austenpoppy:

Slughorn needs to hear this one day

I don’t hate him. Nope. Generally I even like him, and look at him like an old uncle with an odd behaviour.

But there are moments all I want to do is slap him really hard. And yell at him like a mad woman.

I mean, of course I can be angry with other characters, even characters I absolutely love. Because they are human beings and so are flawed and make mistakes. Nothing more normal.

But him, he really gets on my nerves !

Yes, I speak of you, Horace Slughorn. Nobody really dislikes you, right ? They all look at you fondly, kindly. Nobody says how much you were wrong. Nobody says how much your little elitist club was despicable.

Some even don’t realise it.

That is right, a good slap on your chubby cheek would be fine with me. Then I could eventually forgive you.

Because Dumbledore saying you have a natural talent at finding exceptionnal people, people with someting special, makes me want to tear something apart.

Because people finding you are a good judge on these matters makes me believe there is no justice down there.

Because your behaviour towards students like Marcus Belby, whom you invited to the first reunion of your club because his uncle was famous and extremely clever, but rejected once you realized he had no connections with this member of of his family, once you judged him as uninteresting because of his manners and his shyness, makes me want to scowl you forever.

He had probably great qualities, but you dismissed him, you judged him not good enough for your club, so you’ll never know them.

You even tried to forget him after your conversation with him, making pass a snack to all your guests except him.

You spoke to him with a tone of false politeness full of scorn and disdain.

You turned your head.

And you probably never looked at him again.

He would maybe have blossomed if you had encouraged him enough, if you had taken the time to make him grow and improve, if you had taken the time to really look at him.

Which means, if you had done your job seriously.

You are a Potions Master, but a teacher is sometimes more like a gardener. A gardener who plants a seed in the ground, waters it, takes care of it, looks at it grow and turn into a beautiful flower. However, this flower is fragile, and a tempest, winter, or even a simple gust of wind can reduce it to ashes.

The way you turned your head this day was like a gust of wind, the way you treated him with disdain and indifference and even ignored him was like winter’s arrival, the way you humiliated him a tempest.

You’re wrong, though, Horace, if you think that it’s more important, rewarding and relevant to look after the students you find interesting.

Because each student is interesting. You may have preferences, of course, it’s not something you can help, but showing them so blatantly and ignoring totally the other students, who can have something to bring, something to exchange, something to make shine, is an awful mistake.

Moreover, if you believed your judgement unerring, you were greatly mistaken.

You know what ?

One of your favorites, Cormac MacLaggen, whom you liked because his family spent week-ends hunting Nogtails with the Prime Minister, is, though brave, arrogant, presomptuous, so conceited it is sickening, and spent an entire evening talking about himself to Hermione Granger, and visibly harassed her so much, trying to make her kiss him, that she fled away from him. What a wonderful boy !

Of course he had qualities, but you overestimated him. He’s not the future Prime Minister, or else he really has to change.

You have such a great understanding of people, such a great judgement, Horace, that’s really impressive. I’m awed.

Hang on a second, what does this mean, “even the greatest spirits can be misled.” ? You really thought that your false opinion of Cormac was your only mistake this year ?

(Yes, we’re only speaking about this year, when you were Harry’s teacher, because we’re not going to talk about Tom Jedusor, I promise you; I don’t hold a grudge against you because you let yourself being dazzled by his charm and wits; this boy was one of the biggest manipulators who ever existed, the spark of evil, the shadow of the hell, Satan’s laugh, and a lot of people felt into his golden but bloody traps.)

Let me laugh.

Your precious little Harry, whom I love by the way, your little prodigy, was not the creator of all those inventions you were praising. He was – almost – cheating (yeah, I know, that was not really cheating) with a manual with scribbled notes written by another pupil years ago on it.

You know who this pupil was ? Severus Snape. You were wrong, Harry was not better than Snape at potions. (Following a very true comment, to be fair with Slughorn, he did know Snape was very good, it is just I think he did not realise how much).

You know how Harry got your worst memory ? He drank the Felix Felicis you had given him. But you know who suggested the idea ? Ron Weasley.

Ron Weasley. Ronald Bilius Weasley. Ron Weasley.

I repeat his name because apparently you had some problem with it.

