#anti horace slughorn

[lilithofpenandbook]

It makes me SO MAD when people say "there are kind Slytherins 🥺🥺🥺" and show a picture of fucking SLUGHORN

Slughorn? You mean "oh I didn't think a muggleborn would be this talented" Slughorn?

Slughorn as in the Slughorn who told Tom Riddle, a child KNOWN for being a lil twisted, about HORCRUXES just to look good?

Slughorn who didn't even notice a fucking cult being formed in his own house???

People like to blame Dumbledore for the cult, but tell me why it's his fault and not the HEAD. OF. HOUSE? Dumbledore isn't an all powerful all seeing wizard! He's a human who happens to be intelligent and skilled at magic but NOT All Seeing! How is he gonna know Tom Riddle's forming a cult when one) he wasn't even HEADMASTER and two) SLUGHORN was Tom's head of house and should have been aware of it happening UNDER. HIS. NOSE?

Like, even in Snape's time, where the fuck was Horace Slughorn? Where was he when the Mauraders were abusing his own student? Where was he when Lucius and the others were grooming the younger children? Where was he when all of this was happening?

Yes, McGonagall should have disciplined her students. But Slughorn's under a greater responsibility to protect his. Yes, headmaster Dumbledore should have probably intervened in the cult forming. But Slughorn's under a greater responsibility to intervene and inform the headmaster.

For fuck's sake, he wasn't even a good teacher! How did a 16 year old child manage to correct all the incorrect potions in the book and not the FUCKING. TEACHER?!

Horace Slughorn is NOT a "kind Slytherin".

He's the worst one.

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

Hi, I just saw the ask someone sent you about the theory with Slughorn and the SA but I can't find the post where you originally theorized this. Have you ever elaborated on this?

Not posted yet. To convince you people this one's going to take a lot of quotes and be... long, because it turns out there's a story within a story in Half-blood Prince (and that story is hilarious but so awful) so neither of us has gotten around to it/at this point it might just become an RH episode.

[therealvinelle]

A small continuation of the Pensieve post

Three things, to be specific, one to counter a point raised in the replies of the previous post.

Dumbledore plays the memory Harry received from Slughorn right away. How could he have tampered with it?

It's not so much the how to me that matters so much as it is that everything points to the memory having been tampered with. Do I know how he did it, no, but I know it wouldn't have been impossible.

A few suggestions:

Harry's memory of what happens when he gives Dumbledore the memory is tampered with. His memory of what happened in Dumbledore's office is false, at least partially. The books are told in the past tense, implying they are what Harry remembers and not necessarily what happened. What we know is that Harry arrived at Dumbledore's office at night after having already spent a long (And unknown quantity of) time with Slughorn and Hagrid, Dumbledore had all the time in the world to a. obliviate Harry and give him a slightly different memory of what he saw in the Pensieve, b. confound him while he doctored the memory and make it so Harry didn't remember there had been an interim, c. take the memory, doctor it, give it back, obliviate Harry and let him hand the freshly collected memory to Dumbledore, d. anything and everything in between

Dumbledore switches the new memory out with the old one He already had the old one to serve as blueprint, and all the time in the world to make it do and say what he wanted it to

Ultimately, to me it doesn't really matter how Dumbledore did it. He could have made Harry remember whatever he wanted. The fact remains that Slughorn acts the way he does about it, Riddle's behavior changed completely, the memory itself is... absurd (I'll write a post!) and... there was the fact that Dumbledore knew to search for it in the first place, which I'll get into a bit below.

Why did he do it?

He already had the proof he needed that Tom created at least two horcruxes in the diary and the ring. He didn't know how many, however.

And... this is worthy of its own post, but Dumbledore likes to be the person who knows Tom better than anybody, who understands him and can predict his actions. Dumbledore believes he knows Tom so well that his guesses are rarely if ever wrong.

I think he deduced, on his own, that Tom had created six horcruxes.

This is a feasibly high number, monstrously high and tied up with a significant magical number that Dumbledore would see Tom as being enamoured by. In other words, a number Dumbledore could believe.

