Quote from Naaga on May 3, 2023, 12:42 pm

Source: Fanon Vs Canon

Nearly all Slytherins are evil.

This fanon splits in two directions. There are fen who believe that all Slytherins are evil, and there are fen who believe that JK Rowling portrays all Slytherins as evil but that this is an act of bigotry on her part. Neither is fully canon-compatible, although there is certainly some wiggle room as to what proportion of Slytherins you think are wrong 'uns.

To begin with, I find it helps to remember that although Rowling puts Harry in Gryffindor and talks about how much she admires bravery, she herself dresses in green and silver and little snakes. She said in an interview that when she took the house test on Pottermore she got Gryffindor, apparently because she had deliberately answered the questions that way, but then she went on to say that the reason so many Gryffindors stayed to fight in the final battle was because that house was full of reckless, foolhardy show-offs.

Rowling says that all her characters contain elements of herself but admits to having based Snape on John Nettleship, her own Chemistry master, and in most respects you can see the resemblance. John was brilliant, loyal, loving, limitlessly brave but also socially awkward, hot-tempered, sometimes catty and in some ways immature, and at the time Rowling knew him he was also half out of his mind with chronic insomnia, which explains a lot about Snape. But the more unpleasant aspects of Snape's character, his spitefulness and grudge-bearing, don't belong to John at all, whereas Rowling has made it very clear that she herself is still carrying childhood grudges. It seems likely, therefore, that her ambiguous attitude to Snape - and by extension to all Slytherins - is at least in part because she has put into Snape aspects of herself which she doesn't like about herself, and she can't understand why many fen still love him.

In canon, Hagrid tells Harry that there was never a witch or wizard who went bad who wasn't a Slytherin. Quite apart from the fact that we know that many foreign wizwitches went bad and followed Grindelwald, Hagrid is lying even as regards British wizwitches, since we know he knows that one of the Gryffindor Marauders went to the bad, became a senior Death Eater and betrayed his friends, even if he's confused about which one. Possibly he regards Sirius as an honorary Slytherin because he was a Black. Characters whom Harry likes, especially the Twins, are seen to jeer at and denigrate Slytherin at every turn. James first began to pick on Severus because Severus wanted to be in Slytherin, and all the other houses will cheer for whatever team is playing against Slytherin.

We do not know whether it's true that nearly all Death Eaters were in Slytherin, or not. It's certainly true that, with the exception of Peter Pettigrew, a Gryffindor, and Quirrell, supposedly a Ravenclaw, every Death Eater whose house affiliation we know of was a Slytherin, and so was Umbridge (probably by default, since she was disloyal, thick and a coward). We do not know how large a part house-loyalty may have played in this and whether, had Tom Riddle been a Ravenclaw, it would have been mainly Ravenclaws who followed him.

We see some Slytherin players employing dirty tricks at Quidditch, both in Harry's day and in McGonagall's schooldays - but then if you read Quidditch Through the Ages it seems as if cheating is the norm. Indeed, it could be argued that cheating at Quidditch is so universal that to some extent cheating is the game. [This may have something to do with the popularity of a card-game called Cheat when Rowling and I were teenagers.] We can say that at Hogwarts the Slytherins do seem to cheat more than the other teams, perhaps because they are more ambitious - although ambition can be aimed at artistic or scientific skill as easily as at worldly success.

When it comes to the staff we are told that Snape and McGonagall are exactly as partisan as each other when it comes to Quidditch, although both of them "attempted to disguise it under a decent pretence of sportmanship": but we can say that Snape's partisanship involves multiple-booking the pitch for practice sessions and turning a blind eye when some of his house students hex the Gryffindor team, while McGonagall's consists in not giving her students homework in order to free up more time to practise. On the other hand she cheated right at the outset to get Harry onto her team, because we're told that it was actually against school rules for a first year to be on the team, and she had to ask Dumbledore to bend the rule for her. It's Pottermore canon that McGonagall is biased against Slytherin after a Slytherin player fouled her during a Quidditch match when she was about eighteen. At least, she's determined to see them lose at Quidditch - and that kind of lifelong resentment is pretty-well bound to spill over into other areas.

