James and Intent

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 187011

 
> Montavilla47:
> Hagrid doesn't qualify his praise of James in any way, as well he 
> shouldn't.  There's no reason to tell an 11-year-old kid who is 
> learning about his father for the first time that his father was 
> actually a bully.  
> 
> But it definitely gave the impression that James was an 
> extraordinarily good person.  Which I don't think he was.
> 
> He was a slightly more than ordinarily good person.  And the
> only real evidence that he ever changed from the "biggest
> bully" in the yard was the report from Sirius and Lupin
>  that he stopped hexing people in front of Lily.

Pippin:
They say that he got his head deflated a bit, and stopped hexing people for the fun of it. Snape was an exception, because  Snape cursed James every chance he got, but all that happened behind Lily's back. I think we can safely extrapolate that Snape didn't begin cursing James every chance he got until after SWM.

 At the time of SWM, James attacks  Snape because he exists. Snape's into the Dark Arts, and James hates that,  but that's not the reason Snape gets picked on. He gets picked on  for the same reasons any kid gets picked on: because he's unpopular, and weedy, and will try to fight when he can't win.

There's no reason for Lupin and Sirius to say that  James grew up and was a good person if they don't think that this is the case. They could have said he was justly provoked by Snape. But they don't. Sirius knows and  admits they were acting shamefully, though only Lupin cared about that at the time. 

Sirius told Harry that he was truly his father's son. I think he's speaking of  extraordinary courage and also the determination to do whatever he thinks should be done. I don't think anyone is disputing that JKR showed us these qualities in James as well, though neither were much in evidence in SWM. He always had them, he just hadn't found a purpose for them. 

But I think I see what you're saying. We got the idea from the earlier books that James was noble, and a lot of people were expecting to be told how he became a noble person. Or else they think he is supposed to have been a noble person and JKR should have shown us that and probably thinks that she did.

But it isn't every character who gives us that impression. Hagrid says that James and Lily were as good a witch and wizard as he ever knew. Head boy and girl at Hogwarts in their day. Close to Dumbledore. Those are fine character references, but not extraordinary. When Rosmerta and the Hogwarts staff discuss James and Sirius at The Three Broomsticks, it's as an amusing pair of troublemakers. 

Of course Hagrid wasn't going to tell eleven year old Harry on their first meeting that before James grew up to be Head Boy, he was in trouble constantly, or that he'd been best friends with a boy who became a Death Eater. But from the conversation in Hogsmeade, which Harry wasn't supposed to overhear, he clearly hadn't forgotten.

It's Dumbledore and Voldemort who sell the idea that James and Lily were noble. Voldemort claims to have won an epic battle with James. It wouldn't sound so grand to say that he murdered a wandless wizard who was caught by surprise. 

(I don't feel cheated of the epic battle. It's not like James could win, and it always did seem a bit fishy to me that Lily and Harry hadn't had time to escape. Besides, it sets things up so that Voldemort dies the way James did: wandless and betrayed.)

Then Dumbledore gives an account of Snape's rescue that puts James in the best possible light,  allowing Harry (and the hapless reader) to assume that Snape was the school bully, and James a favorite target.  Later he tells Harry that he's sure that James would have spared Peter's life, again allowing us to assume that it was for the noblest of reasons.

And it's Dumbledore who explains the magic of Lily's love, making it sound as if it's the depth of her love and not the choice she made to trust in it that was unusual. 

We know that Dumbledore wanted to inspire Harry with ideals of sacrifice and noblesse oblige. I won't say that Dumbledore didn't believe that James and Lily were noble. But I think they got a lot nobler after they were dead <g>. 

There are no wizarding princes. The purebloods aren't nature's nobility and the Gryffindors aren't either. They both have the same base instincts. All the Gryffindors have is a slightly better strategy for dealing with them -- when they bother to use it.

Pippin