Harry's feelings/thoughts about parents

[Penny & Bryce Linsenmayer]

No: HPFGUIDX 10855

Hi --

Dinah wrote:

> > We know > the photos mean a great deal to him--does he ever want to talk
> to
> > these old school friends of his parents and ask what they were like?
> > Amy Z
>
> That's what I missed in the conversations between Harry and Remus. R was
> reluctant to confess that he and James were friends at Hogwarts, but after
> he said that I always wondered why Harry never asked. At least after Lupin
> learned what Harry heard when the Dementors advanced - and he was obviously
> quite shaken by it, too - I thought that *now* was the time to offer
> comfort, to tell Harry more about his parents. The voices of their struggle
> with death is the most vivid expression of them he has, and that's not a
> pretty thought. It also would have been a good method to weaken the scenes
> the Dementors ticked off in Harrys head.

I think this is all merely plot device.  Along the same lines of why Harry
can't live with Sirius.  If he did, he (and we, the readers) would learn a
whole lot more about the past than JKR is ready to reveal.

> What also struck me strange about Harry and the thoughts he has about his
> parents was the wand scene in GoF. I realized that the order was wrong, but
> that didn't really bother me. What bothered me most was that the person Harry
> had thought of most this evening was James - and we never were told about
> this. Not a tiny mention of Harrys feelings and thoughts.

Oh, I beg to differ!  Voldemort taunts Harry with how his father died "upright
and proud."  When he then turns around and teases Harry for playing "hide &
seek" behind a tombstone, Harry suddenly thinks that he doesn't want to die
like a child crouching & playing hide & seek.  He wants to die upright &
defending himself as his father did.  He was, in my mind, clearly making a
connection that he wants to be less like a child & more like his father (it
seems a rather natural progression for an adolescent male to experience in
fact).  What we don't have is any indication that Harry had *any* thoughts of
his mother, and so the corrected Wand order passage reads strangely (to me
anyway).

Penny