Slug Club
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Harry Potter association | |
| The Slug Club | |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Professor Slughorn's Office |
| Current head | Horace Slughorn |
| Intentions | For Professor Slughorn to network with famous, potentially famous or powerful people |
| Enemies | None |
| First appearance | Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince |
The Slug Club is a student club which appears in the Harry Potter books by J. K. Rowling.
The Slug Club is the informal name given to a group of students favoured by Professor Slughorn who accept his patronage and attend his extra-curricular meetings. Slughorn hand-picks the students because they are connected to important people or he believes they have traits, such as ambition, brains, charm, and talent, which will make them important and famous when they leave school. Much to Draco Malfoy’s displeasure, Slughorn excludes any students that have known Death Eaters in their family. Throughout the school year Slughorn organises dinners and parties at which he makes introductions and forges useful contacts between members. Once out of school, many of his favourites go on to become outstanding in their various fields. According to Molly Weasley, the Ministry of Magic is “littered with Slughorn's old favourites”. After leaving Hogwarts, Slughorn’s favourites often stay in touch and send him gifts, give him inside information, or get his opinion on the news or other important decisions.
In the book "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince", Harry is invited to the first meeting held on the Hogwarts Express. Slughorn also invited Neville Longbottom and Marcus Belby to the first meeting on the train, but was not impressed by them.
He continued to invite Harry, Cormac McLaggen, Blaise Zabini and Ginny Weasley to meetings, and later invited Hermione Granger and Melinda Bobbin after getting to know them across the first weeks of school. Harry, who does not particularly like Slughorn after meeting him before the start of school, manages to avoid most of the other meetings due to scheduling conflicts with Albus Dumbledore’s private lessons, detentions with Snape, or Quidditch practices (which, as captain, he could deliberately schedule to conflict with Slug Club meetings) every time he is invited.
Slughorn, desperate to get Harry to attend his Christmas party, has Hermione Granger check Harry’s free evenings so he could not politely refuse to attend; in fact, Harry did attend, accompanied by a pleased Luna Lovegood. The Christmas Party appears to have been the last Slug Club meeting to which Harry was invited. Slughorn wanted to stay out of Harry's way to avoid answering questions about Lord Voldemort's time at school, when he had been a member of the club and had asked Slughorn about Horcruxes.
[edit] Earlier Members
Slughorn hosted a Slug Club during his first period of employment at Hogwarts. That Club ended with his retirement, at some unspecified point before the hiring of Severus Snape.
Two wizards named Avery and Lestrange were seen in the Pensieve at a Slug Club meeting in Slughorn's memory, which was also attended by Tom Riddle. Since the Hogwart's attendance of Rodolphus and Rabastan Lestrange has been placed around the 1960s or 1970s (due to Rodolphus being the husband of Bellatrix Lestrange), the two who were members during the 1940s were probably the parents of Avery and the Lestrange siblings more central to the series, rather than those characters themselves.
