“You could be great, you know, it’s all here in your head, and Slytherin will help you on the way to greatness, no doubt about that.”
All stupid bitches trying to destroy Harry Potter🙃
So I’d rather not respond to this because it shouldn’t have existed in the first place, but I can’t help it if people want to be petty because hey I’m petty too, so here we are. There’s no need to go out of your way and comment (in an incredibly!! Rude!! Way!!) but in honor of your pettiness, I’m going to go out of my way to explain why no one here needs your negativity (ft. @broadway-to-hell).
My post has three characters, two of which barely appear in Harry Potter and the third of which appears more often BUT is still being viewed through Harry’s perspective. Millicent and Tracey barely appear in any of the books. Let me just show you what Tracey’s page on the hp wiki looks like:
Since the only main thing about her is that she’s Slytherin (because being half-blood would probably make her..support Harry…), it’s obvious you’re judging based on her house, but more on that later.
As for Millicent, there’s a lot more going on. Here’s material I’m going to talk about:
Millicent’s a follower. She’s doing what she was indoctrinated to do. She doesn’t deserve the idea that there’s no redemption for her when this is all she was told to do. Slytherins in the book had no role models (but Snape and y’all KNOW he was a terrible person). She had Slytherin relations so she was probably told from an incredibly young age “this is what you’re going to do, this is what you’re going to think, this is all you can do because no one expects anything else.” And that’s so cruel to do for young people. Like I’m not excusing them being racist, or horrible, or flawed, but the entire series it’s all about what Harry thinks they are. This one-dimensional viewpoint is unfair to the house and to the people in it, no matter how minor these characters were. Slytherin doesn’t equal mean death eater!! The house has a history of turning out evil villains, yes. But these kids are eleven when they are sorted. Being booed and attacked for something they honestly didn’t ever have control over for such a long time. When Slytherins were belittled, they just became more exclusive, because no one would ever accept them otherwise. Even though Tracey and Millicent are both half-bloods, which makes you question whether they really did hate Harry Potter in the first place. I find it doubtful that Harry didn’t generalize them, because he was young too! Slytherins faced so much from both their fellow housemates, family, and outsiders, is it really a big surprise to realize that that entire ideology was forced down their throat?
The first introduction readers have to Hogwarts Houses is in Chapter Four, Diagon Alley, where the very snobbish Draco Malfoy says “he’ll be in Slytherin” (page 77). Throughout the two page scene, readers grow to dislike Draco, as he “strongly reminded [reminds] Harry of Dudley”, a character readers already abhor due to the way Dudley treats our protagonist, and the rotten way Draco talks about Hagrid, who readers like for saving our protagonist from his situation (pages 77, 78). This already creates a bad view of Slytherin in the reader’s eyes. Later on, Hagrid says to Harry “there wasn’t a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn’t in Slytherin" (page 80). Hagrid neglects to mention the truth of Slytherin–its ideals of ambition– that make Slytherin the house that it is. This creates the idea in the reader’s mind that Slytherin is only the “bad house” or “the evil house”. This could have all been disproven later through good Slytherin characters, but it isn’t. The principal Slytherins readers get to know are Draco and Snape, both of whom treat Harry badly. As the readers, we sympathize with Harry because we’ve all been in the position of feeling hurt, and we also pity Harry for his horrible “parents”. The way Snape and Draco treat Harry as the reader’s representatives of the Slytherin just make us hate Slytherin as a whole. This is a stereotype that is set up in the first book and not even disproved throughout the rest of the books, right up until the seventh. Slytherins are the “bad guys” the “House of You-Know-Who”. Sirius Black is happy he didn’t end up in Slytherin, and because we like Sirius and are indoctrinated to believe that Slytherin is the “evil house”, we agree. But Regulus changes everything. He aids the Order and doesn’t get much credit for it. All he gets is an “exception to the rule” idea, where he’s decent but none of the other Slytherins are. He isn’t given benefit of the doubt, either. He’s a Slytherin, Sirius doesn’t vouch for him? Boom! He’s evil. The fact that he has to prove himself is really something wrong with Harry, the fandom, and the other houses. We may be indoctrinated to think that all Slytherins are evil. But that doesn’t excuse you not looking at the traits that make up the House instead of just falling back on the way JKR wrote the story. You probably know a Slytherin and are friends with a Slytherin. They aren’t just part of the “evil” house. They’re the ambitious house, the cunning house, just like the sorting hat says. And you can’t judge Slytherins based on a preconceived notion from the books.
Harry was told from the beginning that Slytherins weren’t the people to go to for help. He is constantly reminded that they’re “evil,” that all of them want him dead, and that they’re disgustingly racist. Pansy does nothing to prove otherwise. However, Pansy was told from the beginning that being half-blood was shameful and was brought up in the exact opposite beliefs. From her point of view, Harry is the bad guy. The Gryffindors and Slytherins do nothing to fix their animosity! Pansy is described in three ways on Pottermore: “Slytherin student, ardent admirer of Draco Malfoy and member of the Inquisitorial Squad.” She’s the addition. The minor character used to show that Slytherins are horrible people, and comes in throughout the book to remind of this fact when she says “Never thought you’d like fat little cry babies, Parvati,” or “Urgh, Chang, I don’t think much of your taste… at least Diggory was good-looking!,” but hold on. Pottermore describes this quote as:
Trash talking doesn’t exactly sound like “being out to destroy Harry”. This sounds exactly like a teenage bully who probably doesn’t have the best personal situation either and lashes out because of it. Fyi, the other quote is described as “Picking on Parvati,” which is…another teenage thing to do. Inexcusable, but it doesn’t throw her into this pit of hellfire that she can’t come back from her. Pardon my repetition, but that’s not fair. Also, Harry can be accused of trash talking as well, surprisingly.
Harry doesn’t show that he knows anything about Millicent, and yet here him and Ron are, describing her in rude ways. I don’t hate Harry at all: if you need more assurance about that my entire blog is there for you, but it’s not fair to say that he isn’t narrow-minded when it comes to Slytherins, which reflects Rowling’s opinion. Like it says in the wiki, we aren’t given any non-Gryffindor opinions about Millicent, which shows the one-dimensional treatment of Slytherins like Millicent in the book.
As for your “stupid” comment? The places these girls appear in Harry Potter canon are in very few. Pansy Parkinson appears a few times in relation to Draco (Book 6, on the train). Millicent Bulstrode is mentioned in The Chamber of Secrets as a character Hermione steals hair from to enter the Slytherin dormitories, and later on as a member of the Inquisitorial Squad. They both appear so little in actual canon that they become mean girl caricatures, especially to the Golden Trio. J.K. Rowling wrote them that way. That doesn’t mean they’re idiots, since we have no idea what Harry saw of them other than the Slytherin mean girl. They could be doing insanely well in classes for all we know. There is a lot more to them than just being “the mean girls” that is never uncovered in canon.
So there you have it. I hope you learned something about Slytherin House, and I hope you reexamine your thoughts on the subject. Either way, I’d prefer it if you didn’t comment on my edits like that (rudely!!) again–I do make them because I like them, the characters, and the books, thank you very much. Happy holidays (please spend the rest of them doing something kinder and more productive than this–that’s what they’re for, remember?) and I’m done wasting my time.
