To think Dumbledore was a massive cheater?

[Slytherine]

Just finished watching the first Harry Potter film on TV and forgot about the injustice for the Slytherins at the end. I have changed my name in solidarity.

So the Slytherins get the most House Points (presumably fairly as most of the professors at Hogwarts could barely hide their disdain for Slytherin House so wouldn’t have been dishing out points to them for no reason) and are sat there enjoying their win of the House Cup, and celebrating with the room decorated in their House colours, and then former Gryffindor Dumbledore just decides (even though the school year was officially over!!) to throw out an unreasonable amount of points to Harry, Hermione and Ron drawing them level with Slytherin, and then a further 10 points to Neville pushing Gryffindor over the edge and into the win. And then, just to rub salt into the wound, publicly humiliated them by casting a spell to replace all the Slytherin colours with the Gryffindor colours and gives them the award instead and they all celebrate, including him and most of the teachers, and Slytherin has to sit there and just accept it??

AIBU to think WTAF and that was very unfair and he was biased by doing this and it’s no wonder the Slytherins were openly hostile and dismissive of him after that!? I’d be fuming if I were a Slytherin student and if I were a parent of a Slytherin student I’d be marching up to the school myself and having a word with the head.

5????

Does it actually say that or is that just the number of identifiable characters? Harry, Ron, Neville, Seamus and..?

Dean.
They’re the only ones ever mentioned at all and I’m sure that at one point in the earlier books it says something like “Harry shared a dorm with the other griffindor second year boys, Ron, Neville, Seamus and Dean” which implies that’s all of them.

(I struggle with insomnia and find the Harry Potter audiobook a nice way to go to sleep because it distracts me, but I know it so well I don’t get too into the story that it keeps me up, so I know parts of it quite well)

@Queenoftheashes

Plus Albus Severus is just cruel.

His initials spell ASP = snake. Quite apt considering.

AIBU to think Dumbledore had a massive hard on for Harry?

Yanbu, but… Loads of things in the ‘wizarding world’ are unjust, for example they send people to prison without trial at the drop of a hat, and Hagrid was never allowed a wand because he as a child supposedly committed a crime (which he didn’t) and the Ministry has way too much power and abuses it. Every character in the series is flawed and the world is flawed too, JK’s incredibly talented and honest exploration and explanation of that to children is a huge part of what makes it such a fantastic series.

So basically yeah Dumbledore is a total jerk sometimes, just like most headteachers.

@ChargingBuck

the Dursleys did take the baby when they could have just said 'nope' and had him put into care

@NeverDropYourMooncup I don't think they could - a later event features Dumbledore sending Mrs D a Howler, something along the lines of "Remember my last!?" (i.e. letter commanding you to take baby Harry on Or Else).

Sorry, can't recall the detail now, but definite 'backstory reveal' point. I think it's when Harry turned 17, & the family evacuate because the Charm now expires on 4 Privet Drive.

That makes it even worse - they were threatened and spent nearly 17 years in fear of meeting a similar end. Then had to flee for their lives.

To think when I first read it, I was pissed off at the blatant rip off of Enid Blyton girls' boarding school stories and the carefully planned merchandising written in from the first first pages. When there was coercion and essentially a threat to kill her/her own child if she didn't keep her sisters kid. No wonder they wanted fuck all to do with magic, it's being used as a tool to terrorise people but the so called 'good guys'

Gryffindor lost initially primarily because Snape kept taking points from them on the flimsiest of excuses, and I'm sure he dished out points to Slytherin students simply for existing. And stopping Voldemort from getting the Philosopher's Stone was surely worthy of recognition?

But Slytherins shouldn’t mind should they as this is right up their alley (well until the last book). As a Slytherin who gives a damn about house points?

I’m totally not a Dumbledore apologist and I wish I was the ofsted inspector assigned to hogwarts because I would absolutely destroy him.

However, Harry and his pals literally saved the school from everyone being murdered. So I don’t know I think he did deserve to win the house cup. Bit tight to let the slytherins think they had won but Harry did very much save the world. Like it’s not like he just handed in homework on time it was a pretty exceptional situation.

Not than exceptional after a few years as he seemed to save the world very often.

@SecretSpAD

At risk of derailing....It has always irritated me somewhat that Hermione wasn't in Ravenclaw.

It’s always irritated me that she’s not viewed as the saviour of the wizarding world, when Harry would have been snuffed out at Bill and Fleur’s wedding (if not far sooner), were it not for Hermione’s quick thinking and magic bag.

(DS listens to the audiobook in the car and Stephen Fry’s exaggeratedly ‘girly and useless’ Hermione voice is annoying.)

But yes, I’ve always thought JKR missed a trick by not having a stirring moment where some Slytherins reject their upbringing and/or Deatheater parents’ beliefs and come over to the anti-Voldemort side, whether it’s turning rebel under the Carrows, or fighting against V at the Battle of Hogwarts. Draco is starting to be something slightly more than a one-dimensional sneering baddie towards the end. It was great to see Percy Weasley reform — it would have been very dramatic to have a bunch of Slytherins refuse to be evacuated from Hogwarts, or go and return, and everyone thinks they’ve come to betray the anti-V faction, but it turns out they’re on side and prepared to fight. Or you could do something with them finding out how Snape died…

It’s probably been done in a trillion fanfics. There’s a lot of Slytherins love around…

[quote Lillith111]@Glassofshloer Mrs Weasley had more kids than she could care for (both with time and money) just to get a girl. All Rons fears of being insignificant and unspecial are because of how little attention he got from her - she showed more love to Harry. She discounts the twins by saying "everyone's been a prefect". She doesn't respect her adult children's choices - over who to date or how to style their hair. She was mostly good but she could be a bit crap.[/quote]
And how she believes stupid rumours about Hermione and rather than thinking ‘I’m an adult woman and she’s a child’ she decides to passive aggressively punish her by sending the boys massive Easter eggs with lots of chocolates and sending her a tiny one.

