I don’t think this makes sense. The point of there being a Slytherin house, I think, is that the not-good is also necessary to the whole, just as Snape’s deceitfulness was essential to fighting Voldemort…

If not, 50 students? 50?? That might solve the problem of “can this gang shoot straight” with the answer being, no, no they can’t–it’s a bunch of underskilled teenagers getting slaughtered by hyperskilled adults. But that’s a grimmer scene by far than a lot of the descriptive passages in the Battle of Hogwarts would imply.

I also think yes, at this point, the good guys are pretty well justified with doing something more than stunning the Death Eaters. Not the least of which is that often these are people who’ve had TWO chances to make something better of themselves, and TWICE they’ve joined up to kill and torment others.

Maybe one reason Rowling doesn’t kill a lot of Death Eaters is that in the end we don’t really know many of them with any degree of specificity. There’s the Blacks and the Malfoys, and then in this book we get a few more of them, but we know very little about even the newer named Death Eaters other than their names and some of their more snivvely habits. Bellatrix needs to get a big death scene because she’s such an out-and-out villain. The Malfoys need to survive for plot reasons. After that, there’s not many dead Death Eaters who would stir us either way, really, if we heard that they had been killed.

Fifty “other” people have died in the Battle of Hogwarts? Nameless too, they are. It really reminds me of the part in Henry V, when Henry asks who was killed during the battle and is told the names of the 4 nobles who have died and then “None else of name, but five and twenty” (IV.viii.105). Presumably, many of the fifty others are students at Hogwarts, and I think they deserve names. It’s like they were wearing the red uniform on StarTrek or are unnamed henchmen in a James Bond movie, and I think it felt disjointed because I the book didn’t feel like that–previously all deaths were significant and addressed.

THis also leads into why I thought the Battle of Hogwarts was somewhat problematic. It’s like a reverse Agincourt. DeathEaters kill fiftysome good guys, the good guys kill 2 Death Eaters and win (of course, they are the worst two, but still). For once in a work of popular culture, it seems like the good guys just can’t shoot straight. I understand why Harry is Unforgiveable Curse-averse, and I think that is fine for his character (Harry is not Prince Hal), but shouldn’t almost everyone else be shooting to kill at this point? Is it that they are not dueling to kill or that they are just not good at it? Yes, Mrs. Weasley kills Bellatrix, but I just thought that the body count on the Death Eater side would be a little higher. And I would have appreciated deaths that were not movtivated by personal revenge (the deaths of Harry’s parents, deaths of Fred, danger to the Weasleys), but just by the necessity of war. It seems as though in Rowling’s world, she can’t imagine a good guy killing someone just because the cause warrants it. Even Dumbledore’s triumph over Grindelwald has a “personal” element to it–his sister. Just for once, can it NOT be personal, but be for the side of good.

If I had to speculate further, I would probably say that the problem comes from placing a narrative where victory comes through sacrifice, resurrection, and redemption over a narrative that seems more militaristic (The Battle of Hogwarts–where one would assume that victory would be achieved more Prince Hal style). It really seems as if the only way the good guys can win is through Harry’s sacrifice, because they are certainly not going to win the day in a straight up fight (even though their numbers seem superior, they have some of the most talented wizards (the teachers) and they are on their home turf).

Despite these lengthy objections, I still really liked the book and felt the series ended OK.

This sounds like it should be written by the bastard son of J. K. Rowling and Iain Banks. (Or, if you’re in a bad enough mood, J. K. Rowling and China Miéville.)

We’re told that Godric’s Hollow was founded at a rather notable historic moment in the Muggle world–I thought the clear implication was that wizards decided they had to go into seclusion away from Muggles as a result of the tumult of the Reformation, the English Civil War, Puritanism, and so on. So now witches and wizards are just a legend to Muggles.

If I were the Muggle Prime Minister after Voldemort is dead, I’d be quietly speaking to a few trusted subordinates about striking back at the wizarding world as a whole. Lots of people dead and not a thing that the PM can do about it–yet.

Only problem with this idea is that we were told in the first book that Dumbledore was in Griffindor. Hermione said so, so it must be true.

Lots of people seem to complain about this moralistic dualism between Slytherin and everybody else. Remember, though, that the Slytherin House was founded by Salazar Slytherin who created a schizm and ultimately left the school over its admittance policy. The founder wasn’t certfiably evil, but he was a bigot. And that bigotry was used and exploited in various ways over the years. Hogwarts was founded circa 1000. The International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy was signed in 1692, but clearly didn’t resolve some very old tensions between Muggles and Wizards. And the tension within the wizarding community remained into the (fictional) present day, where bigotry could be exploited for the purpose of consolidating power.

