James or Lilly killed first?

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 97943

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

> That's not necessarily a Flint, though.  I don't seem to recall 
> anything in that scene to indicate Harry was necessarily relating 
> things in the exact order they happened.  I'm just going from 
memory 
> here, but didn't he pause in the narrative before that happened 
> (interrupted you might say) and didn't Dumbledore say something 
along 
> the lines of "You must have seen..." and Harry responds by naming 
his 
> father then his mother.  Just going by memory, so I could be wrong, 
> isn't that how it goes?

Geoff:
Not quite. In the piece I quoted in message 97929, the order is that 
going through Harry's thoughts and the dots seem to imply that they 
came in that order as he focussed his mind on them.

When he is actually asked about it, canon runs as follows:

'"No spell can reawaken the dead, said Dumbledore heavily. "All that 
would have happened is a kind of reverse echo. A shadow of the living 
Cedric would have emerged from the wand.... am I correct, Harry?"
"He spoke to me," Harry said. He was suddenly shaking again. "The.... 
the ghost Cedric, or whatever he was, spoke."
"An echo," said Dumbledore, "which retained Cedric's appearance and 
character. I am guessing other such forms appeared.... less recent 
victims of Voldemort's wand..."
"An old man," Harry said, his throat still constricted. "Bertha 
Jorkins. And...."
"Your parents?" said Dumbledore quietly.
"Yes," said Harry.'

(GOF "The Parting of the Ways" pp.605-06 UK edition)

At no point in this conversation does Harry specifically mention the 
order in which he sees his parents although Dumbledore suggests that 
the spell victims reappear in reverse order.