questions about HP (Evans?)

[bluesqueak]

No: HPFGUIDX 82375


> urghiggi wrote:
> Ddore tells Harry point blank in OoP that 
> Petunia is Lily's "only living relative." (Or at the very least 
> that Petunia was Lily's only living relative at the time of the 
> Harry hand-off.) So how can Mark Evans (and, relevant to some 
> wilder theories, Severus Snape) be related to Harry?

<Snip>

> Clearly JKR can't have Mark be related to HP IF she wants to 
> preserve the idea that Ddore's statements can be trusted to be 
> correct. If HP and Mark Evans are blood relatives, then Ddore is  
> just flat-out wrong in the statement above ... so if she wants to 
> imply that, and validate theories about Ddore's fallibility and 
hidden agendas, then perhaps Mark WILL emerge as a relative.
> 
<Snip>
> Or did it just mean that, as an infant, 
> Dudley certainly couldn't be a potential party for useful 
> employment of the blood-charm, and thus wasn't worth mentioning? 
> But if that's the case, are there OTHER Evanses out there who 
> weren't suitable, and thus not mentioned? In which case, Mark 
> could certainly be related somehow. 

Pip!Squeak:

I think the last one is it. We have this tendency to forget 
Hermione's early statement in PS/SS ' A lot of the greatest wizards 
haven't an ounce of logic.' [Ch. 16, p. 207]

So we keep taking statements *logically* when we should be thinking 
*magically*.

Voldemort is Slytherin's last living descendant. Magically, that is -
 he is the only descendant who *knows* he's a descendant. There may 
be other genetic descendants wandering around, but for the purpose 
of being able to use their inheritance from Slytherin, they just 
don't count.

So, to the magical mind, they don't exist. Nobody after Voldemort 
will be able to claim they are Heir of Slytherin. Therefore, 
Slytherin has no other descendants.

[If you have a copy of CoS which says 'ancestor', it's an official 
mistake. It should read 'descendant'.]

Similarly, for the purposes of the protection spell:
as far as I can work out, Dumbledore needed someone who

a) knew they were related to Lily
b) knew what a spell was
c) could consent to the spell.

So Dudley simply doesn't count. He's too young for all three - he 
wouldn't know about Lily (he's probably so young he'd not know what 
a 'relation' was), he doesn't know what a spell is, and he wouldn't 
understand what was being asked of him even if Petunia had read out 
the letter to him.

Petunia is at this point probably the only person left alive in the 
whole world who can satisfy a), b) and c). The Evans's living down 
the road have never heard of magic, and might not know that Mr Evans 
is Mrs Dursley's distant cousin.

They don't exist. Magically, that is. When you're setting up the 
spell, you don't consider them, so they have no *effective* 
existence.

So Dumbledore can happily talk about Petunia as Lily's only 
remaining relative, even though we know (from our logical viewpoint) 
that Petunia *wasn't* the only remaining relative. To Dumbledore's 
mind, Dudley couldn't seal the charm, and so he doesn't exist. Harry 
is the subject of the charm, so he doesn't exist as a relative even 
though he's Lily's *son*, for goodness sake! Petunia *is* the only 
relative. For the purpose of the charm.

Agatha Christie has her detective Miss Marple frequently remark that 
she never believes what people *say*. Unless there is objective 
evidence to back it up, don't believe it.

Same applies in the Potterverse, IMO. Don't believe what people 
*say*.

Firstly, there's the possibility that they're lying.

Secondly, there's also the possibility that what you think they mean 
and what they think they mean are not the same thing at all.

Pip!Squeak