Villain Analysis: Slytherin
Not long after I started writing Girl in Red, I realized that I needed to challenge Rose. I’ve found many ways to do so, but I wanted a villain, and Voldemort wasn’t going to cut it against Rose. While I was talking to my friend about it, she mentioned how cool it’d be if something else lived in the Chamber of Secrets. And thus the idea of Slytherin began to form.
Slytherin is first introduced at the end of year two as a disembodied entity that lives in the Chamber of Secrets. It possesses a small army of “Spektres”, which are essentially Dementors that can cast spells, and “Cruentius”, a creature made of animated blood. Rose fights Cruentius while in the Chamber of Secrets, and despite the fact that Cruentius kills her, wins the fight. At this point, Slytherin is a villain. It has an unknown goal, but has no problem killing people to get what it wants.
In the following year, Rose and Slytherin talk more, developing Slytherin. At this point, Rose believes Slytherin to be the consciousness of Salazar Slytherin. It has Rose fetch Hufflepuff’s Cup, which, while readers may recognize it as a Horcrux, doesn’t mean anything to Rose. During this, Slytherin speaks through Cruentius, who is able to take a human form. What changes her perception of Slytherin is what happens at the end of the year. Rose accidentally breaks a Time Turner, causing time to bleed around her. She ultimately gets help from Slytherin to repair the Time Turner and restore time. At this point, Slytherin appears more as an antagonist, willing to help out when the situation suits it.
In year four, it has Rose collect the remaining Horcruxes, explaining their significance, and telling Rose it intends to kill Voldemort. It tells her its name is important to it, and it doesn’t want Voldemort killing people in its name. This is, more or less, a clear motivation. With Slytherin’s goals aligning with Rose’s, it seems it can be trusted. As time goes on, Rose begins to consider Slytherin as a friend of sorts.
After Rose “dies” at the end of fourth year, not much is heard from Slytherin in years five and six. For a villain that is careful about telling too much information about itself, this wasn’t a good move on my part. Slytherin couldn’t develop during this time, because it wasn’t there. It was only mentioned by Hermione and Dumbledore, the only two in Hogwarts who knew about it. But Slytherin reappears at the end of year six, when Voldemort steps into Hogwarts. Slytherin gets into his head and physically restructures his mind to force him to regret what he’s done. This rejoins his soul, and Slytherin kills him, absorbing his blood and soul.
At this point, Slytherin’s true motivations are made more clear. Its face, which originally looked akin to a plastic mask, takes on the quality of skin. It marvels (as much as an entity that never has emotions can) at the fact that it can feel its skin again. It turns on Hermione, who actually killed Rose not five minutes earlier, believing itself to have been friends with Rose and wanting revenge.
At this point, Slytherin was once again a clear villain. Not only that, but it had solidified itself as the main villain of the series. Hermione had arguably taken over as the main character, pitting her against Slytherin, something I hadn’t anticipated when I’d first started writing Girl in Red. Following clues Rose left behind, Hermione and Luna find the notebook Rose kept with her, into which she’d copied Salazar Slytherin’s note on his secret project: Slytherin. Her notebook also explained why she’d faked her own death and turned on them: Slytherin forced her to, threatening her friends if she didn’t.
The biggest difficulty with writing Slytherin was that it was careful not to reveal too much information about itself. This meant that a lot of its plan had to be worked out by the other characters, tying up the loose ends it left throughout the series. Hermione works out most of it, but Ron still calls her out, reminding her that she can’t actually know any of it (but that scene’s purpose was to fill in gaps for my readers anyway, so it served its purpose). This also made Slytherin’s motivations a little confusing. While its desire for a proper body were made clear in its backstory, its hatred of humanity wasn’t clear. Because it was so careful, it never mentioned either part of its plan to Rose. Hermione worked out that it was amassing an army of Spektres to spread out over the world, sucking the happiness out of the air, causing humanity to lay down and die.
Even if you haven’t read Girl in Red, I recommend reading the chapter with Slytherin’s origins (look for “Day 1” to get past the part that leads up to it, stop at “Day 103”). There’s a lot of information in there that I can’t get to here. Writing Slytherin was a challenge, forcing me to scrap several possible outcomes when I realized Slytherin was too careful to allow that outcome. Even its plan with the Spektres didn’t occur to me until nearly the end of the series, when I realized that was exactly something it would use. But its ultimate weakness was its inability to understand human emotion. It was because of this that Ron, Sally-Anne, Harry, and Ginny realized that something had tampered with their memories from the end of sixth year. It didn’t understand why Rose would rather die than live as its puppet. It didn’t expect Rose to have found Salazar Slytherin’s notes, allowing Hermione to craft a spell to destroy Cruentius. And it didn’t expect Hermione to sacrifice herself to kill it, bringing Hogwarts down on top of her in the process.
Most of what I’ve learned about writing villains came from writing Slytherin. It was the big bad of Girl in Red and an original villain. I wrote or expanded other villains along the way, but Slytherin was the first and hardest. I had trouble conveying its motivations, and I don’t think I made it as sympathetic as I’d wanted to. But I like what I got in the end, a villain able to challenge my characters, one that I’ll always remember.
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