What indicates to me that Slughorn is related to Harry

[hermionegallo]

No: HPFGUIDX 138890

CathyD:
I really would like to see your evidence for this, hg, as it appears 
to go against all that is canon. Dobby's eyes are green too, does 
that make him a relative of Harry's as well?

hg:
Surely you didn't intend that to sound as sarcastic and dismissive as 
it does?!  I never said that Slughorn's green eyes were the only 
indicator, but I did hesitate in posting my idea, precisely because I 
feared getting a belittling response.  I think it's safe to assume 
that any board member who posts an idea has read and re-read all of 
the books and put considerable thought into what resonated for him or 
her, as is the case with me.  If my error lies in posting the germ of 
the idea before the prepared dissertation, then that speaks to how 
the board has evolved in the past couple of years and suggests I 
should adjust accordingly.  Noted and apology offered.

If anyone is still with me, then on to my fun idea.


Slughorn's excessive adoration of Lily and Harry has provoked 
suspicion from many readers.  Board member Del pointed out that his 
fawning bordered on mimicking pedophilia; although she didn't believe 
he was predatory, he seemed to be.  I think she was right that his 
favoritism of them was over the top even for his standards -- and (if 
I remember correctly) that he seemed to be hiding something.  I 
agree.  However, as the students are considered children (until 
seventeen) in the series to date, I think an adult teacher developing 
a crush on a student would contradict canon.  I do NOT believe 
Slughorn was drawn as a "dirty old man."  In my opinion, Slughorn's 
behavior fits more neatly into canon as nepotism than pedophilia.

The relation of Slughorn to Lily couldn't be parent, unless he had an 
affair with Mrs. Evans or if he had a relationship with Mrs. Evans 
before Mr. Evans.  Either of these scenarios would make Lily and 
Petunia half-sisters.  I think it's possible but not as likely as 
grandfather.

Great-grandfather or uncle to Lily seems too far removed to be 
pertinent to the plot; my hypothesis is grandfather to Lily.  If he 
was Lily's grandfather, for the bloodline thing to work, he'd have 
had a Squib daughter who married either a Muggle or another Squib.  
This child could have come from a marriage or indiscretion.  I get 
the impression that Slughorn didn't know Lily was his granddaughter 
but suspected it.

Either the half-sib idea or the grandfather idea work as hypotheses 
considering: 
"there's more to Aunt Petunia than meets the eye;" 
the "no, no she's not a squib, but" quote about Petunia; 
it allows for the Evanses to die natural Muggle deaths; 
keeps Harry alone, if the information has been withheld in one shape 
or another (Petunia and Slughorn, not likely Dumbledore); 
is in line with the "Harry is a half-blood because of his mother's 
grandparents" quote.


Evidence of the possibility of the hypothesis being true:

-- Two of Harry's dorm-mates have a family history that involves 
deception/fractured truth: Seamus' mother didn't tell his father she 
was a witch; Dean Thomas' father never told his wife he was a 
wizard.  Seamus' story is canon and Dean's is canon once removed, 
being interview.  These two backstories allow the possibility of 
wizarding genes in Lily's bloodline.

-- JK's website quote about half-bloods: 
"The expressions 'pure-blood', 'half-blood' and 'Muggle-born' have 
been coined by people to whom these distinctions matter, and express 
their originators' prejudices. As far as somebody like Lucius Malfoy 
is concerned, for instance, a Muggle-born is as 'bad' as a Muggle. 
Therefore Harry would be considered only 'half' wizard, because of 
his mother's grandparents.

If you think this is far-fetched, look at some of the real charts the 
Nazis used to show what constituted 'Aryan' or 'Jewish' blood. I saw 
one in the Holocaust Museum in Washington when I had already devised 
the 'pure-blood', 'half-blood' and 'Muggle-born' definitions, and was 
chilled to see that the Nazis used precisely the same warped logic as 
the Death Eaters. A single Jewish grandparent 'polluted' the blood, 
according to their propaganda."

