HuddyJoy0524 I agree with you...sort of. I am one of those people who, after SS, trusted Snape even though i never really liked him as a character. I continued to trust him. I'm not a Snape lover, however, i think it still took balls to do what he did. You can argue that he is a nasty man, but he obviously had a heart and was willing to put the lives of Harry and Lily over his own in order to protect them. That takes guts and bravery. He may have done it for selfish reasons, but did not other characters do the same throughout the series? I agree that there is now an unusually large fanbase for Snape when a few years back everyone hated him. And yes, he doesnt deserve to be loved for the way he treated Harry and others, but if you put yourself in his shoes you may find that you could do the same. I think Jo made the Slytherins generally the nasty ones to distinguish between the "good guys" and "bad guys." She wanted to make it clear i think and chose to do it that way.

LadyNottingham IN DEFENSE OF SLYTHERIN How strange the way you see people in black or white. People all come in various shades of gray. People and deeds are quite differents things. As Sirius said to Harry : "We've all got both light and dark inside of us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are." "All the villians are Slytherins (at least on first sight) and they're either murderers, bullies or nasty at best." => I think there are at least one example that can belie this : Dolores Umbridge. We do not know what her house is, and for all we know of her, she may have been sorted in any House. Personally, I think she had been sorted into Hufflepuff, for being hardworking and loyal. Loyalty is a paramount quality for her and she had proved it so. It's a shame we do not know about her house (would like JKR to clarify the matter one day !) because she may prove that people behaving nastily are not always coming from Slytherin. I'm aware I take a risk here, in case she had been sorted in Slytherin. But in case she had not ? Besides, she acted on a quality (loyalty) that used to an extreme measure was a fault (her total lack of lucidity and utter blindness in front of Fudge). "Slytherins are not bad at best because they're egocentric and because they have no class." => No class ? A person may behave badly, it has nothing to do with being class. See the Malfoys. => Egocentric ? Well, sorry to break this to you, but everyone is. That's part of human nature. In some situations, people can behave in a very egocentric fashion while in other situations, they won't. "Snape also made fun of Neville even though he knew what happened to his parents (partly thanks to him)." => Severus was never responsible for what had happened to the Longbottoms. Bellatrix Lestrange, her brother-in-law Rabastan Lestrange and Barty Crouch Jr were. They were jailed in Azkaban for that. That statement is wrong. "In my opinion Snape wasn't good, nor brave. He was just in love with Lily and felt bad because of what happened to her thanks to him." => The issue is not whether he was good or not, brave or not. The issue is that he chose to act on the light side of himself, guided by love, not on his dark side. => What happened to the Potters was not because of Severus. They had put their faith into the wrong person, Wormtail. Oh, a Gryffindor, by the way... => Severus believed he had betrayed Lily by delivering an incomplete prophecy to Voldemort. But it could have related to 2 boys. He chose to kill the Potters because he had been tipped by Wormtail who was the real traitor to his friends. => Severus wanted to die when Lily died. He could have killed himself and be off with it. He did not. It requires a lot of courage to keep going despite such a loss. The rest of his story speaks by itself - he was brave beyond measure. Nuff said. I don't say that Severus was a nice man. He was not. But there again, he had to keep his cover intact. He could not let go of a grudge over a man that had eventually married the woman Severus loved. He was mean with people in general because he had been raised like that - let's do not forget he had been an abused child. Many abused children (not all of them, but still many) turn abusers later in life. He's not Mr Perfection, but he was not a monster either. He was human, with many flaws. I give him some extenuating circumstances, all things considered. People are the product of their upbringing, among other things. It goes for the Malfoys. I don't defend them but I must reckon that they act like this because they have a lot of prejudices bestowed on them right from birth. No wonder they have prejudices about wealth/poverty and blood purity. The same happens around us. We may talk about class prejudice too. Take Draco (and Pansy too) for example : he just repeats what he hears at home. Like many kids do, even if deep down they are not what their words may define them to be. The same thing must have happened to Narcissa and Lucius. It's very difficult to change one's outlook. The deeper prejudices are rooted, the more difficult it is to uproot and get rid of them. Have you ever witnessed that in children ? It's quite common, I can