TBAY: Who gives an Inv. cloak to a kid anyway?

[Melody <Malady579@hotmail.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 51859

Biting her lip and climbing up the stairs to her room in the safe
house, Melody let loose a heavy sigh.  She dazedly pushed open her
bedroom door, walked inside, closed it back gently, and let the back
of her head rest against the door.  She sighed again and blinked it away.

Not bothering to turn on the lights, she crossed over to the window
seat, grabbing a quilt along the way, and curled up in the pillows to
stare out the window.  She tried her best to blank out her mind.  Let
it just rest for a bit.  The feat is impossible though, but it is fun
to try and accomplish.  Sometimes little things she missed before come
streaming through the mess and sit right there in front of her ready
to be played with, and of course, on this night, such an idea came.

In her blank stare to the outside watching the waves hit the shore,
she began with a thought.

Who gives a teenager an invisibility cloak?

Melody always thought about this from the perspective of Dumbledore
giving eleven-year-old Harry that cloak.  After all, Dumbledore is
lucky Harry is such a moral student and does not abuse that privilege.
 I can think of quite a few people that would not be as thrifty.
No...out and out stingy with the uses of that cloak.  How nice is it
that Harry uses it from the viewpoint of doing good.

But Melody was not interesting tonight to rehash old theories.  Her
mind went to the *other* teenager that got to use that cloak.

James.

How is it that James got that cloak?  How is it that he got to have
and use that cloak while he was still at Hogwarts?

Melody shifted the quilt and stretched her legs out.  A theory was
forming.

-----

We know that James inherited his invisibility cloak; therefore, it
came from his family.  Invisibility cloaks are rare and very prized.
The type of thing inherited, yes.  Also, the type of thing rich, pure
blood families have laying around.  The reasoning there is because a
pure blood family would pass down such items, and the rich because
they could afford it.  Afford to buy *and* keep it.  They do not need
to sell it for profit at anytime in their history.
**cough**Weasleys**cough**.

Now, James' parents have this cloak.  This precious family treasure.
Who in their right *mind* lets a teenager take *that* to Hogwarts?
Who indeed.  No parent would let that out, yet James has it at least
by his 5th year.  So how is it that his parents let their young,
smart, handsome, got-to-be-noticing-girls-by-now son take this cloak
to school?

It seems to me...the cloak was given because they no longer needed it.
 No longer needed it like James and Lily no longer needed it later.
In other blunt words, James' parents are dead.  We know they are both
dead by the fateful night by Dumbledore's words, so they died fairly
young.  Could they have died while James was in school?  Is that why a
fifteen-year-old boy has an invisibility cloak tucked away in his
trunk?  Seems a fifteen-year-old boy with a girlfriend could put that
into more use than just to get food from the kitchen, but that is a
bit digressive here.

Now this could also be why Dumbledore and James are so close.
Dumbledore moved in and kind of "adopted" James or just helped James
put his parents' affairs into order.  That is why James went to
Dumbledore again later on.

I wonder if that is why James so loyally fights for Dumbledore's side.
 I wonder if his own parents died in the fight for a world without
Voldemort.  That could explain a lot.  Oh course, people like the heir
of Gryffindor idea, which this does not disprove, but the idea still
irks me a little.  I would like James and Harry to have more reasons
to fight for good other than their super great grandfather was a good
guy himself.  Kind of goes against the notion of you are your own
person but I am getting off track again.

So...

I say that James' parents, Harry's grandparents, had to have died
while James was in school.  It is the only way James would have had
the invisibility cloak at school.  From their death, all of the family
wealth and responsibility fell on his shoulders.  Dumbledore helped
straighten the family affairs, Lily helped sooth his heart, and the
Marauders helped distract him from the pain.  Well, I bet Lily did
that too.  But friendships are sealed in events like this.

Also responsibility.  James had to grow up beyond childhood and deal
with being on his own.  He sees the responsibility of actions and
*death* greater that most fifteen-year-olds.  He knows how precious
life, any life, is.

---

Letting out another sigh, Melody rolled off the window seat and
stumbled to her bed.  She turned off her alarm clock, crawled under
the covers, and pulled them up over her head.


Melody