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“With 472 points Slytherin House.”
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The Slytherin philosophy is basically to be the best,
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to be great --
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that means working hard,
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always thinking a few steps ahead of your opponent,
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and being ruthless in your pursuit of excellence.
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Because Slytherins are so obsessed
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with proving themselves superior to others,
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they can be guilty of arrogance and powerlust
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“There is only power and those too weak to seek it.”
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Slytherins are very often selfish or self-interested.
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But on the positive side,
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they show impressive mastery of their crafts.
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And as much as the Harry Potter series maligns this house,
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Slytherin at least is never overlooked
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or insignificant-feeling,
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unlike the other two supporting houses.
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Slytherins are known for their supreme power,
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importance and achievement.
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“Slytherin will help you on the way to greatness,
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no doubt about that.”
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This drive to work hard and achieve greatness
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is embodied in Slytherin's most infamous member.
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Tom Riddle a.k.a. Voldemort is undeniably terrible,
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but he's also very impressive --
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he's an orphan who became one of the most powerful wizards ever
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thanks to talent, ambition, and dedication.
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“I fashioned myself a new name,
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a name I knew wizards everywhere would one day fear to speak
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when I became the greatest sorcerer in the world.”
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The only reason Harry even has special skills
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is that he has some of Voldemort in him.
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“he transferred some of his powers to you
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the night he gave you that scar”.
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And it's implied that Harry could have reached new heights
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if he'd been sorted into Slytherin.
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“You would have done well in Slytherin”.
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Harry and Voldemort also share certain qualities
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that Gryffindors and Slytherins have in common --
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they're both extremely driven
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and they'll do anything necessary to win their fight.
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“You possess many of the qualities that Voldemort himself prizes:
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determination, resourcefulness,
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and if I may say so, a certain disregard for the rules”.
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Slytherin's colors are green and silver.
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Unlike Gryffindor's warm tones, these cool colors tell us
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that Slytherins are cool, calculating, and controlled.
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Slytherins are logical and analytical.
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In the first Harry Potter book, the Sorting Hat tells us
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that the house's defining quality is single-minded resourcefulness:
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“Those cunning folk use any means to achieve their ends.”
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So Slytherins are masters of strategy and long-term planning.
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They apply themselves to their goals with rational, smart steps.
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They think around and through problems,
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rather than acting on their gut impulse like fiery red Gryffindors.
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Slytherins are deeply ambitious.
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Both green and silver -- thanks to their links to currencies --
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evoke associations with money and greed,
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and many Slytherins do value wealth and social status.
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“My father can afford the best.”
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Then there's the idea of “being born with a silver spoon in your mouth”
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or getting something “on a silver platter,”
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so silver also speaks to the privilege
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that many Slytherins are born into.
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Green also brings to mind the phrase
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“Green with envy”
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and Draco certainly resents Harry
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for all his fame and special attention.
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“Famous Harry Potter.
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Can't even go into a bookshop without making the front page.”
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We often think of silver as second place, less precious than gold,
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and Slytherins feel like they're always coming in second
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after the Golden Gryffindors.
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In our world, you wouldn't necessarily think
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that Gryffindor's tendency to act first and plan second
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is all that admirable.
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But somehow these reckless, spontaneous Gryffindors
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are always coming out on top in the Harry Potter series.
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It's not like all Gryffindors are the most talented
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or skilled people at Hogwarts
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“He possesses no measurable talent, his arrogance rivals even that of his father's
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and he seems to relish in his fame.”
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A lot of the time,
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Harry and his friends seem to get by on dumb luck.
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“Last year, he really did fight off You-Know-Who in the flesh.”
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“Look, it all sounds great when you say it like that,
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but the truth is, most of that was just luck.”
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In the Sorcerer's Stone, when Dumbledore awards Gryffindor
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last-minute points to hand them the House Cup,
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this would feel like pretty blatant favoritism to the Slytherins
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who have been working all year to win that cup and
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have been leading in points.
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And from this perspective,
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couldn't you start to get why Slytherins resent Gryffindors,
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who seem to keep getting handed success
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even though they don't really apply themselves in an intelligent way?
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We can even see the Slytherins' sense of unfairness
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in the starting premise of the story:
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“How is it that a baby with no extraordinary magical talent
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was able to defeat the greatest wizard of all time?”
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Voldemort exerts exceptional effort to become the greatest
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wizard of his time, but a little baby beats him
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and becomes a celebrity just for passively receiving
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his parents' love.
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Slytherins' house element is water.
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And like liquids,
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Slytherins are slippery, fluid and hard to pin down.
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In astrology, water signs are considered to be intuitive,
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emotional and sensitive.
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Because they're so hyper-aware and sensitive,
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Slytherins are image-conscious.
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They're extremely concerned with how they're perceived.
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The water element may also connect to potions,
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Snape's subject of choice.
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“I don't expect many of you to appreciate the subtle science
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and exact art that is potion-making.”
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Potions is an understated art that's all about the slow simmering
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of carefully chosen ingredients.
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“I can tell you how to bottle fame, brew glory and even
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put a stopper in death.”
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Purposeful, patient and precise is classic Slytherin.
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Harry Potter may focus more on the negative associations,
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but green, silver and water have a lot of positive connotations.
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Silver, the metal, is malleable and adaptive,
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and Slytherins are far more subtle in their thinking
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than straightforward Gryffindors.
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Green is associated with life, vitality, and nature.
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And Slytherins have astonishing potential for growth, rebirth and renewal.