assure you. We all have prejudices and we repeated what we heard at home back in the school yard. I work with kids, I can tell you this is very common. That's where teachers interfere : trying to show the kids something different from their sometimes negative family perspectives. Not an easy task, believe me. Narcissa is a mom. Like Lily, she did her best to protect her only son. You said that Lily could have been in Slytherin in your precedent article. I disagree as she cast herself between the Dark Lord and Harry. Narcissa protected her son in a very Slytherin fashion : enroling another Slytherin to do the job (Severus in HBP), slithering her own way in a home commandeered by Voldemort, and eventually betraying the Dark Lord by saving Harry's life, lying to Voldemort. All this in order to protect her only son. There are many ways to cope with a given situation. Depends on the circumstances. Lily chose one way, Narcissa another. Both for the same outcome : ensure their respective sons live. About Regulus : "he decided to desert Voldemort partly because Voldemort threatened to kill his house-elf." => I wonder where you've read that. Regulus was attached to Kreacher because given his family environment (fully described by Sirius) - Mrs Black was not the maternal sort most likely. It happened in some aristocratic families : the children were brought up by nannies that gave them more affection than their natural parents. Kreacher must have played the same part as a nanny to Regulus (but not to Sirius). In his letter in the locket, Regulus clearly states that he hoped someone would bring down Voldemort in the future. He had not done this because he was not happy that the Dark Lord had mistreated his elf. He knew that the Dark Lord despised elves and how he would treat Kreacher, yet he accepted to lend him the creature. He had betrayed Voldemort (and gave his life in the process) because he no longer believed in him and/or was appalled by the way things had turned back then. He had this thought in mind well before the cave events when Voldemort had hidden his Horcrux in the cave by the sea. "Neither man really changed his views in my opinion." => I've learnt in life that nobody changes their opinion because of someone else. That's a process that is entirely personal. A person may change their opinion because someone had brought them another perspective. But the real, deep change, as experienced by Severus and Regulus, came from within them only, from their own motivations. You cannot change a person's mind. Only that person can, over themselves. If the person has not made the change deep down their hearts/minds, nothing can be done, whatever amount of persuasion involved. Life taught me that. About Slughorn : "... but people were in danger and he didn't want to share the information he had. He could've confided in Dumbledore, he wouldn't be sent to Azkaban for what he did. Yet his reputation was more important to him." => I don't think this was the point really here. I believe Horace did not realize back then in the 1940s that Riddle really planned to create Horcruxes. Riddle had just told him their conversation back then had been for academic purposes. Whether he was a coward or not is not the issue either. Once again, he's a flawed human, like all of us here. Having a gang of Death-Eaters on one's tail is something very difficult to live with - he was always on the go to escape them, even if he wasn't young anymore and should enjoy a nice retirement. Yet, he did not betrayed anybody - unlike some Gryffindor we know. Slughorn is not a courageous man, but he never pretended he was. He just tried to live with his guilt and had no idea whom he could confide in, knowing that the people aware of that secret would most likely finish on the go like him at best, or killed at worst. Some people prefer carry their burden on their own. So we should not be too judgemental on an old man. Bellatrix : indeed. Her place is in an insane asylum, not a jail. Like many criminals nowadays who unfortunately end up in prisons and go out once their time done, but still as insane as ever and ready to commit other crimes again. I wished you could expand more about Gryffindors. What about the deeds of a Peter Pettigrew ? What would you say about him ? What would you say about Sirius when he said to Harry to measure a man on the way he treats his inferiors, not his equals, while behaving not nicely at all with Kreacher ? What about the way Dumbledore used both Harry and Severus, using a child and a man's feelings of guilt, remorse and love, to further his agenda, even if it was for the Greater Good ? What about Xeno Lovegood's reaction to Harry and Ron and Hermione in DH ? There again, because he was a father desperate to save his daughter and ready to betray his own convictions. No judgement here from my part on him. Just to show that extreme situations can lead to unexpected behaviors sometimes. All this to show that people are not black or white. That they are flawed and grand at the same time, reacting differently when coping to certain situations. They are just humans - Slytherins like the others. They make no exceptions.