Because yes, we arrive at the moment you deserve your slap on your face. So you did not think he was worth remembering his name ? You looked at him as if he was “nothing more than a shed of Doxies” ? You wondered why the genius Hermione Granger and the Boy-who-lived befriended a “mediocre pupil with average skills” -that’s not what you said but you thought it didn’t you ?- ? You didn’t indulge him ? You let him out of your stupid club because you thought he was not good enough ? You invited nearly all the people he was closed to -his two best friends, his sister- except him, letting him behind (oh, you left someone like Luna behind too by the way. What a mistake) ?

(By the way, Harry, Hermione, Ginny, why have you not refused clearly his invitations when your dearest friend and brother was so humiliated by this teacher ? Oh, that’s right, Harry, the memory. But Hermione ? Ginny ? Why have you not tried to tell Ron he did not deserve all this contempt ? I would have thought that you, of all people…)

Screw you, Horace Slughorn. Despite all your contempt, despite all the people believing he was average and even mediocre, despite his own very low self-esteem, he became one of the most wonderful persons you could have ever met. He became a wonderful Auror.

You were really deluding yourself. He has always, and will always, been a far greater man than you.

When you have met him, he had, at the age of twelve, led and won a fantastic chess match qualified by Dumbledore as “the best-played game of chess Hogwarts has seen in many years”, in which he had sacrificed himself and got knocked out by a chess piece in order to reach his goal : allow his friends carrying on with the battle.

When you have met him, he had, at the age of thirteen, followed a troop of spiders in the dark Forbidden Forest, to find a clue about what was happening in Hogwarts and save petrified pupils, especially his dear Hermione, and met Acromentulas, although he is arachnophobic ! Spiders were his worst fear at that time, but he did not hesitate.

When you have met him, he had found where was the Chamber of Secrets and how to open it.

When you have met him, he had shoved Harry out of the way of a furious dog and got bitten in his place.

When you have met him, he had stood on a broken leg to tell firmly somebody everyone thought was a mass murderer, somebody he had seen months before with a knive above his bed, that if he wanted to kill his best friend, he would have to kill him too.

And, during a fight, had jumped with his broken leg on this person you knew (yes, Sirius Black) to get their wands he had taken.

And then, always with this broken leg, had wanted to be one of the people chained to the real mass murderer, who was his former rat, to get him to the castle.

When you have met him, he had been part of the battle of the Department of Mysteries, following Harry without questions. He had to fight three Death Eaters on his own, and got hit with a dangerous spell that led him to be scarred for life by a brain.

When you have met him, he was already this self-sacrificing, selfless, brave, kind-hearted, compassionate, clever, witty as hell, extremely funny and loyal to a fault guy you never saw but without whom Harry and Hermione were incapable to live or even function.

Their heart, Horace, you missed the heart of this little trio.

And after, Horace ? After that ?

I won’t tell you everything, use your web of personalities to get a little information !

But you know what ?

This guy, Horace, disarmed Bellatrix Lestrange.

This guy, Horace, defied Voldemort and broke a spell you-know-who had done.

This guy, Horace, hit Death Eaters from a broom.

This guy, Horace, dropped everything to go on a horcruxe hunt.

Yes, Horcruxes. You heard me.

The very Horcruxes you were so afraid of.

And he wore around his neck a part of the soul of Voldemort after he nearly died, after a massive blood loss, for months, with Harry and Hermione.

And because he wears his heart on his sleeve, because his heart is so open, because he thinks he is nothing, he went through mental torture for months.

And even got possessed, got manipulated by Voldemort, but never broke. He got rid of it.

And you know what else he did?

He begged Bellatrix Lestrange to torture him instead of the girl he loves. Don’t tell me he was unaware of what she had done, he had seen it with his very eyes and had been utterly moved. Yet he was ready to go through that for Hermione, was ready to suffer beyond the believable, was ready to become insane.

He wanted to go kill Nagini, Voldemort’s snake if you did not know it, alone, despite the known presence of Voldemort.

He found how to get rid of one of the last Horcruxes, and opened the Chamber of Secrets without even speaking Parseltongue.

He had not planned to go through the war.

You know what is the worst ? What you thought was maybe exactly what the Horcruxe tortured him with.

I like you, Horace, but you really deserve some slaps.