Why Didn't Harry Ask About His Parents' Graves? (was: Re: Godric's Hollow)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 149947

Dany wrote:
> 
> From an 11 years old perspective it is understandable, why he never 
> asked about his parents' graves, but, what about when he was getting 
> older? Does he know that his parents are burried somewhere? Or due 
> to the fact he saw them "coming back" at the end of GOF, he thinks 
> (feel, actually) that they are somewhere out there trying to help in 
> anyway they can? (even though he KNOWS they are not coming back 
> because of what Dumbledore has said)Did he ever stop for a minute  
> and think that his parents' bodies might not have been destructed 
> along with the house?
> I believe it is some kind of a limbo for Harry, Perhaps it just 
> hurts so much to ask, maybe he doesn't want to know the truth, maybe 
> he feels even more guilty than what we know and he feels he cannot 
> face the truth. And it is for sure, that whenever you are right in 
> front of the grave of somebody you love, reality overcomes you.
> Or maybe as Vera has pointed out, he didnt feel quite ready to know 
> and to face reality yet, and this point ends up being convinient for 
> the author. <snip>

Carol responds:
I'm not sure that I can give you a satisfactory answer (or one that
anyone else will agree with!), but here's how I see it. First, as you
rightly point out, JKR has to consider her own convenience in giving
out information to Harry and, through him, to the reader, and that's
probably the primary reason why Harry hasn't already gone looking for
his parents' graves--JKR has saved that (hopefully poignant) moment,
which many of us hope will be tied in with revelations about what
actually happened at Godric's Hollow, for Book 7.

>From Harry's perspective, though, it also makes sense (IMO) for him to
wait until he's ready, emotionally and intellectually, to visit their
graves, not just because seeing their names carved on the tombstones
would somehow make their deaths more real, but because the site of
their graves, Godric's Hollow, is the site of their deaths as well. (I
think he knows or guesses that they're buried there.) It's the place
that changed him from an ordinary wizard child to The Boy Who Lived
(who has now been elevated to The Chosen One). He's had a taste of the
terrible memory of that place and time in the anguish he suffered when
the Dementors came near him. He knows that his parents died to save
him--not a truth that he's ready to face in the early books. (He may
even be suffering from survivor's guilt, compounded by the deaths of
Cedric Diggory and Sirius Black.)

I think it's important that he never knew his parents. It's not as if
they died when he was old enough to remember them, say five or six at
least. They're strangers to him, and, until the "Snape's Worst Memory"
scene in OoP, he's free to idealize them. (He can still idealize Lily
after that, but idealizing James the schoolyard bully is not so easy.)
In SS/PS, Harry starts out with nothing but the memory of a blinding
flash of green light and the lie that his parents died in a car crash.
Even when he learns that they were wizards, apparently unusually
talented and popular, they're still strangers to him. What he wants at
that point (IMO) is not his unknown parents so much as a loving family
(unlike the hated Dursleys), and when he stares at his parents in the
Mirror of Erised, that wish seems to be satisfied. He learns what his
parents looked like, and the reflected images seem to love him. But
Dumbledore persuades him that what he sees in the mirror is only an
illusion. 

By the beginning of CoS, Harry has the Weasleys to satisfy his need
for a loving family, and he has the photo album that Hagrid gave him
so he can see his parents' faces whenever he wants to. (Apparently
that isn't often--we don't see him looking at it again until PoA, and
then it's the "Betrayer" Sirius Black that he's interested in.)

PoA allows him to hear his parents' voices for the first time, but at
the price of reliving his most terrible memory. Comfortingly, he
learns that his Patronus, his protective spirit, is his father's
Animagus form, and that his father became an Animagus to keep his
werewolf friend company during his transformations. Lily is still the
loving mother whose sacrificial love protected him, an idealized being
that he seldom thinks about, but his father, co-creator of the
Marauder's Map and friend of Lupin and Black (now revealed as victim
rather than murderer) is becoming real to him. There are hints of
another side to his father's character in Snape's snide comments about
James's arrogance, but Harry chooses to think that Snape is wrong. 

He rejects any hints that his parents don't live up to his idealized
view of them, "blowing up" Aunt Marge when she insinuates (without
ever having met them) that something was wrong with them, and hating
Snape (who did know them), choosing to believe that his talented
Gryffindor father, who died courageously fighting Voldemort, was like
himself (modest and brave rather than arrogant and reckless, IMO). The
graveyard incident, in which his parents' shadow forms come out of
Voldemort's wand to help him escape, reinforces this idealized view of
both parents. The Pensieve memory in OoP, however, challenges his view
of his father, causing him (briefly) to see Snape's side of the story
and to realize that James, at least, was rather far from perfect.
After Sirius Black's death, which Harry chooses to blame on Snape for
reasons that I've discussed elsewhere, he reverts to his idealized
view of James, who must be good because the "evil" Snape hates him.
And Lily, though she becomes slightly more real to the reader as Harry
learns from Slughorn that she was "cheeky" and good at Potions,
remains where she has always been, the ideal mother who willingly
sacrifices herself to save her child. Harry doesn't ask questions
about her even when he encounters someone willing to talk about her;
he only uses Slughorn's fondness for her (and his guilty conscience
about his indirect role in her death) to obtain an unaltered memory
for Dumbledore. And when Harry learns about Snape's role as
Eavesdropper, his parents' deaths become one more reason to hate
Snape, but not a reason to learn more about them (at least not in the
few chapters of HBP that follow this unsettling revelation).

It's interesting that in GoF, when Rita Skeeter asks Harry how he
thinks his parents would have felt about his entering the TWT as an
underage champion, his response is "How would I know how they felt?"
(quoted from memory). His parents remain strangers to him. He's loyal
to their memory, especially to his father's, and he defends them when
their goodness or their courage is challenged (in Lily's case, only
with Aunt Marge--IIRC, he doesn't defend her against Aunt Petunia's
"my dratted sister being what she was"), but there's no indication
that he wants to know more about them as people. He's not ready,
apparently, for tales of James's dangerous escapades as the Animagus
companion of a werewolf (or for the record of his detentions that
Snape provides) though, ironically, he hopes that his (pureblood)
father could somehow be the Half-Blood Prince. (Lupin's reticence
about his past may be another reason that Harry hesitates to ask
questions.)

Post-HBP, with his other father figures dead and (perhaps) a clearer
understanding of what death is, Harry may be ready to visit the spot
where his father died heroically fighting against Voldemort and his
(still idealized) mother gave her life to save his, if only to inspire
him in his own fight against Voldemort. And having visited the spot
where they gave their lives, he may be ready to learn from Lupin, the
sole surviving "good" Marauder, what his parents were really like,
assuming that Lupin is also ready to reveal what he knows.

Carol, wondering if Neville constantly hears stories from his gran
about how brave and clever his parents (especially his father) were
and whether knowing what they were like really helps him to accept
their tragic fate