BlackHound LN, bravo. I answered shortly after HuddyJoy did, but I deleted my post because it just pushed too many of my bloody buttons. Great post, as always. 50 points to Slytherin. ;)

Barby23 Great article! I don't understand what LN is trying to say by retelling the story that we all know. Nothing in the article contradict what LN wrote, cause it's true that all Slytherins, even those who were on the good side in the end, had a dark side to their character. On the other had there are a bunch of Hufflepuff, Ravenclaws and Gryffindors we meet that are moslty good. It's almost a rule, if you're a Slytherin you are bad. I also wish we met a normal Slytherin who didn't have smt bad to themselves (like a Slytherin Dean Tomas...)

Barby23 Also, no matter what Snape did in the end, I can't consider a person who bullies little kids, to be good. On top of that, poor Lupin lost his job, because a 40 year old man can't get over his teenage grudges.

BlackHound Barby, you're entitled to your opinion just as LN is. But by saying "it's almost a rule, if you're a Slytherin you are bad", you are stating your opinion like it's a fact, and it isn't. Have you forgotten what Sirius Black said? That we ALL have Light and Dark within us...we have to choose which to follow. LN isn't "retelling the story we all know", she's giving her opinion, and really, not everyone knows the whole story. Equally, each individual has their own interpretation of the story JKR told. We're not all going to agree on everything all the time, even though we're all fans. And "Poor Lupin" seemed to understand why things played out the way they did. Did you forget what he told Harry? That no parent would want their child taught by a [i]werewolf?[/i] Remus would have been sacked anyway, or worse.

Hraesvelg LadyNottingham, I will not take your comment as criticism because I don't see how it contradicts anything I wrote (or at least it doesn't go against most of it). If you kill, support or do nothing to stop killing of innocent people just because they're of different race, religion or nationality, you're bad. Those are the Death Eaters and those who sympathize them. In the books, the Slytherins we meet fall under that category or used to be a part of that category. Not killing or not supporting killings of innocent people doesn't automatically make you good either. It just makes you normal. Draco didn't want to kill Dumbledore. That doesn't make him good. It just makes him normal. To see if somebody is good or bad you have to take the little things into consideration as well. Thank you very much for quoting Sirius there. The treatment of those inferior to you. Like kids, for example. Snape was awful to kids, wouldn't you agree? Snape was bullied as a child and he became a bully. It happens often. I agree. But that's an explanation. Not an excuse. Imagine your life depends on whether Slughorn gives the info he has and he doesn't want to do it because it would ruin his reputation. Would you still defend his cowardly behaviour? Slughorn is an intelligent man. I don't believe he didn't know how Voldemort managed to come back since he remebered very well the day he told him about horcruxes (he even tried to manipulate the memory). Pettigrew is not a Slytherin, true. But apparently he's the only evil non-Slytherin (granted, we don't know about Umbridge). On every bad Gryffindor there comes a hundred bad Slytherins at least. In Gryffindor/Ravenclaw/Hufflepuff, the bad people stand out (like Pettigrew). In Slytherin, the good people stand out (like Andromeda). Why is that so? Is it that bad to be ambitious and cunning? On the whole, Slytherins are portayed as bad. Those we meet treat others badly, they cheat, they're the least loyal of the lot and, often, they're cowardly. Most of them aren't evil. But they're bad. There's difference between those two things in my eyes. Snape isn't an evil character. But he's bad IMO. And so are most Slytherins. Why didn't we (Harry) meet one really good Slytherin (I mean a normal one who doesn't have a dark past and isn't/wasn't a supremacist)? We were merely told Andromeda was one. That's why I wanted Lily to be a Slytherin. I hope I cleared things up now. Barby23, you and I often agree on things! ;) Thanks for your comment! That's exactly what I had in mind. HuddyJoy, thanks for you response! :) And you too Blackhound, even if we disagree.

BlackHound But we do meet Andromeda, albeit breifly, in DH. We meet her face to face. She was disowned for marrying the Muggle-born wizard Ted Tonks. I think it would have been kinda hard for Tonks to grow up to be the person she became if her mother was as selfish and twisted as Narcissa and Bellatrix. She raises Teddy Lupin, and we have an idea that he turned out quite alright since he's snogging Victoire Weasley (the daughter of a part-Veela and a Blood-Traitor latent werewolf) [i]in public[/i], clearly with no shame, no apparent fear of being disowned by his grandmother. ;) :D I still maintain you [i]can not[/i] brand [i]an entire House[/i] as "bad" based entirely on the examples that we have from Harry's experience. Hogwarts had, at that time, been around for a little more than a thousand years. If you figure that there are around 250 students per House (JKR's figuring) that's around 250,000 Slytherins over the course of those 1,000 years. Sorry, I can't believe that even [i]most[/i] of those individuals were "not bad at best". We don't know what "Good" Slytherins there may have been before the rise of Voldemort, because Harry & Co. didn't go looking for that information. I don't see how anyone can extrapolate that "for every one bad Gryffindor there comes a hundred bad Slytherins at least". Someone show me the historical data for the 1,000+ years to back that up, and I'll agree. Until then, I will maintain that since we don't know about every member of Slytherin House that has ever existed, it is not right to say that [i]all[/i] Slytherins are "not bad at best". And you know...the phrase is, "a [i]worthy[/i] Gryffindor", which sounds to me like Godric himself knew that just being in that House didn't guarantee that a person was [i]Good.[/i]