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Just as water can take different forms,
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Slytherins can change and transform -- as we can see in Snape
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“He was the bravest man I've ever known.”
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“Why didn't you tell her?
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You knew it was me. You didn't say anything”
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and even Narcissa, when she lies to Voldemort
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that Harry is dead.
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“Dead?” “Dead.”
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Of all the houses, Slytherin is probably the one
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most closely linked to its house animal, the snake.
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“There's a reason the symbol of Slytherin house is a serpent.
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Salazar Slytherin was a Parselmouth.”
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Even their name sounds like the word “slither,”
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as in “the snake slithered across the grass.”
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In Western literature and culture, snakes are associated
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with cunning, treachery and deception:
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The serpent in Genesis tempts Eve to eat
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from the tree of knowledge of good and evil,
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leading to the fall.
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The serpent there represents Satan,
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while the griffin of Gryffindor's name has been associated with Christ.
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So the story immediately paints Gryffindor and Slytherin
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as good versus evil --
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one literally has a Christ symbol in its name,
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and the other's name sounds like the movement of the animal
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traditionally linked to the devil.
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And the Harry Potter story mostly reinforces the Western idea
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of the snake as devious and evil.
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Voldemort himself looks snake-like
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with his smooth, hairless head and slits for nostrils.
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And Salazar Slytherin's basilisk is a monstrous incarnation
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of the house's spirit --
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which is why only Voldemort can control it
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as heir to Slytherin.
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“Parseltongue won't save you now, Potter. It only obeys me”.
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Voldemort's snake, Nagini also embodies terrible violence.
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But there's also another snake we meet early on,
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at the zoo in The Sorcerer's Stone.
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Harry understands that this unaggressive animal is just mistreated.
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“He doesn't understand what it's like,
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lying there day after day
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watching people press their ugly faces in on you”.
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In fact, he feels a sense of kinship with the snake.
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“Do you miss your family? I see.
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That's me as well. I never knew my parents either”.
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So there's a way in which the snakes of Slytherin
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are misunderstood and villainized from the start.
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Outside of Western culture, There are a lot more
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Positive associations with the snake.
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It's often been linked to sexual desire and fertility,
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the mysteries of reproduction.
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In ancient Egypt the uraeus, or rearing cobra,
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was a symbol of royalty and power.
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That reminds us of Slytherin's legacy
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as a grand, important house.
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Egyptians also saw the snake as life-giving --
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just as Snape protects Harry for so many years.
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“Don't tell me now, that you've grown To care for the boy.”
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snakes shed their skin, and the Slytherins we know best
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reveal new sides to themselves,
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symbolically shedding their skin in an act of rebirth.
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So the snake is an animal of contradictions:
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it represents deadliness and vengeance and life and renewal.
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Its venom can be poison or medicine.
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Ultimately the snake is a symbol of duality,
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of both good and evil, and their interconnectedness.
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And Slytherins have both darkness and the capacity for light inside of them.
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The Slytherin common room Is in the Hogwarts dungeons
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Underground, just as Slytherins are symbolically hidden away,
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their true natures not immediately visible to the outside world.
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The room is partly under the lake,
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which puts Slytherins close to their element, water.
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The underwater location visualizes that Slytherins aren't afraid
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to face the deeper, darker truths of human nature.
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Some of them are interested in the Dark Arts.
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The darkness and greenish light make the common room feel
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a little eerie not entirely comfortable --
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Echoing how Slytherins keep people at a distance.
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The house ghost is the Bloody Baron,
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not the most welcoming character.
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In the books, we learn that he was in love with Helena Ravenclaw
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but eventually stabbed her in a rage --
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and when he realized what he'd done,
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he turned the knife on himself.
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So this tragic backstory captures a lot about who Slytherins are --
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they have intense feelings that they don't know
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how to express in a healthy way, and this can be a fatal flaw.
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But they often come to repent the error of their ways.
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In the books, the Bloody Baron Chooses wears chains
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to atone for his crime.
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The house name comes from Salazar Slytherin,
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one of the founders of Hogwarts.
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“Three of the founders coexisted quite harmoniously.
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One did not.”
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“Three guesses who.”
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Salazar is a Basque name meaning “old hall,”
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so this connotes the impressive, long legacy of Slytherin.
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The Slytherins' fixation with their impressive past
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might help explain their problematic history with bigotry.
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Salazar Slytherin himself thought Hogwarts should be for purebloods only.
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“Salazar Slytherin wished to be more selective about the students
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ddmitted to Hogwarts.
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He believed that magical learning should be kept within all-magic families.
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In other words, purebloods.
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Unable to sway the others, he decided to leave the school.”
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And this bias lives on in later Slytherins.
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“Associating with Muggles.
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And I thought your family could sink no lower”.
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The pureblood issue in Harry Potter is an obvious analogy for racism.
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“Her speciality was muggle studies.”
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“It is Ms. Burgises belief That muggles are not so different from us.
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She would, given her way, have us mate with them.”
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The very prejudice Draco Malfoy has blond, typically Aryan looks,
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so that creates a subconscious link between his racism against Muggle-borns
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and the ethnic hatred directed at non-whites in our world.
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“No one asked your opinion, you filthy little Mudblood.”
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And the hate-driven, tyrannical behaviors
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of Voldemort and Grindelwald make us think of Nazism
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or other totalitarian, genocidal regimes.
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“Your parents would be proud. Especially your filthy Muggle mother”.
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In a tweet, J. K. Rowling said,
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“Not all Slytherins think they're racially superior.