FF (a bit): Heir of Gryffindor?

[cassandraclaire at mail.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 15553

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., sabrina_myst at y... wrote:
> All right.  I'm a newbie here, so please don't murder me if this 
has  been over-discussed in the past... anyway.  Although I don't 
know you  guys' opinions on this, it seems that a majority of 
FanFiction.net  believes that Harry, through James, is a descendant 
of Godric  Gryffindor - probably popularised by DD&DS.  Further 
extrapolation  leads to the conclusion that this is the reason 
Voldemort wanted to  kill James and Harry, but not Lily.  Now, I know 
this is a perfectly  logical theory and all - but I, personally, hate 
it!  


*crossly* I get blamed for everything. Characters wearing leather, 
Ginny/Draco romances, the works. I cannot be the first person to 
write a fanfic where Harry is the Heir of Gryffindor. Note that in 
DD/DS Harry being the Heir of Gryffindor has zero, zip, zilch to do 
with Voldemort wanting to kill him. And onward...


Sabrina: My first and foremost reason that this school of thought is 
going be sadly disappointed in future books is, simply, it's not 
JK's  style.  Moan and groan all you like - if 95% of online HP fans 
> believe it, it probably won't make a very good plot twist, and JK 
> hinted through Dumbledore in PS/SS that the reason Voldemort was 
> after Harry is going to be a major twist.  

Harry being the Heir of Gryffindor does not necessarily have to have 
anything to do with why Voldemort was after him. Then again, it 
might. This *has* been discussed a great deal before, and as usual 
we've all come to the conclusion that there is no conclusion. Some 
points from old threads:

IIRC, these are the evidences people have presented for Harry being 
the Heir of Gryffindor: he's in Gryffindor, he pulled Godric's sword 
out of the Sorting Hat, His parents lived in Godric's Hollow; when he 
got his wand, it shot red and gold sparks,  which are the colours for 
Gryffindor, and he was born under Leo, the constellation of the 
lion, which is the animal for Gryffindor; Dumbledore told him he was 
a "true" Gryffindor. There's probably more but I can't be bothered to 
look for it.

I'm not saying these are my arguments, either, just that these are 
among those that have been presented.

I would be surprised if the sole reason that Voldemort wanted Harry 
dead was because he was the Heir of Gryffindor, but I would not be 
surprised if Harry turned out to be the Heir of Gryffindor. It might 
simply not be that big a part of the plot. She's a pretty 
unpredictable writer, that JKR, but not everything is a neck-
wrenching twist. Lockhart seemed like a jerk at the beginning of Book 
2, and he turned out to be a jerk. No surprises there.

Sabrina: Reason No. 2 concerns the sheer impossibility of it.  How on 
earth   can someone like Voldemort try to wipe out all the Gryffindor 
blood  on the planet?  It's easy for him to declare himself the Heir 
of   Slytherin - even though we basically have only his word for 
that,  it's perfectly plausible - but there are also probably 
thousands of  Heirs of Slytherin who just haven't bothered to trace 
back their  ancestry, and of course the same would go for 
Gryffindor.  I can  trace back to one of my ancestors in the circa-
Founder period, and I   also have a thirty-page album filled with 
nothing but the names,   birth and death dates, and children of that 
person's descendants.  So  it would be pretty mad to try and track 
down and wipe out all  Gryffindor blood, or even go after someone 
because of it, because by  the time a thousand years have passed it's 
plausible that even some  of the Death Eaters have Gryffindor blood.  
Now, Voldemort may be an  insane sociopath, but he's not stupid, or 
at least not as stupid as  many would think.  He would probably know 
the sheer insanity of this.


I have actually never heard the argument that Voldemort wanted to 
kill Harry because he was trying to wipe out all traces of Gryffindor 
blood. IMHO, that makes little sense, although in a world where 
Dumbledore can confidently assert that Voldemort "is the last 
descendant of Slytherin" your argument about the difficulty of 
tracking down all living descendants of Gryffindor doesn't 
necessarily hold up. How do you know there's not some spell, be it 
simple or complex, that would pinpoint where they all are on a map? 
Thus negating the need for tedious searches through genealogy books 
and for Voldemort to renew his library card, which has doubtless 
expired.

Also, like I said before, Harry being the Heir of Gryffindor might 
not be at all related to Voldemort wanting to kill him. Or, say it 
was related, it doesn't necessarily mean that Voldemort wants to wipe 
out everyone with Gryffindor blood. We don't know what being an Heir 
entails, do we? We don't know if everyone descended from Slytherin is 
automatically an Heir of Slytherin, or if it's a random factor that 
appears every few generations, like a genetically linked disease, and 
Voldemort had some kind of magical alarm system that was tripped when 
a new Heir of Gryffindor was born. Now, I really don't believe that, 
I'm just saying it's narratively possible. I have yet to see an 
argument that convinces me that Harry is *definitely* the Heir of 
Gryffindor, and I have yet to see any argument that convinces me that 
he definitely isn't.

Cassandra