt family, with an abusive father, snake-obsessed brother, and pathetic daughter, Merope, who traps her husband with a love potion in HBP. She is also the worst mother in the entire series, giving birth to the worst villain.
The Slytherins are shown as a bunch of indoctrinated racists and cowards, who are mostly motivated by fear. Even the youngest are seen as deserving of contempt. The other houses shun them for fear they will grow up to be criminals, and no one wants to socialize with them or be their friends. Even the Slug Club, which is supposed to let the houses mingle, never results in new understanding or friendships. Harry and Ginny, the pinnacles of Gryffindor, are just as prejudiced as anybody, acting suspicious and accusatory toward any Slytherin they cross paths with, as we see in HBP when Ginny calls Blaise Zabini a “poser” in front of the Slug Club members, and then Harry follows him to his train car to spy on the Slytherin students, for instance. Yet do the books ever for a moment ask us to think that the glorified Gryffindors could possibly be wrong? No, because the demonized Slytherins are always in the wrong! A revamp of the flawed house system could have stopped the demonizing, but no one ever gets a clue about how to do that. Such a wasted opportunity for a more uplifting tale.
Verdict
Slytherins are capable of being noble, loving, and family-oriented. But that is completely overshadowed by behavior that is petty, cruel, and vindictive. The real Dark Mark of the series is that snake symbol on their robes, which is like a prophecy of doom ensuring that the other houses basically tell them to go hang and good riddance. So the verdict has to be: Yes, the Slytherins are completely and totally unfairly demonized.
Who would you rather make out with: Voldemort or a Dementor?
Voldemort
Pick Voldemort—Dementors won’t just