My problem with the six horcruxes is twofold, one being that we're here relying on Tom having only made the number of horcruxes he discussed with his teacher when he was a teenager, the other being that... I'm not convinced he made six. The evidence Nagini is a horcrux is too circumstantial ("Voldemort adores his pet snake and that pet snake is peak r/likeus, Harry, I think it's a horcrux." - Dumbledore being an evidence man who proves things. No really, those are his arguments, Tom likes his snake and the snake is pretty smart), and while Harry has his feverish "I'm a snake" hallucinations he never experiences that for any of the other horcruxes. I could go either way on this one.

Point ultimately being, the memory was always worthless because Tom could easily have been lying about the number he was thinking of, just as Dumbledore could easily have come up with the contents of his conversation with Slughorn on his own.

Secondary point being, the conversation as is is... not damning. Tom asks about horcruxes, gets told what they are, it is information Magicke Moste Evil already had to offer, Tom asks a hypothetical question and Slughorn is disproportionately disturbed. Perhaps I'm desensitized, but if you tell someone "horcruxes means putting your soul in an object so the object has to be destroyed before you can be killed" and they reply "cool, so if I make a bunch of horcruxes I'll be really hard to kill" you should have seen it coming.

It's a conversation that reads as scripted by someone who sees Tom's evil as so obvious, so plain to the eye, clearly poking out from just beneath the surface, that of course Slughorn would see his innocuous question as damning. Dumbledore certainly does.

With that, onto the next point.

Were horcruxes brought up at all, then?

Oh I'm sure they were, otherwise Slughorn wouldn't have responded the way he did when Harry first asked about them. The first part of the memory, with the party, Tom lingering, and then asking about them, that all happened or Slughorn wouldn't have had the reaction to Harry that he did.

My whole hypothesis is that something else happened after that.

Dumbledore knew there was a memory to ask Slughorn about in the first place

Slughorn is an able Occlumens, he always carries the antidote to veritaserum on his person, and he guards this memory like his firstborn.

He never, ever, would have given this memory to Dumbledore if there was a way he could deny its existence, just as he never would have tipped Dumbledore off it existed in the first place. We know Slughorn didn't tip off anyone else, or Dumbledore would have had the memory through that person already.

And yet, Dumbledore has to have known it existed, that a sensitive conversation between Tom and Slughorn happened, in order to ask for the memory in the first place.

Two people knew that conversation had happened, Tom Riddle and Horace Slughorn.

Slughorn never would have told Dumbledore, just as Tom Riddle never would have said a word if the conversation was what we were presented with.

Except, one of them must have.

The only explanation, then, the only way for Dumbledore to have known the conversation happened, is if Tom told him.

This is where I think inappropriate conduct on Slughorn's end is the only feasible explanation. And Dumbledore, as it happens, was Deputy Headmaster at the time. Tom, for obvious reasons, would have been unable to approach his Head of House.

Do I think Tom told him exactly what had occurred, not necessarily, but he must have said something that led Dumbledore know there had been an incident with Slughorn. As for what he wanted to achieve by going to Dumbledore, that's again up to speculation but Dumbledore, for all his flaws, had made it clear to Tom that he's a strict, no nonsense allowed at Hogwarts, type of person.

Tom approaching him explains how Dumbledore knew, and Slughorn having behaved inappropriately is the only circumstance in which I can conceive of Tom doing this. Certainly, I think it proves that the conversation can't have been what we were presented with.

As for his interest in getting the memory, that's for another post but I do think it ultimately comes down to the man having a fascination with Tom Riddle, with collecting every memory he possibly can as he pieces together the Tom Riddle mosaic.

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

How did you come to change your mind about Slughorn ? Or do you still believe he performs an essential service with the Slug Club?

I got around to rereading Halfblood-Prince, that's what happened.

If he did what I thought he did, yes, he would absolutely be performing a great and necessary service. Networking is clearly vital.

However, that er... upon rereading, that is very much not what he's doing at all despite putting on a good show that these are networking events for the children.

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

Gotta say, your characterisation of slughorn fits completely with the bad vibes he gave me when reading (although the fact he always has at least one designated muggle born spoke to tokenisation to me rather than a kink) 10/10

The Man Who Would be King by me and @therealvinelle

There's a meta to come, to replace the meta I had previously written on Slughorn, which is to say one should always reread the source material before trying to remember what vibes one got from a character.

And that I was wrong.

So very wrong.

...

Look, @therealvinelle, praise!