The significance of Harry having Lily's eyes

[Jen Reese]

No: HPFGUIDX 138910

Mimbeltonia:
> I keep seeing people wondering about the significance of Harry
> having Lily's eys. I thought that was already obvious from the HPB,
> but maybe I misunderstood JKR's hint completely. <snip>
> The _significance_ (to the plot!) of his eyes looking exactly like 
> his mother's  is the effect looking into Harry's (Lily's)imploring
> eyes has on Slughorn, whose favourite student she once were: He
> can not resist, and Harry receives the vital information, the
> horcrux memory.

Jen: After speculating about the significance of Lily's and Harry's 
eyes so much, the idea of the Slughorn scene being IT would 
seriously disappoint me (I'm totally biased, but hey, until JKR 
says 'that's it, folks' I'm holding out hope <g>). I think there are 
two parts to the mystery of the eyes, and one is foreshadowed in the 
Slughorn scene.

Meeting Slughorn, Harry finally got to interact with someone who 
knew Lily and actually wanted to talk about her! Petunia is so tight-
lipped, and James' friends barely mention her while tripping over 
themselves to tell Harry what a great guy James was (or in Snape's 
case, what a loser he was). Can't blame them, really, but they've 
offered no hope for learning more about the woman behind the 
Sacrificial Mother. Turns out she was cheeky, fun, smart and 
charming. So Slughorn was the beginning of the Lily story, and he 
saw enough of Lily in Harry to give him that memory.

But he didn't know Lily like a friend or family member would, and I 
think Harry having Lily's eyes is going to open up the floodgates in 
the last book. There are two people I would love to see identify 
Lily inside Harry and no, neither is Snape ;). Both are slightly 
unlikely candidates, though. One is Alice Longbottom, if she could 
recover enough to tell Harry about Lily. Not only would it be a 
satisfying ending for Neville to know one of his parents, it 
wouldn't be a stretch to discover these two women in such similar 
circumstances became friends. 

The other even *more* unlikely candidate, if that's possible when 
comparing her to a woman considerd insane(!), is Petunia. It seems 
like her facade is slowly cracking. First came the look on her face 
when she heard Voldemort returned, the look which forcibly reminded 
Harry Petunia was Lily's sister. Then in HBP, Petunia was 'oddly 
flushed' after Dumbledore called the Dursleys on the carpet for 
mistreating Harry. I really think, no matter how unlikely it seems, 
Petunia will finally put aside her hatred of Lily during some 
incident when Harry reminds her of Lily. Nothing elaborate, just 
*something*.

Valky:
> On to Harry's eyes. I don't mean to shoot down this line of
> reasoning.(I *really* don't), but I distinctly remember a quote
> from JKR(pertaining to some artworks of Harry without his glasses
> on) in which Jo implies that Harry's eyes are a weakness rather
> than a strength.
<snip>
>I haven't really got an answer as to the significance of Harry's
> eyes,as a vulnerability. But he certainly gets blinded a lot in 
> the books. I have speculated on that before and got nowhere but
> it's the only specific eye vulnerability I found in Harry. And it
> doesn't seem to have much to do with Lily. So I'll leave it with
> you, maybe something will turn up this time :D

Jen: Here's the quote from Reader's Digest in 2000: She's thrilled 
with Stephen Fry's taped version of the books, outraged that an 
Italian dust jacket shows Harry minus his glasses. "Don't they 
understand that they are the clue to his vulnerability?" 

I reprinted it exactly becuase I think *maybe* JKR slipped up there. 
She refers to the Italian dust jacket in several other interviews 
and only mentions it as 'annoying' because she suspected they didn't 
like a hero with glasses. Only in that one interview does she 
mention Harry's vulnerability. Was it a mistake on the part of the 
magazine? Well, no lawsuit yet!! So maybe a mistake on the part of 
JKR.

There are theories of course, here are a couple speculating about 
the 12 uses of dragon blood and how a potion or ointment of dragon 
blood was used to protect Harry, rendering him defenseless in the 
same area that dragons are (from Sirius' comment in GOF):

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/83354
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/128717

Besides being involved in these theories personally *ahem*, I like 
the mythological connection to Achilles.

Possibly the vulnerabilty isn't so elaborate, and is something more 
along the lines of Harry losing his glasses and not being able 
to 'see' something critically important for later on. That's not as 
exciting as the dragon blood theories of course <beg>. Well, that's 
all I'm coming up with, maybe someone else can pick up this 
speculation and run with it?

Jen R., also intrigued by hemione gallo's theory Petunia and Lily 
are half-sisters, which would explain why they look so different 
when JKR typically depicts siblings looking alike. Still thinking 
about this one, hg!