All posts by -stellecarstaiirs

Hey, I don't know if anyone remembers my first very long post on Slytherin House, and I was too busy to think of another writing idea, but here I am, this post will definitely be shorter than the former, more of my thoughts on the House members.

We can see that most Slytherin students do act arrogant, or some seem to be arrogant at some point. I don't think everyone in Slytherin is arrogant, but the image seemed to have been solidified due to Draco Malfoy and his gang throughout the whole Harry Potter series. I would have preferred JKR to write more on other students and to show the broader spectrum of Slytherin, since, as I may have mentioned multiple times before on comments and posts, the defining traits of Slytherin are more of brains, determination, and pride, and it is a more complicated concept than just the slight arrogance of being pure-bloods or in high status in the Wizarding World.

Even though I know there are lots of CC slander, let me mention Albus Potter for a moment as an example of my thought. His character is quite complicated in my opinion. Or maybe because we saw his mentality growing up all in one play. But the point is, he was smart, determined on what he wanted to do, and could deceive his parents at some point but that was for what he believed was right. Those are clearly traits of Slytherin and I think that was why he was assigned to this House.

In conclusion, the point is, when we read Harry Potter, or perhaps reread them, we should maybe think of other Slytherin students for a moment and maybe stop looking at them like we look at Draco. (I know that a big part of this Fandom doesn't and appreciates Slytherin quite a lot, but also some of the people I know have been quite dichotomic in terms of looking on various House traits)

+ Note: I also believe that the thoughts some of them hold have been inherited by their parents, who are in a high social status, and they got those thoughts from their parents, and so on so forth, so there must have been a point in the past where pure-bloods have thought they are more supreme than other people in other parts of the social hierarchy of the Wizarding World.

++ This post is kind of messy as I wrote it in a hurry but hope I got the point across.

For the few months I've been on the Harry Potter Wiki, I've been seeing lots of misunderstandings on the Slytherin House, about their personalities, actions, treatments, and so on so forth. Therefore, I've decided to write a thorough analysis of this Hogwarts House and add a few of my thoughts.

Please do not attack me just because of my opinion, but logical counters or discussions are always welcome.

I will use some excerpts from the Wiki article (they will be in preformatted text format). Also, this post will be divided into a few parts. The first part, this post, will be talking about the general House itself.

In establishing the house, Salazar instructed the Sorting Hat to pick students who had a few particular characteristics he most valued. Those characteristics included cunning, resourcefulness, leadership, and ambition. Many Slytherin students tended to clique together, often acquiring leaders, which further exemplified Slytherin's ambitious qualities. Examples of these included Draco Malfoy's gang, Merula Snyde's gang, Pansy Parkinson's gang and the Death Eaters.

First of all, let's take a look at this part from the Slytherin article. Number one, being cunning. According to Cambridge Dictionary, being cunning means to be clever at planning something so that they get what they want, especially by tricking other people, or things that are cleverly made for a particular purpose. It's different from mere slyness or greed. In other words, Slytherin students may use trickery but it needs some thinking, clever thinking to do so. Number two, resourcefulness and leadership. Now, this point further proves that Slytherin students are actually smart, knowledgable, and able to lead a group with charisma. Ambition is another trait of them, aka a strong wish to achieve something. This trait is sometimes merely misrepresented as greed on what a person wants to have or to do, but I think ambition should be interpreted as the meaning of the word itself. A strong want for achievement.

Of course, the examples in the article, like Draco Malfoy's gang, weren't acting that well, but in my opinion, these were because of the individual personality of these characters, and we should not generalize this to the whole lots of Slytherin students.

The founder highly valued and favoured pure-blood students and the Sorting Hat admitted that it could be a factor when being sorted. Students of any blood status could be placed in the house. However, a Muggle-born student from that house was considered to be quite rare.

Being a pure-blood, yes, this is also another factor of being a Slytherin. Lots of them are pure-blood wizards and witches. However, even though a student's blood status affects whether they are in Slytherin or not, I believe that, as the article states, muggle-borns, et cetera with Slytherin traits can get in the House. (speaking of which, it would be fun to write a 'muggle-born student in Slytherin' draft... nevermind, I'll continue writing)

The emblematic animal of the house was a snake and the house's colours were green and silver.

I've done slight research on what snakes symbolize in general, and it is usually described to symbolize a dual expression of good and evil. This may refer to characters like Draco Malfoy or Severus Snape, which I would like to elaborate further on my latter posts which I'll write later.

The color green usually symbolizes growth, renewal, harmony, wealth, and stability, whilst the color silver symbolizes industry, high-tech, wealth, rich, and elegance. I don't know if Rowling put thought on the house emblem colors and its symbol, but we can see a common symbolism between the two colors: wealth. In my opinion, this might show the abundance of powerful pure-blood families in Slytherin House.

Slytherin corresponded roughly with the element of water due to serpents being commonly associated with the sea and lochs in western European mythology, as well as serpents being physically fluid and flexible animals. Similarly, in Celtic mythology, water is seen as a portal to another world, leading some to speculate that the element was chosen to symbolise many Slytherins' hope for a pure-blood only community. The colours also corresponded with waters around lakes and lochs often being green, and silver being often associated with grey rainwater.

As I have done my research, water symbolizes unity, consciousness, life, et cetera. Since we can see Slytherins bonding over and group up pretty easily, I think the associated element with this House quite fits their traits and actions.

At the end of the day, I think the Slytherin House is nothing different from the other three houses. They won the House Cup for the straight row in a few years because they were smart, skilled, and ambitious enough to work on their goal (even though they might have used a few trickeries). Therefore, there is no need to think differently about them or think they're just full of sly foxes.

When I first watched and read the Harry Potter series, I've thought that Slytherin students were meanies or something along the lines of that, but I realized a while after that it was something very binary and we have to see what is beneath in the seeming parts of characters, a group, et cetera. (Keep in mind that these two paragraphs were solely my thoughts!)

Okay, this marks the end of this post. This is... well, pretty long, and I did work on it for more than thirty minutes researching and writing. If you read it all, I do pay my respects for you (*phew*). In the next part, I would like to write about either the loyalty of Slytherins or an analysis of a few Slytherin characters. Until then... :)