With the juxtaposition of the Nazi "reasoning" paragraph to the 
first, the likely inference from this quote is that all it would take 
was even one Muggle to "muddy" the bloodline.  With Wizarding genes 
being "dominant and resiliant" according to JK, the only way for Lily 
to be Muggle-born and have Wizarding genes is if one of her birth 
parents was a Squib (or if she wasn't actually Muggle-born at all, 
which seems the less likely of the two possibilities).

-- It's also possible that the "more to Aunt Petunia than meets the 
eye" and "no, no she is not a Squib, but" quotes refer to the fact 
that either one of the Evans parents was a Squib or that Petunia and 
Lily are half-sisters, because we know that JK has stated that 
Petunia is not a Squib and that she is a Muggle. She is not a witch 
pretending not to be, as there is no Ministry record of her (OOP, 
Harry's hearing). 

OOP 38, Harry looking at Petunia:
"She was looking at Harry as she had never looked at him before.  And 
all of a sudden, for the very first time in his life, Harry fully 
appreciated that Aunt Petunia was his mother's sister.  He could not 
have said why this hit him so very powerfully at this moment.  All he 
knew was that hew was not the only person in the room who had an 
inkling of what Lord Voldemort being back might mean.  Aunt Petunia 
had never in her life looked at him like that before.  Her large, 
pale eyes (so unlike her sister's) were not narrowed in dislike or 
anger: They were wide and fearful.  The furious pretense that Aunt 
Petunia had maintained all Harry's life -- that there was no magic 
and no world other than the world she inhabited with Uncle Vernon -- 
seemed to have fallen away."

This suggests that they could be half-sisters, being that their eyes 
were so different; conversely, "large, pale eyes" sounds like 
Slughorn whose eyes are described, for example, as "large, round" 
(65) and "pale gooseberry" or pale green (67) in HBP.

-- The function of Aunt Marge in the plot seems to be to give us more 
information about breeding and blood, especially in connection with 
Petunia.

POA 25
"It's one of the basic rules of breeding.  You see it all the time 
with dogs.  If there's something wrong with the bitch, there'll be 
something wrong with the pup --"
POA 27
(indicating Harry) "This one's got a mean, runty look about him.  You 
get that with dogs.  I had Coloned Fubster drown one last year.  
Ratty little thing it was.  Weak.  Underbred...It all comes down to 
blood, as I was saying the other day.  Bad blood will out.  Now, I'm 
saying nothing against your family, Petunia -- but your sister was a 
bad egg.  They turn up in the best of families."

OOP 691
"They were all bullying him, Hermione, 'cause he's so 
small!...Hermione, I couldn' leave him.  See -- he's my brother!"
"Hagrid, when you say 'brother,' do you mean --?"
"Well, half-brother.  Turns out me mother took up with another giant 
when she left me dad, and she went and had Grawp here."

These quotes make me wonder about Petunia being a "runty" one or 
about the possibility of half-siblings.

-- The only humans in the series who have green eyes are Harry, Lily 
and Slughorn.  JK makes a point of directing us to Slughorn's eyes 
repeatedly.  (In Slughorn's introductory chapter, they are mentioned 
8 times in 10 pages; same in Burial chapter.)  

-- Slughorn has a canon history of keeping hidden from Dumbledore 
information that he believes will cast him in a bad light.  ("...keep 
it quiet, what I've told -- that's to say, what we've discussed." 499 
HBP -- plus his own withholding of the Horcrux conversation memory.)  
It's been established elsewhere that Dumbledore doesn't know 
everything.  If there was an indiscretion involved in Slughorn being 
related to Lily, he'd be inclined to keep it from Dumbledore.  If 
he'd been involved with a Muggle, he'd likely keep it from everyone, 
like Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings.  Likewise, if he was 
involved with someone outside of marriage, he'd keep it secret.

-- Even if Dumbledore did know, Slughorn would probably be the last 
person Harry would be sent to live with.  It has been established 
that Dumbledore has kept information from Harry and told him partial 
truths.  Part of Dumbledore's plan in keeping Harry alive was to also 
keep him grounded, and isolating Harry from the Wizarding world was 
an integral part of it:

PS 15
"These people will never understand him!  He'll be famous -- a 
legend..." (McG.)
(AD): "Exactly.  It would be enough to turn any boy's head.  Famous 
before he can walk and talk!  Famous for something he won't even 
remember!  Can't you see how much better off he'll be, growing up 
away from all that until he's ready to take it?"

