Yes? we even have a passage where Harry admires young Riddle for his bravery. Many Death Eaters were brave. Voldemort valued bravery. Andromeda, a Slytherin, shielded Harry from Voldemort himself, as did her sister, Narcissa. (and don't pull your "but they are only good if they are brave" card - you asked for examples, you got them.)

Slytherin qualities weren't presented as bad. Take this passage for example:

Those are all qualities that Dumbledore himself - and many other people - see as good. And you have the "good guys" utilizing them heavily in the series. Whether it's the Marauders, the Trio or the Order. The "Slytherin side" of Harry was a big theme in HBP.

I think you should go read the books again.

 

If Slytherin qualities aren't bad, then how come every single Slytherin we see is bad or used to be bad at some point in their lives? How come nobody from the other Houses is truly bad?

 

Andromeda Tonks. Horace Slughorn. Phineas Nigellus Black. All the canon Slytherins that didn't join up with Voldemort. Fucking Merlin (maybe).

On the other hand: Peter Pettigrew. Quirinus Quirrell. Gilderoy Lockhart. Presumably other Death Eaters who didn't come from Slytherin.

Come on, ThatGreekLady, you're not even trying anymore.

 

Not to mention Regulus Black.

 

Phineas Black doesn't count, he's a portrait.

I can give a half-hearted nod to Andromeda who literally only appears once.

Slughorn was kind of dick hiding the memory like that.

Those were only exceptions to the rule. Who are the major Slytherins we see? Umbridge, Voldemort, the Malfoys, Snape (who should have been a Gryffindor apparently)

 

A list of other "kind of dicks" in the Harry Potter universe:
- Zacharias Smith
- Ernie Macmillan
- Michael Corner
- Cormac McLaggen
- Ron Weasley

And besides, the reason those characters are important is because they're all considerably older than the majority of the actually evil Slytherins we see. Andromeda was born at around the same time as Bellatrix, Slughorn is older than Voldemort himself, and Phineas Black was long dead before Slughorn was born.

In short, the older the Slytherin in question, the more likely that they were never evil at all. Or, to put it more bluntly: Slytherin isn't inherently evil, Voldemort is inherently evil, and Voldemort corrupted Slytherin. It's like an infection that spreads from student to student, and eventually parent to child, quarantined within Slytherin due to house rivalries. But being evil doesn't make you go to Slytherin, and being in Slytherin doesn't make you evil - listening to Voldemort makes you evil.

 

Ehm no. He says that it's not our abilitys but our choices that defines who we are. Basicly he brings the best argument against what you claim. Harry may carry a great many slytherin traits but in the end he chose a diffrent path.
I am quite sure would you ask Dumbledore wheter slytherin is the home to the bad guys he would say it's not the house, but what you choose to do with your life, that it's up to you to take your path and not to some goddamn hat.

It is simple bad luck that the current generation of slytherins are considert the worst of the worst. But it very likely wasnt always like that and it might not prevail.

 

Exactly this. Especially since we know from canon that the hat sends kids where they want to go.

(Also, as a totally random thought, if houses were purely trait-based the Weasley Twins would've been perfect Slytherins. Cunning, resourceful, ambitious, and a big of disregard for the rules sums them up pretty well.)

Yeah, I rather like the idea raised several times in this thread that the current crop of Slytherins are bad seeds on account of Voldemort's lingering influence.

 

That presupposes that every Stored student gets to choose, which we know is not the case. We don't know that Riddle chose Slytherin. Hell, as far as we know, Harry knew more about the houses going in than Riddle, so how would he know what to choose? And again, when Riddle was being Sorted, Slytherin wasn't yet widely regarded as this place for evil people as you're trying to ram down our throats, precisely because he was the reason for Slytherin's reputation in the books.

This thread is like throwing a bouncy ball against a wall, guys. We won't make the ball stick unless we put glue on it and the wall just doesn't like our glue.

Edit: hmm, I posted this before seeing Sesc's last post

 

I don't think either side in this argument is getting the other's point.

Sure, there's nothing inherently wrong with the stereotypical attributes of those in Slytherin. And really they have nothing to do with the house itself; the house as an institution does not supernaturally infuse its members with cunning or whatnot. But, and it's a very big but, Slytherin House itself - that is, Slytherin House the Hogwarts institution - is framed as "evil" in the book series. If you show the barest signs of decency (see Snape) that of course means Hogwarts sorts too soon and you should really have been in Hufflepuff or something all along, because a Slytherin who isn't okay with murder? Preposterous. If you exhibit Slytherin qualities then sure we'll praise you for using your cunning and street smarts but isn't it wonderful that you have those traits but still chose not to go into horrible, horrible Slytherin?

