[HPforGrownups] Re: Harry's Family

[Jenett]

No: HPFGUIDX 33632

On Thu, 17 Jan 2002, zoehooch wrote:
> I must say, I've been puzzling about this very topic for while. What 
> happened to James' parents? Cousins? Aunts and uncles?  I hope JKR 
> addresses this soon.  Book 5, I hear, is supposed to contain more 
> information about James and Lily; perhaps some of these questions can 
> answered.

I think this is one of the 'your mileage might vary depending on 
background' questions.

I *have* no aunts, uncles, or cousins - in fact, I'm currently related by
blood to only about 5 people on the planet that I know of. (Obviously, I'm
related to more people genetically, but none that I directly know of or 
who would know of their connection to me)

Both my parents were only children. They both came from very small
immediate families. (My mother had a much larger extended family, but most
of them died in the Holocaust and her father's brother and his wife never
had children) My parents were older when they had me - 3 of my 4
grandparents had died before I was born (all in their mid-60s). It doesn't
leave room for a whole lot of close kinship ties.

Thus, for me, it doesn't seem particularly unusual at all that something
similar might have happened in Harry's family in some way - that either
there just weren't many kids or that for whatever reason, they met with misfortune.
Likewise, James might just have been an only child, and had either older
parents, or parents who had died before he did (whether simple bad luck or
act of malice, who knows.)

We obviously know that Lily had a sister - but the indications seem to me
to clearly indicate that there aren't any other family members around now,
whether or not there ever were. Whether that's because of simple life
events (nothing 'causing' them) or misadventure, I don't know - but I've
never read it (again, probably due to my own background) as anything
completely off the wall.

On the other hand, I admit to wanting to know a lot more about both James 
and Lily, regardless of whether they had siblings, so I'm scarcely going 
to complain about more information. 

-Jenett