Just as an impression is created that Snape is constantly taking points from Gryffindor, when in fact he is constantly taking points from the Trio, specifically, so an impression is created that Harry has constant problems with Slytherins, when in fact he has constant problems with Draco and his cronies, specifically. When it was announced that Hagrid would be the new Care of Magical Creatures teacher, the applause was "tumultuous at the Gryffindor table in particular", which strongly implies that all the other tables including Slytherin applauded, although Gryffindor applauded loudest. When Harry rode on Buckbeak in front of the mixed Gryffindor/Slytherin class, "everyone except Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle cheered". Pansy Parkinson and her friends jeer at Hermione from behind Snape's back during the teeth incident, and it is Pansy who suggests handing Harry over to the Dark Lord to protect the school - but she too is one of Draco's immediate circle. Umbridge's gang of thugs do seem to all be Slytherins, but again they are mainly Draco's gang, and she is a Slytherin herself. That is, it may be house-bias rather than intrinsic evil which leads a Slytherin teacher to look for, and find, Slytherin recruits.

Then, there's a very odd bit of business which you may say is an official canon-compatible fanon. On 1^st February 2008 Rowling said at interview "A part of the final battle that made me smile was Slughorn galloping back with Slytherins, [cut] they'd gone off to get reinforcements first, you know what I'm saying? But yes, they came back, they came back to fight, so I mean - but I'm sure that many people would say 'Well, that's common sense, isn't it? Isn't that smart, to get out, get more people and come back with them?' It's the old saying, 'There is no truth, there are only points of view.'" This scene does not exist in the book.

What we do find, however, is this: "And now there were more, even more people storming up the front steps, and Harry saw Charlie Weasley overtaking Horace Slughorn, who was still wearing his emerald pyjamas. They seemed to have returned at the head of what looked like the families and friends of every Hogwarts student who had remained to fight, along with the shopkeepers and homeowners of Hogsmeade." This reads superficially as if "every Hogwarts student who had remained to fight" is referring to the non-Slytherin students who are already up at the castle, but it seems pretty clear from JK's comments that what she had in mind was that this group included many Slytherin students who had remained in Hogsmeade while they summoned reinforcements, or who had been Flooed to their families only to come back with those families in tow. Even though it doesn't say so on the page.

Against this we have Voldemort in the Shrieking Shack, saying to Lucius "If your son is dead, Lucius, it is not my fault. He did not come and join me, like the rest of the Slytherins." which suggests that many of the Slytherins had joined the Death Eaters. This contradicts Rowling's statement to some extent, but is feasible time-wise.

In the scene in the Great Hall, McGonagall told all the students they would have to be evacuated, and Ernie Macmillan asked if they could stay to fight if they wanted to, and McGonagall said they could if they were of-age. Pansy Parkinson (only) wanted to hand Harry over. The other three houses rose and faced Slytherin, then drew their wands on Pansy (only). The rest of Slytherin remained seated and uninvolved, but this incident must have left them feeling isolated. McGonagall then said "Thank you, Miss Parkinson. You will leave the Hall first with Mr Filch. If the rest of your house could follow." and all the Slytherins rose and left; followed in turn by Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff and Gryffindor. No Slytherins stayed behind to fight but there were "a number" of Ravenclaws, a larger number of Hufflepuffs and about half of Gryffindor who did, including some who were underage and had to be ordered to go.

On the face of it this makes it seem that the Slytherins didn't want to defend the school, and as if the Gryffindors are bravest and best. However, this is Rowling commenting on that scene: "There comes a point in the final book where each House has the choice whether or not to rise to a certain challenge – and that's everyone in the House. // The Slytherins, for reasons that are understandable, decide they'd rather not play. The Ravenclaws: some decide they will, some decide they won't. The Hufflepuffs, virtually to a person, stay – as do the Gryffindors. Now, the Gryffindors comprise a lot of fool-hardy and show-offy people. That's just the way it is. I'm a Gryffindor, I'm allowed to say it. There's bravery and there's also showboating, and sometimes the two go together. The Hufflepuffs stayed for a different reason. They weren't trying to show off. They weren't being reckless."