The message is pretty clear. You can't be a "good" person because you're in Slytherin. You can't even be a good person who happens to be in Slytherin. The narrative frames it as though they are good people in spite of being members of Slytherin House. Which frankly is understandable, because Slytherin the institution isn't and perhaps never was about cunning or ambition or self-preservation; it's rooted and branched in pureblood ideology.

 

What Slytherin house stands for and how it is portrayed by Rowling is quite different and contradictory. For example if take the first book, Only cunning and ambitious go there, this fact is proved wrong by, Malfoy Crabbe, Goyle sorted there in hilarious way. The Fact that Hat screamed Slytherin touching the Malfoy's head proves that Rowling just wanted "all baddies in Slytherin"

I remember reading a fic in which it was told that there was a conspiracy by which Slytherin was front by making idiot people go there and making everyone's suspicion fell on them, while real cunning people hide behind facade in Huppelpuff and Gryfindor

That was pretty good idea.

 

Was Slytherin intended to represent everything that's "wrong"? No, as I think Sesc has been arguing, what's right or wrong is completely dependent on your personal set of values.

Was Slytherin intended to represent the opposite or antithesis of Harry's values? I think this may be a better way to frame the question. And even then it's not clear. We view the world of Hogwarts through a very impartial point of view. The only members of Slytherin that we ever see a lot of are those that Harry has a significantly antagonistic personal relationships with, for reasons beyond simply what house they belong in. There is no way to know if people like Malfoy are representative of Slytherin as a whole.

 

I personally have to agree with the person who said Rowling probably originally intended Slytherin to be the evil house but changed it in the last two books.

I mean the first 5 books are a huge propaganda against Slytherin. Harry's first friends tell him what a bad house Slytherin is. Harry's bully is a Slytherin. All the bad guys are Slytherins and literally all Slytherins seem like bad guys. Even the Slytherin founder is evil.

In book 6, we got introduced to Slughorn who is hardly a likable guy, but I guess you could say he's "not evil". Woooooo, we got one non-evil Slytherin, what an improvement!

In book 7, Snape got his redemption but it was kinda ruined when Dumbledore said he should have probably been a Gryffindor.

Whether you guys like it or not the Slytherin House produced a huge number of murderous psychopaths, while the other houses did not.

 

What quotes do you want? Do you disagree that the first 5 books were a huge anti-Slytherin propaganda? Do you think if there was any redeeming quality about Slytherin it wouldn't have been mentioned?

May I remind you:

1)Only the Slytherins supported Umbridge.

2)No Slytherin in DA.

3)99% of villains are Slytherins. They're not even villains for a good reason, most of them seem bad for the sake of being bad. Like the only bad Gryffindor is Wormtail and Rowling said in an interview the hat was between putting him in Slytherin or Gryffindor. (so I assume it should have probably put him in Slytherin seeing how non-brave he is)

https://www.pottermore.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/hatstall

4)What are the "good" Slytherins we see? Slughorn (who is probably what most people would call a morally corrupted guy), Snape (hardly a good person seeing how he bullied his own students), Andromeda (who? She's such a minor and insignificant character that it doesn't even matter), Regulus (some dead guy in a cave who still became a Death Eater). Everyone else is either a murderous psychopath (Voldemort, Bellatrix) or a total dickhead (Draco Malfoy, Umbridge).

I don't know why Rowling decided to show Slytherin in such a negative light (maybe perhaps she wanted to have some clear villains and Slytherins were the easy choice), but you can't ignore 7 books of trash talk. You can't ignore all this and pretend Slytherin is such a good and misunderstood house. This is your own headcanon and it's not what we see in the series.

 

See where the problem is? You've already generalized Slughorn as unlikeable, when there might be others who like him, just like you have chosen to see the Slytherins as being evil in 'general'.

Traits like cunning and ambition aren't portrayed as bad in the books, and stop saying Snape's 'Gryffindor' traits are what 'redeemed' him. If anything it were his Slytherin traits that allowed him to be such an effective spy. The kind of strength required to endure being under Voldemort, hating him every second for it, while watching him commit those atrocities required a trait that can only be said to be characteristic of a Slytherin.

Bravery isn't the monopoly of Gryffindors, just like loyalty isn't that of Hufflepuff or being clever and precocious that of Ravenclaws.

Yes, Slytherin did produce bad wizards, but as has been said that it was more a result of Voldemort leading his revolution from there. If ever there was a Gryffindor Dark Lord I'm sure the situation would be reversed.

 

I for one will never understand why Crabbe and Goyle were Sorted into Slytherin.

It just goes to show that Slytherin the institution is built on blood status and ideology, not any of the traits it's supposed to hold.

 

"Might"? Sure there "might" be.

Slughorn was a biased teacher who hid an important memory because it didn't make him look good.