OOP 835-7
"Five years ago you arrived at Hogwarts, Harry, safe and whole, as I 
had planned and intended.  Well -- not quite whole.  You had 
suffered.  I knew you would when I left you on your aunt and uncle's 
doorstep.  I knew I was condemning you to ten dark and difficult 
years...You might ask -- and with good reason -- why it had to be 
so.  Why could some Wizarding family not have taken you in?  Many 
would have done so more than gladly, would have been honored and 
delighted to raise you as a son.  My answer is that my priority was 
to keep you alive...Five years ago, then, you arrived at Hogwarts, 
neither as happy nor as well nourished as I would have liked, 
perhaps, yet alive and healthy.  You were not a pampered little 
prince, but as normal a boy as I could have hoped under the 
circumstances."

-- If Slughorn was Harry's great-grandfather, he would likely believe 
that concealing the memory from Dumbledore would protect Harry -- 
that revealing it to Dumbledore would put Harry in tremendous danger, 
even more so if he thinks that Dumbledore suspects Harry of being a 
Horcrux (when Dumbledore held out the hand with the ring, he was 
waving it in the direction of Harry, so when Slughorn looked at the 
ring, he'd be taking in Harry with the same glance).

-- Harry asks Slughorn to "be brave, like my mother" and tells him 
that giving up the memory would be "a very brave and noble thing to 
do."  When Harry is looking into Slughorn's eyes at the end of this 
Burial chapter, the Felix, unbeknownst to him, has worn off.  He 
thought he had 24 hours worth in the bottle, and so took enough, he 
thought, for 2-3 hours; the bottle held 12 hours worth, so (if indeed 
it was real Felix) it would have worn off by the time he was 
refilling the bottles.  It is something else that is at work here, 
not the Felix.  I think he's being brave, for Harry's sake, for 
Lily's sake.

-- Slughorn being Harry's great-grandfather doesn't negate the 
aloneness of Harry.

JKR, Mugglenet/Leaky interview:  "As a writer, it was more 
interesting, plot-wise, if Harry was completely alone. So I rather 
ruthlessly disposed of his entire family apart from Aunt Petunia. I 
mean, James and Lily are massively important to the plot, of course, 
but the grandparents? No. And, because I do like my backstory: 
Petunia and Lily's parents, normal Muggle death. James's parents were 
elderly, were getting on a little when he was born, which explains 
the only child, very pampered, had-him-late-in-life-so-he's-an-extra-
treasure, as often happens, I think. They were old in wizarding 
terms, and they died. They succumbed to a wizarding illness. That's 
as far as it goes. There's nothing serious or sinister about those 
deaths. I just needed them out of the way so I killed them."

She doesn't say that Lily's grandparents have no importance to the 
plot, only that all Harry's family has been ruthlessly disposed of.  
Lily's parents are dead, they are not massively important to the 
plot, but Lily's grandparents could have been disposed of in other 
ways and could be important to the plot.

-- Lily could have been a candidate for Slytherin House, like Harry:
HBP 70-1
"Lily Evans.  One of the brightest I ever taught.  Vivacious, you 
know.  Charming girl.  I used to tell her she ought to have been in 
my House.  Very cheeky answers I used to get back too...You'll be in 
Griffindor like her, I suppose?  Yes, it usually goes in families.  
Not always, though...The whole Black family had been in my House, but 
Sirius ended up in Griffindor!"

-- Slughorn notices something special about Lily; compare what he 
says about Tom to what he says about Lily:
"Your mother was Muggle-born, of course.  Couldn't believe it when I 
found out.  Thought she must have been pure-blood, she was so 
good...You mustn't think I'm prejudiced!  No, no, no!  Haven't I just 
said your mother was one of my all-time favorite students?" (70-71)

HBP 495
"Nonsense, couldn't be plainer you come from decent Wizarding stock, 
abilities like yours.  No, you'll go far, Tom, I've never been wrong 
about a student yet."

-- To close, (for the time being): Slughorn being Lily's grandfather 
is far more palatable than him being a dirty old man.

hg.