Plot Hole / Harry's relatives

[catlady_de_los_angeles]

No: HPFGUIDX 36194

My apologies to everyone for mis-stating what Kenilworthy Whisp wrote 
about flying-animal animagi and people transfigured into bats. (How 
much brain power can take it to remember something as simple as "No! 
No! Bad ferret!")

Aberforth's Goat wrote:

> Actually, she spelled it out in a couple of interviews - and it was
> connected to Ron Weasley's cousin, who was originally slated for
> Rita Skeeter's role. Here's an excerpt from an interview in
> Entertainment Weekly:

My recollection of what JKR said to Lino (is that the name? Black guy 
on BBC who was an early champion of Potter?) was that the Weasley 
cousin accidentally slipped out in the process of fixing the plot 
hole. I used your very own search engine 
http://www.geocities.com/aberforths_goat/ and found what seems to be 
the interview I remember except it's listed as HP Galleries Interview 
at 
http://www.geocities.com/aberforths_goat/Fall_2000_BBC_Newsround.htm

Here's the quote:
<<Q: Last time we spoke you said there'd be a Weasley cousin. It 
didn't appear. You've deceived me!
JKR: It got pulled. Sorry about that. What appened on Book Four, and 
one of the reasons why it was easily the most difficult to write, 
which had absolutely nothing to do with Harry being famous or me 
being famous, was that for the first time my plan fell down. I got 
halfway through and realised there was a huge gaping plot hole. The  
two ends just didn't meet. It was entirely my own fault: I should 
have had enough sense to go through it very carefully before I 
started writing. So I had to do an enormous amount of unpicking and
in the process I'm afraid the Weasley cousin disappeared. >>

btw, I read that there page in View Source because my Netscape goes 
crazy trying to process it as html. I tried IE (because there are
 more and more pages that only work for IE) and the page did come up, 
but with a box telling me A Runtime Error has Occured Line 3 
Unterminated String Constant.

Unc Mark wrote:

> Are all of Harry's family dead? (snip) There was discussion that 
> Lily might be Dumbledore's grandfather, Given his age, Dumbledore 
> might be Harry's great-grandfather, great-great, or 
> great-great-great-grandfather.  

Canon tells us that all of Harry's family are dead (or at least 
gone). When Dumbledore and McGonagall meet at the Dursley doorstep on 
that night in 1981: "I've come to bring Harry to his aunt and uncle. 
They're the only family he has left now."