Harry's Grandparents (was the Dursleys and the Potters

[Rita Winston]

No: HPFGUIDX 11672

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., love2write_11098 at y... wrote:
> 
> What I'm dying to find out is what on Earth happened to all four of 
> Harry's grandparents. I suppose it's possible that Petunia got so
> fed up with her parents favoring Lily (at least, in her eyes) that
> she stopped talking to them, thereby cutting off Harry's contact
> with them as well. And I suppose it's highly likely that James's
> parents were both killed in the first war with Voldemort.

At the beginning of SS, when McGonagall protests against Dumbledore 
entrusting Harry to those nasty Dursleys, Dumbledore says they're 
'the only family he has left'. First, I think that explains why he 
gave Harry to such awful people -- there is an old magic that will 
protect him while he lives with his family. The protective effect 
takes a while to wear off after he leaves, so after a school year at 
Hogwarts he has to go back to the Dursleys to renew it, but then he 
can visit the Weasleys once it is renewed.

Second, the way this is relevant to your question, if Harry's Muggle 
grandparents were still alive, they would also be 'family' to Harry 
and Dumbledore couldn't have said his aunt and uncle were the only 
family he had left. I also wonder what happened to them, but like 
to suggest that Petunia murdered them in a temper tantrum over them 
favoring Lily.

About James's side of the family -- as you mentioned, wizarding folk 
live longer than Muggles, altho' I don't know that we know it's 
exactly 50% longer. I figured that IF wizards live to be 150 AND have 
a child when they're 30, a kid could have up to great-great-grand- 
-parents still living. 
born 1980 - kid - aged 11 in SS
born 1950 - parent - aged 41 in SS
born 1920 - grandparent -- aged 71 in SS
born 1890 - great-grandparent -- aged 101 in SS
born 1860 - great-great-grandparent -- aged 131 in SS

Were all those generations killed off fighting Dark Wizards (before 
the First Voldemort War, there was Grindelwald defeated by Dumbledore 
in 1940-something)? And they had had only one child per generation 
per all those generations? In my fic 'Cedric's Funeral' (which is 
in this egroup's Files/Fanfic folder) (at first, I didn't even know 
that people think that shameless self-promotion is something that 
should be apologized for), I made that have been the fate of the 
Diggories, so that Cedric's death ended a family that had lived 
in the same village since before 1066.