HuddyJoy0524 I think that another thing we are missing here is that we are dealing with a period of history that is minor. @Blackhound mentioned that Hogwart opened only 1000 years or so ago before Harry. All the crap with Voldemort and his followers took place over a period of about 100 years. Someone in the story at some point stated that most of the Death Eaters came from Slytherin. That's because Voldemort did. So, naturally, his followers would want to follow in his footsteps. Therefore, Slytherin became tainted. But it's implied that after Voldemort is gone Slytherin is cleansed and brought back to the fold and before Voldemort's time, Slytherin was probably just like any other house. Yeah, they may have been a little more likely to be nasty to get what they want...but many people do that all the time. I'm not excusing it, but it's human nature. We also can't forget that Godric Gryffindor is subtlety made to be arrogant and pompous as well by Jo (at least i got that impression). I think that overall, as @LN pointed out, things aren't black and white. EVERY single character, except for maybe Voldemort, had good and bad qualities and were made to be so pointedly human that it's very hard not to empathize or sympathize with all of them at some point (honestly, i think i have reading through the books). JK Rowling purposefully makes grey areas in order to show that the world can be made up of grey areas.

Hraesvelg Again, that's the point. Nobody is just good or just evil. I'm not even suggesting something like that. That's NOT, I repeat, what the article is about. It's not realistic that all of them are evil, so why didn't we meet a single Susan Bones-like decent Slytherin? They're constantly shown as bad and we had to wait until DH to conclude that some of them were just nasty. Why wasn't there just one decent Slytherin who joined the Order because he believed they were right, who didn't have connections to DEs and who wasn't disliked by everybody? Why can we say for just about any Hufflepuff/Ravenclaw/Gryffindor they're GOOD, but when it comes to Slytherins we can, at best, say they TURNED OUT OKAY, BUT... Do you see where I'm getting at? Not all of them are bad (statistics!), but Harry can't really say that from his PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. Even the good ones either treated him badly or caused him problems some other way. We're told not all of them are bad, but we don't have proof. That's my point. If Slytherin were like any other house, I'm sure Albus wouldn't be scared of ending up there. They're not like any other house because it was Slytherin who rebelled. Hagrid thinks they're all bad, the Weasleys think all Slytherins are bad (and how long is their line? Arthur's mum was a Black on top of it), from Harry's experience they're pretty bad,... Why didn't we see more members of other houses who were mean and nasty to Harry? I'm not implying they don't have flaws, but in comparision to what WE'VE SEEN of Slytherins, they're really good. Also, didn't JKR say Snape was a terrible character? And that Draco was not Tom Felton but a nasty boy? That Pansy is really bad? These people (especially Snape) turned out to be okay in the end. But even the author says they're not good.

BlackHound **Edited, because clearly my sarcasm was far too much.**

Barby23 Are you like 5 years old???

kaatie I forgive the Slytherins for all of these (well not Voldemort and Bellatrix, sorry i wish i was that forgiving lol). They were taught pureblood supremacy from birth, or at least picked it up in 1st year and never learned better. They're ambitious want to feel more important than they actually are so they demean muggles and muggleborns to feel like they're better. Its a pride thing as much as it is an insecurity thing. They were also drawn in and fooled by a charismatic leader, so if anyone's to blame its only Voldemort!

xyluss I wonder why no one has brought up how extremely horrible ron was to hermione their first year. I mean he acted towards hermione in a completely " Slytherin" way. Also, remember how horrible the school was to harry when he was selected for the tro wizard tournament? Every single house turned into a "Slytherin" towards harry. Think about how cold every single person is towards moaning myrtle. So empathy or sympathy at all from anyone. Think about how no one ever tries to reach out to grumpy Filtch. He was beneath everyone. No one remembers how horrible percy became?! He turned around.. at the last second. But he still went nasty. I could find many more things but the biggest and most significant.. if Dumbledore hadn't won the battle against his dark half, he would have ruledthe world with Grindelwald far before Voldemort tried. Also, when everyone constantly tells you something it starts to stick. You have a group of people tell someone they worthless every day and they start to act worthless and believe they are. Everyone has ganged up on slytherin and deemed them all nasty evil people. Well, the Slytherins eventually adopted that demeanor and ran woth it. Also. Um. Remember how dispicably James treated Severus??? And Sirius too? And Remus just turned a blind eye. Darkness was in their hearts to be that way to another human. Yet they redeemed themselves. Dumbledore redeemed himself. Why can't Slytherins?