She's misremembering it slightly - less than half of the Hufflepuffs stayed - but it seems clear that this statement refers specifically to the scene in the Great Hall and it does suggest that she is seeing the Slytherins' departure as in part a reluctance to join in with a game of one-upmanship, especially as she sees many of the Gryffindors as staying in part to show off. It has no bearing on what they did later.

There are other factors here to bear in mind. The fact that the numbers staying increased with each house suggests that there was an element of being given confidence by seeing people ahead of them opt to stay, and that part of the reason none of the Slytherins stayed was simply because they were the house who sat closest to the door and were therefore the first to leave.

Also, one of the Gryffindors who wanted to stay, and who was ordered to go because he was underage, was Colin Creevey, who from what we were told in CoS is probably Muggle-born (Draco certainly thinks he is, and he hadn't known about magic till he got his Howgarts letter), and therefore wouldn't have been at school that year. Just before the muster in the Great Hall, Harry was sent to collect people who had come in via the wizardspace tunnel from The Hogshead to the Room of Requirement. Colin Creevey's presence at the muster shows that some, perhaps many of the people from the RoR had come downstairs to sit at their house tables. These were, by definition, people who wanted to fight, because that was why they'd come there in the first place, and this group was heavily weighted towards Gryffindor and away from Slytherin. Neville had alerted some of the former Dumbledore's Army members, who in turn had alerted the rest of the DA (which included no Slytherins because none had been invited to join), the Order (which included at least two Slytherins but for differing reasons neither was present) and several former members of the Gryffindor Quidditch team (all Gryffs by definition).

So, a lot of the people who stayed behind to fight did so because they had just come to the castle for that very reason, part of the reason why there were so many Gryffindors was because more Gryffindors than other houses had been given the alert, and part of the reason why there were no Slytherin fighters at that point was because Slytherins had been excluded from the chain of communication which brought the fighters in. If Rowling's interview comment is to be believed, they gathered fighters later, once they had had a chance to speak to their families.

Just after the fourth student house left, McGonagall stated that the time was half an hour before midnight. Having left the Great Hall between about 11:15 and 11:25pm, the students all tramped upstairs to the seventh floor, shepherded by their Prefects, entered the Room of Requirement and filed out through the wizardspace passage which led to the upstairs room at The Hogshead. The route through this passage appears to be shorter and faster than the real distance outside, but it would still take a while to feed nearly six hundred students down it. Having emerged in The Hogshead, any students wishing to join Voldemort would have had to walk back to Hogwarts and then deep into the Forbidden Forest, since Voldemort's army was based at Aragog's old nest. They could have done this by about 1am.

Just after Snape's death, Voldemort made an announcement giving Harry an hour to come to him. Half an hour later, Harry looks at his watch and sees that it is nearly 4am, so Snape died around 3:20am. Working back through the sequence of events prior to Snape's death, Voldemort's comment to Lucius was made around 2.35am, so there was time for Voldemort to have witnessed Slytherin recruits coming in, if he was telling the truth to Lucius.

Against this, however, we have not only Rowling's comment about many Slytherins returning with reinforcements to defend the castle, but also the fact that we aren't shown any young people fighting on Voldemort's side other than Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle, and that Aberforth speaks of seeing Slytherins in general and the children of Death Eaters in particular being evacuated to safety. It's clear, therefore, that Slytherin house didn't join Voldemort en masse, even though some of them may have done. Perhaps Voldemort was already at the Shrieking Shack, saw Slughorn leading Slytherins towards the school, and just assumed they were for him. Or he saw that Draco's gang - who make up around half of their year - were joining him, and assumed that all the Slytherins would do so.

>[Depending on whether ther are eight or ten Gryffindors in Harry's year, there are twelve or ten Slytherins, since the two houses together add up to twenty students. Draco's gang comprises Draco Malfoy himself, Vincent Crabbe, Gregory Goyle, Blaise Zabini, Pansy Parkinson and possibly, but not definitely, one or more of Theodore Nott, Daphne Greengrass and Millicent Bulstrode.]

