controversial: dumbledore would’ve made the right decision taking the 1991-1992 house cup away from slytherin even if harry and co. hadn’t saved the school and stopped voldemort from returning to power
Can I ask why? Genuinely curious here
Slytherin students didn’t have better academic performance and they certainly didn’t have better behavior than the other houses. What they did have was a head of house who would award his own students points for almost no reason while handing out penalties to other houses like candy. If Draco Malfoy answered a question correctly in potions, he’d be awarded ten points, while Hermione giving the same answer would lose ten points for being a know-it-all.
That’s the thing, the game was rigged in Slytherin’s favor. Snape set his own house up to win, through absolutely no merit of their own, seven years in a row with no penalty. Meanwhile Dumbledore is made out to be the one who “just hands victory to his own house” after four members of his house put their lives on the line to save the school from a genocidal mass-murderer.
Gryffindor deserved the house cup because their students saved the school, but even if they didn’t, Slytherin should have had it taken away from them because they didn’t earn it.
I can’t even condemn Dumbledore for letting Slytherin believe they’d won, sit in a green-and-silver dining hall, and then changing it when he announced they’d actually lost, because after seven years of cheating, it’s not enough for them to just lose. If they’d just lost, they’d think they were cheated out of something that’s rightfully theirs. Allowing them to believe they’d just once again been handed an award they didn’t deserve, and then giving it directly to the house that actually did something to deserve it, teaches a valuable lesson.
Anyway, if we’re going to criticize Dumbledore’s abilities as a school administrator for anything, it’s how unchecked he left Snape’s treatment of his students. Even putting aside the emotional and physical abuse he inflicted on his students, there should have been some provision in place to prevent his abuse of the points system before he had a chance to hand it to his own students for ONE year, let alone seven.
There should have been a provision that the current holder of the house cup is ineligible for participation in the next year’s competition. There should be an upper limit on how many points you can take away from another house’s students, and how many points you can give to your own students. Students should be able to appeal unfair penalties to the headmaster.
Point is, Slytherin shouldn’t get an award just because their head-of-house refuses to play fair
Are you forgetting that these are children you’re talking about here? I don’t believe that there is enough proof in the books that Snape could have skewed the points system enough to win every year, especially considering the bias that other houses have against slytherin, but that honestly shouldn’t even matter. The slytherin kids did work hard, just as hard as gryffindor did. You are trying to invalidate their accomplishments when the only person who would have actually done anything wrong was Snape. Allowing those young children to think that their hard work was being celebrated and then snatching it from under their noses with no explanation whatsoever does NOT teach a lesson that they can’t cheat. It teaches a lesson that their hard work will not be rewarded, especially since none of them were even cheating. It teaches slytherin kids who are young and impressionable that their accomplishments don’t matter.
You can’t ignore that they are very young children. It doesn’t matter what prejudices you hold against the slytherin house, because they were still young and they worked hard. You can argue that they maybe didn’t objectively work as hard but we will never know if that is true, and it doesn’t matter either way. Teaching young slytherins that their hard work and accomplishment are actually worthless only further leads to house rivalry, because those kids do not understand why they were treated so harshly.
Ok let’s assume that Snape’s well known favoritism toward his own House did not play any role in their winning the Cup seven years in a row and that said victories were the result of hard work alone: That does not in anyway invalidate the points that the four Gryffindors EARNED for their role in preventing the rise of Voldemort.
The main argument against the points seems to be that Dumbledore waited until the last minute to award. Ok let’s imagine what would’ve happened if Dumbledore had just quietly awarded the points to Harry in the hospital wing: as @lupinatic states in a comment on this post, Slytherin would definitely think they were “cheated”. As it is, Dumbledore put all the cards in the table and told everyone exactly why Gryffindor earned those points (points that they would have already had if Harry and co hadn’t previously lost 150 points a few weeks before; if nothing else all Dumbledore did was award a net 10 extra points to Gryffindor).
Furthermore you speak of a “prejudice against Slytherin house” that doesn’t exist, at least not to the extent some think it does. The reason that ¾ of the school resent Slytherin house is not only because the House at large seems to be genuinely nasty to most other students, but because it has a long history of prejudice and “blood superiority” (their password was literally “pureblood” while muggleborns were being attacked), not to mention many of them are the children of “former” Death Eaters, who almost certainly must have attacked or even killed the relatives of the other students.
