JKR interview - Lily and why Harry ends up having to ...

[Wanda Sherratt]

No: HPFGUIDX 101795

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "sofdog_2000" 
<sofdog_2000 at y...> wrote:

> 
> 1) Lily eventually married James because he changed. He got over 
> himself and started behaving like a better person. Why hasn't been 
> revealed, but hey, people mature.

Did he really change that much, though?  When Harry asks Sirius and 
Lupin, they admit that he kept on fighting with Snape, despite Lily:
"Well," said Lupin slowly, "Snape was a special case.  I mean, he 
never lost an opportunity to curse James so you couldn't really 
expect James to take that lying down, could you?"
"And my mum was OK with that?"
"She didn't know too much about it, to tell you the truth," said 
Sirius.

So he hid it from her.  How well did she really know James, even by 
the time they married?

I have a vague memory of one of C.S. Lewis's science fiction books 
(someone can tell me which one it is - it involves Merlin travelling 
in time to the present day).  There's a married couple in it, and 
though they don't know it, they are destined to produce a child who 
is to save the world.  Only they're not very happy, and the wife has 
refused to have children, with the result that the moment to 
conceive this child has passed, and the moment is gone forever.  
When right after "Snape's Worst Memory," Harry is thinking over how 
his mother seemed to hate his father, he wonders if James somehow 
forced Lily into marriage.  Maybe there's something to that: perhaps 
theirs wasn't a love-match, but more of a political marriage, to 
produce this miracle child who would fulfill prophecies and defeat 
Voldemort.  It's a bit of a dicey subject for kids to read, though - 
almost like selective mating, but if Rowling wants to push the 
envelope in literature, this would be one way!

Wanda