Choice over Heritage/Heirs

[GulPlum]

No: HPFGUIDX 45956

At 11:50 30/10/02 -0800, Anne wrote:

<snip>

>Take Harry, for instance.  More important to the course of Harry's life 
>than whether he is *Gryffindor's Heir* or not is the fact that he was born 
>a wizard.  If the second thing turns out to be true, it is merely part of 
>the *raw material* of Harry's life just as we know that the first is. 
>These things don't lock him into any certain *fate*, they are merely the 
>starting point for his life's choices.

My main reasons to doubt the Heir of Gryffindor theory are meta-textual, 
because JKR's "clues" are usually oblique, whilst more obvious "clues" tend 
to be subverted.  For instance, we don't find out Lupin's first name until 
after he's revealed to be a werewolf; his surname alone isn't enough to be 
a definitive indicator, and given JKR's frequent use of flowers and plants 
as names, she was (perhaps deliberately) leading us up the garden path.

Pulling the sword out of the hat is *such* an *obvious* clue connecting 
Harry with Gryffindor - how many English-speaking people (even children) 
are unaware of Excalibur? Furthermore, we have a context in which, both 
when he does the act and when it's later explained to him, Riddle is 
underlined to be Slytherin's Heir/Descendant. I'm therefore very 
suspicious: does JKR *want* us to make the connection and assume Harry to 
be Godric Gryffindor's Heir (on top of which, we all know he lived in 
Godric's Hollow as a baby), only to be laughing up her sleeve as she takes 
us down a very different road?

That said, though, and in direct reply to Anne's comments above, there's 
something even more important from which everything which has happened to 
Harry flows and will rule his entire future life: being The Boy Who Lived.

Surviving Voldemort was not a choice he made (he was hardly in a position 
to make choices!); furthermore, my own belief is that it wasn't even a 
deliberate choice Lily made, either. Yes, I know there are those who 
theorise that Lily "invoked" some kind of magic by sacrificing herself, but 
I don't subscribe to that view. It is the simple fact that she was prepared 
to save herself, to display the ultimate gift of love, which stumped 
Voldemort, the ultimate antithesis of love.

The theme JKR appears to be developing from this is what choices will Harry 
make based on that? Will he make choices which befit his status as TBWL? 
Similarly, whether or not Harry is Gryffindor's Heir by blood, the ultimate 
question is whether he is "worthy" of that status. Is he Gryffindor's 
spiritual Heir, the way Riddle is currently presented not only as descended 
from Slytherin, but appears to live by his creed? (Actually, I'd like the 
story to pan out by making Slytherin out to be a Good Guy, despite having 
built the Chamber. OK, he hid a Basilisk in there, but Hagrid, who is 
presented to us as a Good Guy, also has an affinity with nasty creatures...).

If Harry is related to Gryffindor, and it could well be that this was part 
of the substance of Trelawney's First Prediction, this is not what makes 
him a better person than Riddle. What makes him a better person is choosing 
to use his status for good rather than evil.

>This leads me to something within the books which I am really hoping JKR 
>will take up eventually.  It is quite noticable that there are really no 
>examples of
>really good muggles anywhere.  The best you can do is assume that any 
>number of the muggle-born and half-blood students have decent muggle 
>parents.  It is
>so noticeable to me that I am wondering if *looking down on muggles* will 
>be one of the prejudices taken up in the story eventually.

I suspect that won't happen. The Muggle world, apart from the Dursleys, is 
(at this stage, at least) of no relevance to the story. The wizarding 
world's condescending attitude towards all things Muggle has already been 
well established. We know that some Muggles accept the wizarding community 
and magic as a force (Lily & Petunia's mum, Hermione's parents) and we, the 
readers, can join the dots for ourselves: the Dursleys are not typical of 
Muggle attitudes and behaviour, and thus JKR has no need to present us with 
a comparison. In terms of the meta-textual message JKR is trying to 
portray, the wizarding world parallels our every-day experiences, and thus 
including "speaking parts" for Good Guy Muggles is unnecessary. In a way, 
*we* are the Good Guy Muggles.

On a separate but related issue, Emily F wrote:

>This may seem like a silly question, but what are the odds that Godric
>Gryffindor only has one heir (then two, with the birth of Harry)?  I assume
>that most wizarding families aren't as...numerous as the Weasleys.
>Nonetheless, we're looking at MANY generations of people!  There should be a
>multitude of heirs, right?  Perhaps I misunderstand the meaning of the word
>heir, but this is something that's always bothered me about heir!Harry.
>
>(I realize, of course, that this argument applies equally well to Slytherin
>and Riddle.)

Steve (bboy_mn) replied with parallels about the rules of inheritance, but 
whilst they certainly can account for the "Heir" bit, they do not account 
for Riddle's being Slytherin's "last remaining descendant" (editorial 
mistake notwithstanding).

I'd like to suggest a possible explanation for there being only one 
descendant of each of Gryffindor and Slytherin after a millennium. As Emily 
pointed out, the likelihood is infinitesimally small, given wizard 
longevity and normal procreation. However, if we take into account 
Slytherin values of ambition and self-promotion at all costs, I posit a 
situation in which Slytherins have routinely wiped out their more distant 
relatives, leaving only one clear line of Slytherin blood. Similarly, the 
rivalry between the Slytherin and Gryffindor Lines could have caused them 
to wipe out whole generations of Gryffindors. The Potters were perhaps an 
oversight by a previous generation of Slytherin descendants, a mistake 
which Voldemort tried to correct, culminating in attempting to kill Harry...

--
GulPlum AKA Richard, who has just noticed he's been writing the above for 
over two hours and thinks it's time to shut up.