Regulus Black / Significance of DD & Sirius having

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 147394

Alla wrote:
<snip>
> > Right, I can imagine all sorts of possibilities with Aberworth 
storyline, but what is his role as brother of great Albus Dumbledore?
That is what bugs me at the moment. :-)
> > 
> 
Potioncat responded:
> Another thought about the significance of the brothers. There is a
huge section of HP fans who have no idea that the barman is Aberforth
 Dumbledore. Harry doesn't know. I don't think anything in canon tells
us this. I'm sure there's a smaller, but still significant number of 
fans who don't particularly remember that Sirius's brother was named
Regulus.  
> 
> The impact of Regulus's role and Aberforth's role will be more
intense for those fans who are expecting nothing than it will be for
us. It would be easier for us to say, "Is that it?"
> 
> Potioncat, still dosed up on cold medicine, and hoping this post
isn't too foggy.

Carol adds:
There's a contrasting brothers motif, or more accurately a contrasting
same-sex siblings motif (aargh! I hate "siblings," but "same-sex
brothers and sisters" doesn't make sense, much less alliterat)
throughout the HP books. We see it most clearly, I think, in Petunia
and Lily, Bellatrix and Narcissa, and Percy and any other Weasley boy,
but there are other pairs as well: Parvati and Padma Patil or Colin
and Dennis Creevey, for example, and most subtly, perhaps, with Fred
and George, who are physically identical and very similar in their
personalities, but are not interchangeable. (The pair I can't figure
out is Rodolphus and Rabastan Lestrange. Why is Rabastan in the books
at all?) I imagine that we'll see something of the same pattern with
Albus and Aberforth on the one hand and Sirius and Regulus on the
other (with the interesting twist that in both cases, the brother we
already know is dead, and so--unless JKR is pulling a fast one on
us--is one of the brothers that we know only by name.

Whether there's any thematic significance to these pairings is unclear
at the moment, at least to me. They may simply reflect JKR's
relationship with her own sister, who is apparently very different
from JKR and yet on good terms with her.

I hope that the Albus/Aberforth and Sirius/Regulus pairings are used
in markedly different ways. For example, I'd like to see Aberforth
providing us with much-needed information on his brother and on Snape
(what really happened when the Prophecy was revealed, for starters!),
but I don't want Resurrected!Regulus (aka Stubby Boardman) to perform
a similar role. (Please, JKR. Enough faked deaths--unless it's
Emmeline Vance's death faked by Snape). But I do want to discover that
Sirius was wrong about Regulus. (Too bad he won't be around to see the
locket Horcrux that Regulus stole opened and destroyed, which I expect
Harry will see happen in Book 7.) I'm guessing that Aberforth will be
primarily a source of information (it would be nice if he added a
little humor, as well, but we seems like a dour old codger, so
probably not). Regulus, I'm guessing, is chiefly a plot device to get
the locket Horcrux into Harry's hands. Maybe we'll get some backstory
on him from Kreacher, but it would be nice to have a less biased and
more coherent witness.

At any rate, the contrasting brothers (and sisters) seem tied to the
importance of "blood" in the sense of family or shared ancestry. I'm
remembering Hagrid'sdrunken and tearful remark about blood being
important in OoP--no doubt in connection with the injuries he had
received from his attentions to dear little half-brother Grawp.

Does anyone else think that these pairings may have some thematic
significance and, if so, any ideas on what that significance might be
(or why the heck Rabastan is in the books)?

Carol, who also is very different from her sister despite the same "blood"