We still don't have hard evidence within the book that many of the students whose families came to fight with them were Slytherins, despite what JK said at interview. It is however reasonable to surmise that many of them were the families of students who had been evacuated to Hogsmeade and then chose to fight. Of those students who had stayed at the castle not many could send a speaking Patronus, and if they were able to Floo-call their families from the castle then their families could have stepped through the Floo to join them, not had to walk from Hogsmeade. We are not shown any evidence that any sort of broadcast about the attack was able to go out in time to summon support, only that Neville was in touch with Luna and Ginny through the old DA coins, and they then spread the word. Unless somebody at the castle had a working mobile phone, it seems likely that the families who came to join students in Hogsmeade had been summoned using a Floo in Hogsmeade.

Although the books certainly do create the impression that Slytherins are all pariahs, or that Rowling thinks they are, this was clearly not her original intention, but the accidental result of an editorial decision. She has stated that she had originally intended the books to include a major character called Mafalda Weasley, Ron's red-headed Slytherin cousin, who would be opposed to Voldemort, who would help the Trio by reporting on the activities of the DE wannabees in her house, and who was just as brilliant and as bossy as Hermione, causing Hermione to have mixed feelings as to whether Mafalda was an ally or a rival. But Mafalda, sadly, was edited out, along with Dean Thomas's back story, for reasons of compactness.

The following is a letter posted on Pottermore and supposedly given out or read to newly Sorted Slytherins, post-war.

Congratulations! I'm Prefect Gemma Farley, and I'm delighted to welcome you to SLYTHERIN HOUSE. Our emblem is the serpent, the wisest of creatures; our house colours are emerald green and silver, and our common room lies behind a concealed entrance down in the dungeons. As you'll see, its windows look out into the depths of the Hogwarts lake. We often see the giant squid swooshing by – and sometimes more interesting creatures. We like to feel that our hangout has the aura of a mysterious, underwater shipwreck.

Now, there are a few things you should know about Slytherin – and a few you should forget.

Firstly, let's dispel a few myths. You might have heard rumours about Slytherin house – that we're all into the Dark Arts, and will only talk to you if your great-grandfather was a famous wizard, and rubbish like that. Well, you don't want to believe everything you hear from competing houses. I'm not denying that we've produced our share of Dark wizards, but so have the other three houses – they just don't like admitting it. And yes, we have traditionally tended to take students who come from long lines of witches and wizards, but nowadays you'll find plenty of people in Slytherin house who have at least one Muggle parent.

Here's a little-known fact that the other three houses don't bring up much: Merlin was a Slytherin. Yes, Merlin himself, the most famous wizard in history! He learned all he knew in this very house! Do you want to follow in the footsteps of Merlin? Or would you rather sit at the old desk of that illustrious ex-Hufflepuff, Eglantine Puffett, inventor of the Self-Soaping Dishcloth?

I didn't think so.

But that's enough about what we're not. Let's talk about what we are, which is the coolest and edgiest house in this school. We play to win, because we care about the honour and traditions of Slytherin.

We also get respect from our fellow students. Yes, some of that respect might be tinged with fear, because of our Dark reputation, but you know what? It can be fun, having a reputation for walking on the wild side. Chuck out a few hints that you've got access to a whole library of curses, and see whether anyone feels like nicking your pencil case.

But we're not bad people. We're like our emblem, the snake: sleek, powerful, and frequently misunderstood.

For instance, we Slytherins look after our own – which is more than you can say for Ravenclaw. Apart from being the biggest bunch of swots you ever met, Ravenclaws are famous for clambering over each other to get good marks, whereas we Slytherins are brothers. The corridors of Hogwarts can throw up surprises for the unwary, and you'll be glad you've got the Serpents on your side as you move around the school. As far as we're concerned, once you've become a snake, you're one of ours – one of the elite.

Because you know what Salazar Slytherin looked for in his chosen students? The seeds of greatness. You've been chosen by this house because you've got the potential to be great, in the true sense of the word. All right, you might see a couple of people hanging around the common room whom you might not think are destined for anything special. Well, keep that to yourself. If the Sorting Hat put them in here, there's something great about them, and don't you forget it.

The idea that Merlin might have been in Slytherin is of course a colossal continuity error. Whilst it's true Merlin is a title not a name (it's usually translated as "from Carmarthen" but for reasons explained in this essay I personally think it means "from Caermelyn") and there may have been several of them, the Merlin, if he existed at all, was five or six hundred years too early to have ever been a student at Hogwarts, unless he went back in time. Perhaps History of Magic is still being very badly taught, and perhaps what Gemma should have said was that Merlin survived to great age and was one of the early Heads of House in Slytherin....

