[HPforGrownups] Re: Just one little bitty question

[k12listmomma]

No: HPFGUIDX 177050

>> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "dreadr" <dreadr@> wrote:
>> I would also like to know more about Lily and James.  In the first
>> book Hagrid is telling Harry that Lily and James were Head Boy and
>> Girl in their day.  I find it hard ro reconcile this picture of James
>> with the later images that we see of him -- Lily maybe but James?
>> Did he have a sudden brain transplant after his O.W.L.S.?
>
>> seanmulligan:
>> Maybe he matured as a result of the Whomping Willow incident.
>
>
> nboja:
> Maybe because they were head boy and girl, that is how they
> developed a relationship, because we know when she's talking to Snape
> under the tree she seems to not like James very much.

Shelley:
I think Dumbledore was realistic about who he chose as Head Boy and Girl- 
not in that he chose "perfect" kids (if the kids had to be perfect to get 
it, then practically no Slytherin would ever become Head Boy or Girl!), but 
kids who really had the chance to become someone once given a position of 
responsibility. I think Dumbledore or the headmaster at that time saw that 
James could be responsible when asked to, and making him a Prefect was one 
way to "ask him to behave", officially. Making him Head Boy, if that really 
was the case and not a case of Rowling messing up her details again, really 
would have been a way to further transform a kid who really liked to have 
too much fun into a child who shone when responsibility was heaped upon him. 
I think James really was a child who did better the more responsibility was 
thrust upon him.

And I agree, if they were both Head Boy and Girl, then they would have spent 
some time together in those roles, and maybe that's how Lilly got to see the 
other side of James- that he could step up to the plate and be responsible, 
that he did care for others and not just about himself and having fun. And, 
maybe his idea of "fun" changed too, to become something that would never be 
done to harm others, as that prank a few years earlier could have. Maybe his 
idea of fun had matured too, so that he knew how to have a good time and 
still be responsible by his 6th and 7th years.