who is older..lily or petunia

[muniloopin]

No: HPFGUIDX 41975

Snip from Greg:

>Lily gets her letter when she's 11.  The whole family 
> goes off to Diagon Alley, and everyone, including Petunia, falls in 
> love with the magical world.  For the next two or 3 years until 
> Petunia turned 11, all her parents talked about was the day that 
> she'd get her own letter.  Then, the whole summer of her 11th year 
> goes by & no letter for Petunia.  Rather than admit that the 
> magical world rejected her, she decides to reject the magical world 
> by hating all things magical, including her nephew who even at young 
> age showed he had the gift she never did.  I think that scenario 
> makes more sense than the jealous older sister bit, but maybe 
> that's just me.

Even if Petunia is older, I don't think she can be MUCH older than 
lily. In my experience, a sister who is older by three or more years, 
looks upon her younger siblings more or less as a semi-parent. Many 
older sisters who have siblings more talented than themselves, tend to 
boast about "my little sister this" or "my little brother that". 
Younger sisters on the other hand, irrespective of their talents, 
feel this pressure to live up to the older sister. I tend to agree 
with the above description of how petunia waited for the letter that 
never came. 
                       
But it would make even more sense if they were twins! not identical 
twins of course (more about this later) but just fraternal twins. 
That would explain the rivalry and also near-identical ages of Harry 
and Dudley.

Now, what does Petunia look like? in the lexicon, both Petunia and 
Lily are described as "tall and thin". Lily has green eyes, but what 
about Petunia? Her eyes have been described as "beady" and some how i 
tend to associate "beady" with black...is that the universal opinion? 
could green eyes be beady? Dudley has blue eyes but he is supposed to 
look like his father, not mother. Petunia has blond hair as opposed 
to Lily's red. but is it dyed? COULD they have been ideantical twins? 

The other point is whether or not at least one of the Evanses was a 
squib. I tend to go with this theory because of the fact that they 
were PROUD to have a witch in the family. Think about it, if they 
were a purely muggle family with no trace of magic anywhere, would 
they be PROUD to have a witch in the family? They would be happy for 
lily but PROUD? They would be amused by her ability to "turn tea cups 
into mice" but to them it would be like a muggle magician doing 
tricks...amusing but not terribly glamorous. In fact, the parents 
would be glad to have at least one daughter who is still in their 
world, with normal ambitions and abilities.

Also, in a muggle family, no one would expect petunia to be magical 
too. No one would be upset if petunia became an accountant instead of 
a witch. In a squib family on the other hand, magical daughters would 
seem like the only way to respectibility and a daughter who was a mare 
muggle (well, I guess children of squibs are called muggles/mudbloods) 
would be made to feel inferior. If the evanses were squibs who cut off 
all relations with their magical relatives out of shame, that would 
also explain why harry does not seem to have any relations other than 
petunia on his mother's  side.

So I imagine the following senario:

Lily and petuania are playing with toy broom-sticks that squib Mr 
and Mrs Evans have ordered from zenko's for their daughters. To the 
delight of the parents lily hovers a couple of feel above the ground 
whereas petunia can only hop around pretending to fly. Or even 
worse...petunia is fringe-magical...just a tiny bit magical. She can 
make her toy-broom stick rise a fraction of an inch and no more - 
however hard she tries. It goes on like this - lily making her 
toy-wand glow whereas petunia's only heats up ...and so on. Petunia 
hoping that this would be enough to get her into hogwarts but it is 
not...lily goes to hogwarts and petunia to a muggle school where she 
is considered a freak because coming from a  squib background, she is 
ignorant about many muggle things. So she decides to "stamp out that 
nonsense" in herself and distances herself as much as possible from 
magic. 
                     
By the way, I am new to posting here though I have lurked for a long 
time now.
                      
Cheers!
                      > 
moonilupin