Some Discrepancies

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 86416

-"Susan Miller" wrote:
> > 
> > If those in the mirror are magical, then the mirror seems to be 
> > claiming that Lily's family is magical. But there is plenty of 
> > canonical evidence ("Muggle-born Lily") to the contrary. If the 
> > mirror is simply showing Lily's family, then where is Petunia? I 
> > think it is showing Harry's idealized idea of what his family 
> would 
> > look like. Lily's and James' relatives, minus Petunia who he 
> hates, 
> > show up smiling at him. I just don't see how we can apply this as 
> > hard proof to conclude that these people ever existed. The mirror 
> > lies.

Serena wrote: 
> All the mirror shows is Harry's greatest desire--to have a real 
> family.   The Evanses would be part of the family, so it's very 
> likely they would show up with the Potters.  However, it might be a 
> bit more likely that Harry has seen pictures of the the other Evans 
> side having grown up with Petunia--surely she has photos of people 
> besides "Duddikins" around--say like her parents.   So it's possible 
> that the Evans are depicted acurately.

Carol:
I don't think it's necessary for Harry to have seen photos of the
Evanses for the mirror to depict them accurately. In fact, it's most
unlikely that he knows anything about his mother's side of the family,
living or dead. Uncle Vernon keeps a pretty tight lid on that topic,
which is why Petunia virtually explodes in the few instances where
she's allowed to talk about her "freak" of a sister and the "awful
boy" she married. She's not likely to keep photos of her parents, who
favored Lily over her, lying around. And the knobbly-kneed older man,
presumably a relative on the Potter side, certainly wouldn't have been
in those photos.

So I agree with you that the mirror is revealing real people that he
(and we) will find out about later, but not that it recreated those
people from photographs he had seen. It knows more than Harry does
about the family he longs for.

Carol