/ Chapter Discussion 20 / Typical family

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 182958

Potioncat:
> The more I think of it, just what would be a typical family? And 
then, what would be a typical House-based family? What traits might a
Gryffindor family have that a Hufflepuff family might not?
> 
> How does the Weasley family compare to the Dumbledore family?
> 
> How do the Snape, various Black, Gaunt and Malfoy families compare?
> 
> What House would we think the Crouch family fit into?
> 
> The one big difference I can see between the Malfoys and the Blacks,
(at least some of the Blacks) is that family members were more 
important than the Cause. Of course, no one in the Malfoy family had
actually rebelled against the Cause.

Carol responds:
If we eliminate the Weasleys and look only at the other families we
actually see, a typical family in the WW seems to consist of two
parents and a son! The Crouches; the Malfoys; both James's family and
Harry's original, pre-Dursley, families; the Snapes; the Finnegans (if
his father counts); the Diggorys, the Longbottoms (before their
incapacitation), the Notts, and apparently the Zabinis, the Crabbes,
and the Goyles as well. Zacharias smith, too, seems to be an only
child. The Blacks change the pattern by having two sons and the
Lovegoods (before Mrs. L's death) by having a daughter! Obviously,
there are as many girls as boys at Hogwarts, and some of them, like
Muggle-born Lily, may have a sister (or brother), but the typical
family we see depicted has one child, and it's usually a boy. (No
wonder the Pure-Bloods are dying out!) 

I think that the biggest contrast is not between the families of
students in different Houses as between those born in the WW, whether
they're Half-Bloods like Snape or Pure-Bloods like the Crouches, and
those born in the Muggle world, whose families would always be
outsiders to the WW. Of course, the families of Half-Blood children,
if one parent is a Muggle rather than a fully WW-adapted Muggle-born,
would face special problems, as we see with the Snapes. (We never do
learn how the Finnegans dealt with the problem once Mrs. F. confessed
that she was a Witch. We don't see Seamus's Muggle father at the
QWC--I doubt he'd have been allowed to come or could have gotten past
the Muggle-repelling charms--and it's his mother who twice wants him
out of Hogwarts.

Anyway, given Mr. Crouch's opposition to Dark magic, I doubt that the
Crouch home when Barty Jr. was young was anything like the Black
house, whatever House the two Bartys were Sorted into. Both of them
were highly intelligent and magically gifted (based on the testimony
of others for Barty Sr. and on Barty Jr.'s actions in GoF). If it's
possible to be Sorted into Slytherin based on pure blood and ambition
alone, despite an aversion to Dark Magic, I can see Barty Sr. being a
Slytherin. Otherwise, he strikes me as a Ravenclaw, very intellectual
and austere like Rowena herself. Barty Sr. could have been Sorted into
Slytherin, a disappointment to his father, who nevertheless was proud
of his son's twelve OWLs, and that Sorting could have been the
beginning of the estrangement between the father and son (which seems
to have persisted despite the twelve OWLs). I see Barty Jr.'s joining
the DEs as an act of rebellion against his tyrannical father but also,
possibly, a bid for Pure-Blood supremacy similar to Regulus's. (They
were about the same age, maybe a year apart, the youngest DEs of VW1.)
So, IMO, Barty Jr. was probably a Slytherin, but I can see him being a
Ravenclaw. I'd like that, actually. We need DEs from other Houses, and
he would fill the bill.

Carol, just responding to Potioncat without having any real arguments
to present