The Harry Potter Series

[incognito]

Heh, true. (And they don't get altitude sickness, either!) I guess I can just hand-wave it away and go with the explanation of wizards being made of sterner stuff than humans.

[Deleted]

Bringing this over from the film thread:

Dec 20, 2010 10:47:05 GMT -4 @dwanollah said:

Plus there is the whole Ginny = Harry's mother factor, which is a little too much for me, too.

because ITA. I don't mind BookGinny too much but this I found slightly annoying.



I've read most of the books only once so I might remember this wrong, but I didn't really like Harry's parents. I know that most of what we see of them comes from Snape's memory but still. Lily marries someone she clearly seemed to hate and identified as the bully he was. James and his gang came across as the "cool" kids with James as this jock who, as I said, bullied people. I also didn't like Sirius and Lupin very much. It was weird how those two as well as Snape always expected Harry to be like his father and he never was (thankfully IMO).

[roseland]

I don't think Lily married someone she hated. I think the glimpse we saw of James was that he was a bully but he was also a kid. I think we're led to extrapolate that James grows up and becomes more compassionate, probably due to Lily's influence. And, while I never understood the fanbase's love for Sirius (I have to admit to being shocked when I went on the Internet after reading the fifth book and being very surprised at the reaction to Sirius' death because I had actually been relieved that it was Sirius, since he wasn't someone to whom I had that much of an emotional attachment), I think all of the people in the original Order of Phoenix were to be admired. They all put their lives at risk to help defeat Voldemort. I also disagree that Lupin expected Harry to be like his father. Sirius definitely did but Lupin seemed content to let Harry be Harry.

[MrsCatHead]

Is it ever explained how Harry has so much money in Gringott's? It all seems too perfect: kid who has lousy childhood is suddenly whisked away to a world where he's famous, people like him, he's rich as Rockefeller...But this is geared towards kids. And kids love underdog makes good plots.

[GoldenFleece]

The money in Harry's vault was from James, who was sort of like Draco in his day, the spoiled only child of wealthy parents, though not as evil since the Potters were Gryffindors

James (and therefore Harry) is a descendant of the brother who owned the Invisibility Cloak in the Tale of the Three Brothers; maybe it was helpful in his ancestors acquiring their riches throughout the years?

[bklynred]

I wondered about his riches too. James is never painted as a perfect wizard so I assumed he & his family squirreled away cash. I actually wondered how the Weasleys managed to stay so poor when every wizard around them seemed to pick up cash everywhere they turned. Not saying they did so legitimately, but it seemed an acceptable part of the wizarding community.

[chitowngirl]

Plus, Harry's money was sitting untouched in Gringott's presumably earning interest for 10 years.

What happened to the Potter family, was James the only one?

[Ninja Bunny]

Also he inherited all of the Black's cash and belongings through Sirius. Harry has two family fortunes socked away in Gringott's.

[Mutagen]

The money in Harry's vault was from James, who was sort of like Draco in his day, the spoiled only child of wealthy parents, though not as evil since the Potters were Gryffindors

I don't see young!James as being quite like Draco. Don't get me wrong, James was an ass, but he wasn't the wizarding version of a racist/supremacist the way Draco was. To my knowledge he didn't select his targets by blood purity status... which doesn't make his bullying any better, but I do see a fundamental difference there. (Not that you were saying they were 100% alike, I'm just sort of rambling)

Personally, my read on James was that he was like a darker, uglier version of the Weasley twins - like a crueler version of their idea of "mischief."

[DaisyNukem]

I always thought that James was a good person at heart, just kind of stupid as a teenager. The incident with Snape was seen in the Pensieve by Harry and I remember Dumbledore telling him that memories are just one person's recollection of the events. The incident was only seen from Snape's perspective. AFAIK, there was never any context given for what happened.

This is not to say that I agree with what James did, just that there may have been a lot of things on both sides that were never told. I don't think that Snape was a perfect little angel as a teenager. I also think that his love for Lily may have affected his actions towards James. I truly believe there was no love lost between Snape and James at any time. However, I do think that these things are rarely one-sided, and that both sides contribute to the problem.