[HPforGrownups] Re: Why the Potters

[Patricia Bullington-McGuire]

No: HPFGUIDX 58065

On Sat, 17 May 2003, stardancerofas wrote:

> Okay, still fairly new here, but I'm going to throw my two knuts in
> this conversation.
> 
> We all seem to be forgetting one thing. In PS/SS (US paperback pg.209)
> when Harry looks into the Mirror of Erised, he doesn't see just Lily
> and James, he sees "other people with greens eyes like his,other noses
> like his, even a little old man  who looked as though he had Harry's
> knobby knees--" 
> 
> He's looking at his family. Not just his parents, but Potter's, which
> tends to make me believe, since Dumbledore had to place Harry with the
> Dursley's that the entire Potter line had been eliminated.
> 
> Maybe by Lord V, and his DE'S? Lily really wouldn't have mattered to
> Lord V, she was a Potter by marriage, not by blood.

While I agree that it will probably turn out to be significant that Harry
is the last of the Potters, I don't think we should read too much into
what Harry saw in the Mirror.  First, Harry gets his green eyes from his
mother, an Evans, so some of the green-eyed people he saw in the mirror
were probably from his mother's line; i.e. he wasn't just looking at
Potters in the mirror.  Second, Dumbledore tells Harry, "this mirror will
give us neither knowledge nor truth." (PS/SS, US paperback, p213)  So,
even though Harry saw a large extended family in the mirror, those people
may not really even exist.  The mirror tells us that Harry *wants* them to
exist, not that they actually do or ever did.

It may very well be that Voldemort hunted down and killed every last
member of the Potter clan except Harry.  Or, the Potters could have died
out naturally, having too few children over the years to sustain
themselves.  Heck, they could even have all died in a tragic accident at
the last Potter family reunion.  We do know that there are no more Potters
at this time since DD says the Dursleys are Harry's only relatives, but we
don't know *why* there are no more Potters.

> So maybe it is a 'feud' between House Founder Bloodlines, maybe not.

I have trouble seeing why anyone would care whether their
great-great-great^x-grandfathers were enemies 1000+ years ago.  When you
go back that many generations, people have so many ancestors that focusing
on the conflicts of just one or two doesn't make much sense.  Unless there
were a present-day conflict that descendents of the Founders happened to
be involved in, I can't see why the 'bloodlines' would be at odds, and if
it's about a present-day conflict, then it doesn't really have much to do
with the Founders at all, does it?  This is one of the reasons I'm not a
fan of the 'Heir of Gryffindor vs. Heir of Slytherin' theories.  But what
do I know?  JKR may be going off in a totally different direction with
this than I would if I were writing.

> All I know is June 21st is still too far off.

Ain't that the truth?

----
Patricia Bullington-McGuire	<patricia at obscure.org>

The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered
three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the
purely hypothetical.  They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each
nonexisted in an entirely different way ... 
                -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"