Cover art for The Once and Future King by TH White, painting by Rachel Nicole Saffold, part of a series of colourful poster-style illustrations

Or perhaps, of course, it's all quite deliberate and is another obscure literary reference. In TH White's young adults' series of Arthurian novels called The Once and Future King, which was popular when Rowling and I were schoolgirls, Merlin ages backwards and so remembers the future, so Rowling might really mean us to understand that Merlin was a schoolboy in the 11^thC and an old man in the 5^thC. Or she may be playing with the idea that the world of the Harry Potter books really is the world of The Once and Future King or of Kevin Crossley-Holland's The Seeing Stone series, with Arthur and Merlin living in a fantasy version of Norman England. There is some internal evidence to support the idea that this isn't our modern Britain. The Muggle prime minister in HBP would have to be John Major in our world, but he thinks of his predecessor as "he" and Major's predecessor was a "she". Pottermore claims that the Hogwarts Express is a Hall Class locomotive and was made ninety-seven years before the Hall Class was designed in our world, and two years before the successful first public test of Stephenson's Rocket, when real-life steam trains had barely begun. Rowling has witch-persecutions happening in the 10^th/11^th C, at a time when in the real world the church officially didn't believe that witches existed, and the ordinary people consulted them for medical help; and in the 15^th C when in our world they came a century later - although this last is almost certainly because Rowling doesn't know the difference between "the fifteenth century" and "the fifteen-hundreds".

Of course, this letter is intended to be Slytherins talking about themselves, so we can expect a certain degree of bias relative to whatever JKR herself thinks of Slytherin, but it shows, I think, that while she has admitted that she sees Gryffindor as full of reckless show-offs, she sees Slytherin as full not of villains but of Goths and poseurs. Which, I suppose, would include young Severus, and certainly includes Draco. In the same interview in which she spoke about the Great Hall scene, she said "Yeah, I am a Gryffindor, but that's not all good. I know Harry's a Gryffindor, but Harry's a Gryffindor for the same reason I'm a Gryffindor. I've got a short temper. Harry's got his issues. I'm just saying. Also Gryffindor hasn't, despite the way it thinks of itself, it's turned out the odd dark wizard. Hufflepuff's got pretty much a clean record. As, indeed, Slytherin has turned out more than one hero."

Given what she said at interview, it seems likely that JK showed the Slytherins all leaving, and supposedly being for Voldemort, because she was setting up a magnificent coup de theatre, echoing the big reveal about Snape, with the massed ranks of Slytherin house swarming to join the fight - but she forgot to mention the house of the people who followed Slughorn's charge across the grounds. And with or without a mass influx of Slytherin students' families, the final victory over Voldemort is quite Slytherin-heavy. Phineas Nigellus is the Trio's agent and guide, more than they know. Horace Slughorn duels the Dark Lord in his pyjamas. Narcissa Malfoy saves Harry's life in order to bring Voldemort down and save her son. The house elves swarm into battle behind Kreacher crying "Brave Regulus!", the name of the Slytherin Death Eater who gave his life in struggle against the Dark Lord because he'd learned that the Dark Lord didn't value the lives of house elves. And it is Snape who brings Harry the sword of Gryffindor; whose Patronus represents all that is good and beautiful to Harry; who dies for the cause whilst using his last breath to give Harry vital information; who is "the bravest man" and whose capacity for love and loyalty is the "flaw in the plan" which plays a major part in bringing the Dark Lord down. Interestingly, Dumbledore thought that the power the Dark Lord knew not would turn out to be love, and that it would be Harry's love; but in the event it was Snape's capacity to love and Harry's near-total lack of self-interest - another virtue which the Dark Lord knew not - which saved the day.

It was because of Snape that Lily had a free choice whether to save herself or to die defending Harry, thus giving Harry the magical protection which kept him safe and disembodied the Dark Lord for ten years; and without Narcissa and Snape at the Battle of Hogwarts there would have been no final victory.