James Potter Bio Facts

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 89984

Debbie R.:
It just makes me wonder, especially in 
> light of the revelations about James' teenage attitudes along with 
> his proclivity toward hexing people who annoyed him.  (That reminds 
> me, would Bertha Jorkins have been in his age group?)   From what 
> I've seen, I think that James and his fellow Marauders might well 
> have fit just fine in Slytherin. 
 
Carol:
I'm pretty sure that Sirius tells HRH (in the cave scene in GoF where
they bring him chicken legs on a Hogsmeade weekend) that he knew
Bertha at school and that she was a few years older than he was. (He
calls her an "idiot," IIRC.)

Debbie R.:
> One more bit of canon that lends me to think there is some merit to 
> questioning overall assumptions about the Marauders' House is 
> Hagrid's assertion in SS that (aproximate, don't have the book 
> handy) - there's been no wizard what's gone bad that wasn't in
> Slytherin. Now, we know that Characters have been know to make 
> incorrect statement; but still - what does that say about Sirius? At 
> the time he was in Azkaban and they thought that he was right up 
> there with Voldemort. 

Carol:
Isn't Hagrid's statement more or less modified by characters in later
books to indicate that *most* of the wizards who joined LV were in
Slytherin? I wonder, based on Hagrid's outburst in the tavern scene in
PoA ("I comforted the murderin' traitor!") whether he has quite
processed the connection between "young Sirius Black" who lent or gave
him the motorcycle, depending on which version of the story we
consider definitive, and the prisoner who at the time Hagrid makes the
statement in SS in languishing in Azkaban. I have a feeling that
Hagrid doesn't really sit down and think things out. ("Oh, yeah.
Sirius Black must have been a DE, mustn't he? So there was one from
Gryffindor.") Of course, he didn't know that the traitor was really
Peter Pettigrew, who must have been a Gryffindor if James was. I can't
seem them acting as a foursome without sharing a House, and since
they're all boys in the same year, that would also mean that they
shared a dormitory.

If it had been McGonagall or Dumbledore who made that initial remark,
I would trust it, but Hagrid is not given to precision. There's also
the apparent fact that both James and Sirius hate the Dark Arts
(associated with Slytherin) and are chiefly characterized by a kind of
reckless courage, a Gryffindor rather than a Slytherin trait. So in
the absence of other evidence, I'm inclined to trust that image of
James as a Gryffindor quidditch player. It's the closest thing we have
to solid evidence at the moment. (There's also Lupin's support of
Gryffindor in quidditch, somewhere in PoA.)

Carol