Harry has TWO parents WAS Re: A midget in glasses,

Thu Jan 30 20:37:50 UTC 2003

No: HPFGUIDX 51157

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "lavaluvn <gansecki at h...>" 
<gansecki at h...> wrote:
>  I think Harry has yet to hit his growth spurt and when he does, 
> we will know for sure ("Harry seemed to have shot up over the 
> summer and now towered over Hermione...").  We should expect it 
> eventually; as you say, his father was also tall.
> 
> My 2 cents,
> Dr.Cheryl

Why should we expect it? Harry looks like his father in the face, 
but he has his mother's eyes [numerous references]. His father was 
tall, but his mother's height was not described.

Harry may be short for his age because of not having had enough food 
from the Dursley's. However, the exact quote is 'The Dursley's had 
never exactly starved Harry, but he'd never been allowed to eat as 
much as he liked.'[ PS/SS p. 92 Ch. 7 UK paperback] This implies 
Harry has always had enough to eat; just no second helpings.

It's quite likely that Harry is small for his age because he takes 
after his mother in height. Interestingly, in the Mirror of Erised 
Chapter [12, PS/SS] JKR doesn't mention his mother's height. She 
mentions hair colour, eye colour, and the fact Lily was pretty; but 
not height. Petunia, by the way, is described as 'thin' (like Harry) 
in PS/SS.

Harry is not just his father's son. This is a misleading impression; 
possibly deliberate. It's given by the concentration of the first 
three books on Harry's dead *father*. 

Subtle indications suggest that Lily may have been the more dominant 
partner. Hagrid and McGonagall both refer to Lily and James as - 
well, as 'Lily and James'. [Ch 1 and Ch 4 in PS/SS]. In the UK 
people tend to put the male name *first* in a partnership (James and 
Lily) *unless* the female name is the person they naturally think of 
first.

Other indications; Snape notoriously finds it upsetting that Harry 
looks like James. But there's an interesting counterpoint to that. 
Dumbledore seems to go out of his way in PoA Ch.22 [p.312 UK 
hardback] to point out to Harry (at a moment when he's telling him 
how like his father he is) that Harry is not *exactly* like his 
father. He has his mother's eyes. 

**Other ways in which Harry is not James Potter Jr**

Harry plays Quidditch. Just like his father, right? 
Wrong. In interview 
http://www.scholastic.com/harrypotter/author/transcript2.htm
JKR has James Potter as being a Chaser, not a Seeker [the movie 
changed this]. 

Harry has the invisibility cloak, just like his father, right? 
Wrong. James used it 'mainly for sneaking off to the kitchens to 
steal food'. Even with that big hint from Dumbledore, Harry never 
sneaks off to the kitchens until GoF (three years later)and then 
it's to meet Dobby.

In PoA Lupin remarks that James 'would have been highly disappointed 
if his son had never found any of the secret passages out of the 
castle'. [p310, Ch22]. If it hadn't been for the Weasley twins, 
James would have been highly disappointed, because until this point 
Harry never *looked* or thought of looking for the passages.

Harry is not like his father in an extremely important way. The 
Marauder's map [PoA] suggests strongly that its inventors made 
mischief for the fun of it. Its codewords are 'I solemnly swear I am 
up to no good', and 'mischief managed'. When Snape tries to break 
its secrets, it insults him. 

Harry really isn't his father's sort of prankster. He plays games 
(duelling with fake wands with Ron in GoF), but any practical jokes 
usually have a serious purpose behind them. The firework in the 
cauldron in CoS [Ch.11, p140 UK paperback] is to create a diversion, 
not just to enjoy the chaos. 

Snape in PoA Ch. 14 p.209 notoriously points out two areas where he 
thinks Harry does resemble his father - his arrogance, and his 
disregard for the rules. Both of these are true comments; Harry does 
disregard the rules and he can be arrogant. 

Harry's disregard of rules can be for trivial reasons (Hogsmead, 
PoA) as well as more serious reasons (saving the Stone, PS/SS). 
Harry's arrogance? More difficult, because in many ways Harry is 
naturally modest. But he sticks to his opinion that the unlikable 
Snape is the one after the Stone despite Hermione and Hagrid's 
disagreement[PS/SS]. He decides he'll be perfectly safe at Hogsmead 
despite having been told a dangerous murderer is trying to find him 
[PoA].

Again, I think we are being subtly misdirected here by the author. 
She chooses to have these faults presented by Snape, an 
unsympathetic character. 

She downgrades as much as possible the nature of James's 
rulebreaking by having Sirius Black present Snape as 'sneaking 
around, trying to find out what we were up to... hoping he could get 
us expelled' [PoA Ch. 18, p. 261]. This quite deliberately brings to 
mind Snape's treatment of Harry; raising the expectation that James, 
like Harry, was justified in his breaking of rules. 

Similarly with the arrogance; Harry is naturally modest and rarely 
arrogant. His reply to Snape "My dad didn't *strut*. And nor do I." 
[PoA Ch. 14 p.209] encourages the reader to compare James with 
Harry. To see James's arrogance as a very minor fault.

But...

James's rule breaking wasn't minor, or justifiable. James and the 
MWPP encouraged Lupin to escape from the secure isolation that was 
needed to protect others. They not only got Lupin out of the Shack, 
in a state where he had no control over himself, but they took him 
INTO HOGSMEAD AND THE SCHOOL GROUNDS. [PoA Ch. p.260 Ch.18]. They 
took him into places where there were other human beings, human 
beings that he would (in werewolf state) have wanted to kill.

And James's arrogance? Again, JKR chooses to have the *big* result 
of James's arrogance presented by Snape at his most 
unsympathetic. "You'd have died like your father, too arrogant to 
believe you might be mistaken..." [PoA Ch.19 p.265]. James, being 
told that Dumbledore suspected a traitor, insisted that Sirius Black 
would never betray him. James, having been told that Dumbledore was 
so worried he himself was willing to act as Secret Keeper, agreed to 
let the Secret Keeper be Peter Pettigrew.

James trusted his own judgement so highly that he chose to trust his 
friend Peter Pettigrew over Albus Dumbledore.

And so James and Lily are dead. Harry is an orphan. Because James 
Potter was to arrogant to believe he might possibly make a mistake. 
To arrogant to believe, in an age where no one knew who to trust 
(See Sirius's description of the times in Ch. 27 GoF, p. 457) that 
*his* friends could possibly betray *him*.

I suspect, that while Harry *looks* like James, and likes to think 
of himself as like James, inside he is much more like his mother. 

Did James save Snape by his own choice? Lupin describes him as 
having 'heard what Sirius had done' [PoA Ch. 18 p.261] which implies 
he didn't hear it directly from Sirius. Was Lily so shocked at what 
Sirius had done that James suddenly found himself seeing their games 
with Lupin in a completely different light? Realising for the first 
time that somebody could get *killed*?

Are we going to find out that in the Lily/James partnership, it was 
*Lily* who was the pure moral core?

And which part of his parents will be dominant in Harry? His 
father's 'I know best' style of rulebreaking, as Snape fears? His 
mother's willingness to die for someone else?

Well, we have a clue. Harry has his mother's eyes.

And the eyes, traditionally, are seen as the windows of the soul.

Pip!Squeak