I found that so nasty. What kind of adult does that? And she was a cow to Fleur.

Presumably because experienced wizards and witches would've put it all together a lot sooner and realised Harry was the last horcrux and interfered with his plans.

Surely it would have to have ended in the same way though? The rest of the wizarding world couldn't just have kept being killed/living under Voldemort's regime and Harry be allowed to live at everyone else's expense?

Haven't rtft sorry but don't the griffindors basically get back the points that got taken off them for breaking the rule to save the world?

He was a terrible faff, Voldemort. He could have killed Harry ages ago but he just would get on with it. Too much prancing around and telling everyone how evil he is first of all

[quote Glassofshloer]@Showercurtainofdoom I wouldn’t call Percy (or Fred and George) dynamic If I’m honest.

Fred’s death was awful.[/quote]
Percy reached a high ranking government position within a few years of leaving school. Imagine someone finishing their A levels and ending up working for Boris Johnson before they’d turned 21! Regardless of personality or politics, this is dynamic ladder-climbing.

And Fred and George left school, likely “asked to leave” after assaulting the stand-in headmistress with magical explosives, and managed to raise capital - no family money - to open up a rip-roaringly successful shop in the middle of prime wizarding commercial real estate in the middle of an economic downturn and catastrophic political upheaval. It doesn’t get anymore dynamic than that!

@IWishToAnswerInTheAffirmative

He was a terrible faff, Voldemort. He could have killed Harry ages ago but he just would get on with it. Too much prancing around and telling everyone how evil he is first of all

😂

Yes you would think killing an eleven year old wouldn’t require such forward planning. Realistically Quirrell could have just went into his bedroom at nighttime and killed him with a big knife, he’s a little boy. He wouldn’t have exactly been able to defend himself.

Or even just make his death look like an accident - boot him off the astronomy tower and say he was playing on his broom and fell. Or say he fell in the lake and drowned. Honestly with the health and safety procedures at Hogwarts that’s probably just par for the course and everyone would be like ‘ah it happens.’

I think some of the Slytherins did come back in the battle at the end — I'm sure Slughorn did (he's a good example of a different type of Slytherin).

Jumping back to the bit about Sirius and no trial, at that point people weren't trusting at all — there'd been a lot less contact than usual between families, people had been under the Imperius curse, attacks were happening all over the place. People thought that Crouch's hardline approach to suspected Death Eaters was right.

I don't know why Sirius didn't tell Fudge he was innocent when he visited Azkaban and explain they were animagi (although out of universe it would have messed the plot up!).

Harry’s relationship with Sirius is classic of attachment disorder. Children often latch on intensely when someone shows them affection and attention. I see it in abused children with new foster carers and the kids are overly affectionate, cuddling, “I love you” and so on. Superficially it seems sweet, but I find it immensely sad that a child can be so starved of love from a family they’ll reach this point with someone they barely know after a very short space of time.

That’s Harry with Sirius.

I agree the absolutism of Slytherin all being evil wronguns is detriment to the overall story.

Grey areas like Slughorn were only introduced in the last couple of books. It would have been good to have a few threads running throughout of fundamentally decent kids who are just kind of twattish who are placed into Slytherin.

I like how Dumbledore is presented at first as a perfect figure but this view is changed as Harry gets older. Its easy to forget we are first introduced to him through the eyes of an 11 year old.

it would have been very dramatic to have a bunch of Slytherins refuse to be evacuated from Hogwarts, or go and return

Some Slytherins did go back. They leave to get reinforcements and Slughorn leads the reinforcements back into the castle, just as the centaurs and house elves join the battle.

Just saw this meme on FB & thought of this thread @Slytherine

Re only five boys in Gryffindor - I read an interview with JK Rowling where she explained this was an exceptionally small school year due to the children being conceived in the first wizarding war. I guess there wasn’t much time for sex!

And Fred and George left school, likely “asked to leave” after assaulting the stand-in headmistress with magical explosives, and managed to raise capital

It’s better than being asked to leave, they said “we’ve had enough of Umbridge’s shit, we’re out of here!”

But they didn’t raise the capital, Harry gave it to them. Or at least, a large chunk, I’m not sure on the wizard/muggle money exchange rate.

@SickAndTiredAgain

And Fred and George left school, likely “asked to leave” after assaulting the stand-in headmistress with magical explosives, and managed to raise capital

It’s better than being asked to leave, they said “we’ve had enough of Umbridge’s shit, we’re out of here!”

But they didn’t raise the capital, Harry gave it to them. Or at least, a large chunk, I’m not sure on the wizard/muggle money exchange rate.

Jk isn't sure of the exchange rate either. It varies from book to book. Can't remember details but some thing cheap and something super expensive are the same. Only noticeable if you're looking for it though.

I'm a big molly fan but she should have gotten a job. Potentially if she's home schooling the youngest (how else do they learn to read or write?) but once Ginny starts school it's just her and Arthur for all the year. The kids are away. It's selfish not to because they are so poor. And cleaning only takes so long. She seems like an accomplished witch taking on belatrix so she should have been able to get a part time job at least.