Portraits

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 184019

Catlady (Rita Prince Winston) wrote:
<big snip>

> I'm not ready to give up my idea that the Ministry building, St.
Mungo's, old family homes, and other wizarding institutions (including
a monastery, which could have avoided being confiscated by Henry VIII
by use of Muggle-repelling spells) generate the portraits by magic
same as Hogwarts does. Still your theory, that all the other paintings
have to have their frame and canvas prepared for the specific person
while that person is still alive, would explain why no portrait of
James and Lily Potter appeared in the ancient Potter family home, and
why the drunken monks got a group portrait instead of individual
portraits. <snip>

Carol responds:

It would be nice to think that *some* monasteries escaped dissolution,
but I suspect that the monks in the painting (and the Fat Friar's
ghost) predate Henry VIII.

As for the Potters' "ancient family home,' how do we know that the
cottage in Godric's Hollow belonged to the Potters (James's parents),
who were quite wealthy and probably owned a much larger home
commensurate with their wealth? Surely, James and Lily wouldn't have
hidden in his family's home, where they could easily have been
discovered by DEs before the Fidelius Charm was cast. I suspect that
the cottage where they were hiding was Dumbledore's, either his family
home after his father's imprisonment or a second home that he bought
for his own use over the summer holidays when no one but Filch, Hagrid
and the various ghosts and House-Elves stayed at Hogwarts.

We can't know, of course, but neither can we assume that the cottage
at Godric's Hollow was the Potters' "ancient family home." For one
thing, neither Harry nor Hermione saw any other gravestones with the
name Potter engraved on them. (Peverell, yes, but it seems that the
Peverells, Harry's ancestors on the Potter side, were extinct in the
male line.  I doubt that James's father was born in Godric's Hollow as
the result of some female ancestor having inherited Ignatius
Peverell's "ancient family home," with her descendants remaining in GH
after one of them married into the Potter family, at which time it
became the Potters'"ancient family home. It was just a cottage, in any
case.) 

Carol, trying to remember exactly the word "cottage" occurs