So you could say that the 17 year life of Harry Potter coincides with the great civil war of the wizarding world. Among other things, this war will decide whether the wizarding world will live in peaceful coexistence with non-magical humans, or will become an invisible genocidal regime, like a Hitler with an S.S. that only the Prime Minister even knows about.

A Scrimgoeur or Kingsley Shacklebolt follow-up with the British P.M. would have been interesting, perhaps an argument about whether the time might come where the crumbling resistance might have to break their secrecy so as to give the poor Muggles a chance to hide/defend themselves.

And remember too that just because most of the Slytherin didn’t help Harry, most of them didn’t join the death-eaters either. Self-preservation is one of the most frequently noted Slytherin characteristics, and you see that again and again through Malfoy behavior. (And frankly, self-preservation is supposedly the root of the pure-blood hostility toward non-magical people.) You could assume that in a permanent Voldemort regime, Slytherins would most easily go along to get along, much as many people have throughout the ages under fascist or totalitarian regimes.

Slughorn is meant to be the redemptive Slytherin (along with Snape). Remember that he’s been hiding to preserve himeself at the beginning of 6. And Dumbledore tells him that it’s time for him to pick sides. And he does. He may be a pompous jerk, but he does fight to protect Hogwarts against the Death-eaters.

these things seem admirable to me–sticking one’s neck out for a friend. also, remember we see the james’ past through the bitter memories of snape, so we see him at his worst moments.

I was also disappointed that none of the Slytherin students came over to the Light side of the force–although she continued to give lip service to the idea that being a Slytherin is not necessarily evidence of evilness, JKR is pretty light on the examples. Snape, Slughorn, and the reluctant aid of Sirus’s ancestor (via his portrait) don’t make a terribly compelling case.

I’m completely with you, though I recognize that in hammering on this point–on the whole question of the different houses and what the whole James-Snape-Lily dynamic is supposed to show us, if anything–as I have here and on my own blog with Alan and Karl simply the reveals the degree to which I still wish I could see in this book something different than the story Rowling plainly intended to give us. But I don’t care–I wanted a good Slytherin! I wanted some sort of intra-Hogwarts (or indeed, wizarding-world-wide) moment of change or recognition! And I continue to insist that, on some level or another, Rowling was at least initially fiddling around with that. You have all those old comments from Dumbledore talking about how there’s something fundamentally wrong with how wizards have run their world, ignoring the Muggles and elves; you have his comment–relayed through the Pensieve–that Hogwarts probably “sorts too soon.” Moreover, poke around Rowling’s website and some of her interviews, and you’ll see that she had set up back stories for several Slytherin student characters–in particular a chap named Nott–that were at one time going to serve as a counterpoint to the Malfoys. Certainly Slughorn is such, with him very specifically giving Draco the cold shoulder in the sixth book. So the raw material was there. But in the end, she didn’t see developing it as important to her bildungsroman…and I suppose that’s a legitimate choice, though a frustrating one for some of her readers.

Also, JKR spends so much time cutting down James Potter–we see him mostly through Snape’s eyes–that I can’t see what Lily ever saw in him, though it must have been something. But all we ever see of him is that he was an arrogant git who liked to play tricks on people. I guess she just takes for granted the hero-worship that young children have for their parents, and goes from there.

This is something else that Alan and Karl and I discussed in the comments on my blog: how did James change? All we ever are told is that he “grew up.” Well hell, this whole story is about Harry growing up, and we can see in ain’t easy. Why did James manage it, and Snape not? (Taking “growing up” to mean changing for the sake of love, for the sake of something asked of you by others.) But again, that is not the story we’re getting, except in small glimpses here and there.

Tim,

This is why I’m thinking that if she ever wants to write a new series, it would be great to make Albus Severus the central character and stick him in Slytherin. Maybe a new threat rises where love and self-sacrifice aren’t the answer, but instead what’s needed is the controlled and discreet application of power.

Oh, yes! Tim, that’s brilliant. And there’s a foundation laid for sucha generational conflict, or at least inconsistency–notice how easily the rules against memory manipulation or Unforgivable Curses go out the window once war is declared. Couldn’t you just see Harry coming down hard on Albus for deciding to use a little bit of the Dark Arts, and then, as the story progresses, learning of his dad’s own willingness to get Dark occasionally (“You’ve got to mean them, Potter!”) in the past?