Surely, you can make the argument that “not all Slytherins are bigoted children of death eaters,” but that’s the same as saying “not all white people are racist”: Maybe not but you can’t ignore the history of prejudice and abuse of privilege that is firmly entwined in the House’s legacy.
tl;dr yes they are children, and as evidenced from the behavior of many of them, they are children who are accustomed to having their own way because the system is often altered in their favor
Thank you! Also, @aroacestars, who says the Slytherin kids don’t know why they were ‘treated so harshly’ (for a value of ‘harsh treatment’ that means ‘expected to understand that another House’s students had done something worth rewarding’)? Maybe some of the younger ones didn’t, but I bet the older ones understood the subtext @raptorific laid out (’you don’t get a reward just for showing up, someone else well and truly earned it this year’) just fine.
As I mentioned in another comment on this post, this method of defending Slytherin House as wronged was super predictable – “they were children, just little tiny babies, and shouldn’t have had to experience this sort of disappointment just because Snape was a turd!”. First of all, not everyone wins all the time, not even when someone stacks the deck for you (which, again, they won’t always be doing). You have to learn to deal with loss gracefully, and the younger the better. Second, sometimes you think you’re winning and someone comes up from nowhere and overtakes you too late for you to secure a victory. Again, it happens, best learn it early. Thirdly, sometimes kids get screwed over as a result of adults’ actions. The kids shouldn’t get a reward they hadn’t earned just because an adult cheated for them. Children not getting a reward because someone else earned it isn’t cheating them out of anything, since they weren’t entitled to it to start with.
Finally, ALL of the students were between the ages of 11 and 18. They were ALL children, not just the Slytherins. Snape taught Gyffindor, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw children that hard work and effort meant nothing, for seven years running, but according to a large segment of fandom that’s fine and dandy and those other three Houses should just accept it because it’s not the Slytherins’ fault. But if the reader dares to think that losing once, that not letting Slytherin endlessly dominate the Cup, won’t do Slytherin kids any harm and might do all four Houses a world of good? That’s just the result of ‘whatever prejudices we have against Slytherin House’. I’m so tired of Slytherin House not being given literally everything being interpreted as some sort of bigotry.
If Slytherin kids learned that hard work and effort can still be taken over if your opponent goes above and beyond the call of duty in a manner that deserves public celebration, that’s not a bad lesson, it’s not a result of prejudice, it’s not bullying, it’s not making inter-house rivalry worse. IT’S LIFE. Snape did them zero favours coddling them, and Dumbledore did them no favours by letting him. If ‘yeah, someone who risked their life to do the right thing is getting a reward instead of us’ is actually so shocking to the Slytherins, there was a problem that went WAY beyond ‘but but but they did all their homework though, they should be rewarded for that!’. When you’ve spoiled a child, you don’t just quietly keep doing it in hopes the kid will work things out themselves. Nor do you just change things hoping the kid figures out why. YOU TELL THEM. “This is the reason you’re not getting the thing you felt entitled to. Also, you weren’t entitled to it.”
“If ‘yeah, someone who risked their life to do the right thing is getting a reward instead of us’ is actually so shocking to the Slytherins, there was a problem that went WAY beyond ‘but but but they did all their homework though, they should be rewarded for that!’.” -lupinatic
Say it again for those in the back.
Also, lmao at the idea that Slytherins experience prejudice for being Slytherin.
Like, seriously, if the slytherins heard the “Harry and his friends literally saved everyone’s life and faced down the most dangerous evil wizard of all time so their house got the cup” and thought “I can’t believe he took it away from us ): we deserved it more ): I’m gonna cry myself to sleep” then they NEED some disappointment in their lives right quick because at that point giving them any kind of reward (or even attempting to soften the blow of the loss) is BAD FOR THEM.
And honestly? Yeah those kids should be punished for the fact that Snape rigged the game in their favor. And they should be made fully aware that it’s because of Snape that they’re not allowed to win. Snape is popular with his students because he lets them figuratively get away with murder.
They should be mad at Snape for taking their victory away from them, because by cheating for them, he not only said he didn’t believe in their ability to win it on their own merits, but he made it so any efforts they actually made to win were meaningless.
And making those children feel the negative consequences of being spoiled by an overly permissive teacher will teach them a valuable lesson, that being handed everything on a silver plate is what’s easiest for you but it’s not what best.