Characters: None
Summary: Who would ever want to be in Slytherin House?
Pairings: None
Author's Note: Keep reading if you want to see my opinion on the Slytherin bias. All I'm gonna say in this note is that: Sorting + Slytherin = Instant status as a social pariah.
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.
When a eleven-year-old with or wizard is brought to the Sorting Hat they may as well have been given a pair of dice, and told to roll them. If they are sorted into Slytherin, they've rolled snake eyes, and they'll never have a lucky roll again. They'll just keep rolling snake eyes, again and again, for the rest of their lives.
Sorry kid, your luck's run out, and I can't let you roll again. You don't get any second chances. Just the way the system works.
From the moment a child enters Slytherin House, they are doomed. They may not know it at first and they may never know it, or they may never see it that way and simply construct a new world in place of the one that's denied to them, but doomed they are, doomed indeed.
Because no one will ever look at them the same way again.
Their lot, their future and their fate is decided for them before they ever give any thought to it themselves. A Slytherin child can either give themselves over to the Dark Arts or try (and often fail) to make their way through the world in legitimate occupations where they will always be subject to invasive scrutiny and the distrust of their coworkers and employers.
The rest of Wizarding Britain does not hold them to a higher standard; instead, they just write them off immediately as lost causes and practically push them into the position of dark wizards, then tell themselves smugly, triumphantly that they knew it would happen when it does. That they knew that that Slytherin child would never amount to anything good, and that they were right to look down on them, taunt them, maybe bully or ostracize them. Slytherin House is one against many; Slytherin House never had a chance.
For just as Gryffindor House does not always produce courageous wizards, just as those of Hufflepuff are not always just, just as those of Ravenclaw are not always wise, Slytherin House does not always produce those who are intent on becoming experts of the Dark Arts, does not always produce witches and wizards who are rotten to the core. Most of them aren't afflicted with pureblood mania. Most of them just want to live free, just want a chance to live in peace.
But no one ever hears them. They are drowned out by the few Slytherins who are truly evil, drowned out by the Gryffindors, the Hufflepuffs and the Ravenclaws who refuse to listen. They are simply lumped in with all the rest, thrown to the wolves. They are practically thrown to Voldemort by the others, who then scream 'Traitor!' when they join with him.
Voldemort, at least, promised them acceptance, redress for their hurts, a place where they would always be accepted, so long as they were loyal to him. The vast majority of the Death Eaters did not join Voldemort out of pureblood mania or a fanatical loyalty to the viewpoints that he held: they joined him simply because they had been denied any means of making an honest living without a cloud of suspicion hanging over them for the entirety of their careers. There was nowhere else.
The courage of those Slytherins who broke away from Voldemort or always chose to stand apart from him put the Gryffindors of their time to shame.
But there was always that bias, wherever they went. There's a reason no Slytherin ever joined the Order of the Phoenix during the First Wizarding War (too risky, too risky, they might murder us all while we sleep), a reason why so few Slytherins make up the workforce of the Ministry of Magic.
There's a reason why so few Slytherins ever become anything but those on the outskirts of society, maybe with a small handful of friends from other houses but likely people they never knew at school.
There's a reason so many fall to the Dark Arts.
They were doomed from the moment they were Sorted, and they kept right on rolling snake eyes after that.