Welcome to Harry Potter Theory. Today, we're discussing the house of Slytherin and whether or not its students are inherently EVIL.
First off, I’d like to address…why would Slytherin House be EVIL? Well, throughout the centuries, Slytherin hasn’t always had the best reputation. In fact, it started off with a pretty poor one almost as soon as it was founded. This is, of course, because the founding wizard of Slytherin House, Salazar Slytherin had what we might call a rather … “limited” view of what it meant to be a TRUE witch or wizard. In fact, as one of the four founding members of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Salazar Slytherin indeed advocated for the school to ONLY admit pureblood pupils. He believed that Muggle-born or half-blood witches and wizards were “less than” and shouldn’t be permitted access to a magical education such as the one the founding members were offering at Hogwarts. Now, while these views certainly suggest that Salazar Slytherin was a rather prejudiced and narrow-minded wizard, they don’t necessarily mean that he was an EVIL man. However, Salazar Slytherin did do a great many other things that bring his character—and inherent evilness—into question. One of the most obvious examples being his creation of the Chamber of Secrets. I mean, what good and sane person puts a gigantic, incredibly dangerous Basilisk with a fatal stare and sideways glance that petrifies people right beneath a school full of children? What good could possibly come out of that? And speaking of snakes, there’s also the fact that Salazar was a parseltongue, meaning that he had the ability to speak to snakes and serpent-like creatures. This alone certainly doesn’t make him evil—but if you add the fact that almost every parseltongue that we’re aware of was pretty evil—like Voldemort and the Gaunt family— it definitely doesn’t do Salazar Slytherin any favours in supporting his character.
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