[HPforGrownups] Re: The Dursleys' role (was New/Old Friends?)

[Kathryn Cawte]

No: HPFGUIDX 54366

 
Greicy wrote -

Hold up!?  *If* Lily is the Heir to Gryffindor, or any of the other 
houses, how would Dudley be the Heir if he's a muggle.  Harry would 
have more rights wouldn't he?
 
I wouldn't mind an Heir plot, so long as there's a twist and knowing 
JKR there will be.
 
Me -

This is my second attempt at this *glares at computer* so please point out
any jumps in my logic. Having typed it all once I may accidentally skip a
few points this time.

Firstly - if the Heir is a descendent then Petunia would be the Heir not
Lily as she is the older sister, that's the point. Therefore it wuld pass to
her son not Lily's.

However, I prefer the idea that the Heir is not genetic but spiritual. the
Heir of each founder is the person in each generation that is closest to the
spirit of the founder in question, the person closest to their ideal.

As such i believe that someone *cough*Tom*cough* could be the heir of a
House when younger but as they mature grow away from the ideals of the
founder and cease to be considered the Heir. This is important to my view of
the world because I don't see Salazar as necessarily being a bad guy so it
would be nice if I could square that opinion with his Heir growing up to be
Voldemort. I don't think we really know enough about Salazar to say whether
he could be considered a good guy or a bad guy. We know he built the CoS and
that he fought with Goderic over allowing muggleborns to enter Hogwarts. We
know that he considered them to be less than purebloods and/or a threat. But
we've never been told that he ever tried to kill anyone and from all we know
after he fought with Goderic and left the school he didn't come back and
cause trouble. Since the ww is secret from muggles, muggleborns are by their
very existance a threat. It's not that they know about the ww per se but the
fact that their muggle relatives know about it. The more people know about
something the more likely it is that it will be revealed to the wrong person
 As such trying to get muggleborns stopped from going to Hogwarts is
understandble. We also know that he constructed the Chamber with its
resident monster and set it up so his Heir could open it but we don't
actually know under what circumstances he intended it to use  (and while he
set it up so that you needed certain abilities to open it there's nothing
limiting its use to his Heir after all Harry gains entry to it). Since he
viewed muggleborns and muggles as some kind of threat (and who wouldn't,
humans do have a nasty history of persecuting elements of society that
differ from the 'norm') the Basilisk could well have been some kind of last
ditch defense mechanism.

Umm yeah sorry back to my original point. Harry is told that 'only a true
Gryffindor' could pull the sword out of the hat (or something along those
lines) now that could well make him the Heir of Gryffindor - not because of
any rumoured line of descent between him and Goderic but because he embodies
the ideal of what Goderic saw as being the perfect Gyffindor. Maybe if he
survives the war with Voldemort he won't still embody those ideals when he
is as old as Dsumbledore (after all we all change) but for that moment in
time he was a 'true Gryffindor' and therefore the heir ....

K