Head Boy an' Girl

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

Now, yer mum an’ dad were as good a witch an’ wizard as I ever knew. Head boy an’ girl at Hogwarts in their day!

--PS chapt. 4 Many of us have questioned how James (and, to a lesser extent, Lily) could have been head boy, given everything we've been told about his behavior as a teenager. But I'm wondering... are we absolutely certain that he actually was head boy?

It occurred to me this morning that the only mention of James and Lily as having been head boy and girl in the entire series is Hagrid's statement above, which he makes soon after delivering Harry his Hogwarts letter. We are told multiple times in multiple books that Tom, Bill, and Percy were all head boys, but it is never once stated again that James and Lily were head boy and girl, not even when the trio is looking through an old list of head boys in chapter 13 of CoS.

We know that Hagrid is not the most reliable source of information. Just a few hours later, he will tell Harry, "There’s not a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn’t in Slytherin," completely glossing over the fact that man who betrayed Harry's family was a Gryffindor. When he declares that James and Lily were head boy and girl, he is in the midst of countering Petunia's claims that they were strange and abnormal freaks who got themselves blown up. Could he be lying here... or, umm, exaggerating the truth a bit? (They weren't really head boy and girl, but they should've been, given how totally awesome they were).

After all, it is Hagrid's assigned duty to make sure that Harry agrees to go to Hogwarts and follows in his parents' footsteps... including, eventually, the whole getting themselves blown up part.

Comments

Who knows

[urbanman1984.livejournal.com]

JKR may have forgotten that she put that in Philosopher's Stone and totally think she hadn't.

Re: Who knows

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's also a possibility.

Re: Who knows

[snapes-witch.livejournal.com]

I think this is probably likely also. She admits that she doesn't re-read the books. Just another 'flint'.

Re: Who knows

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think it's more likely too, but it's fun to try to come up with watsonian explanations for the various contradictions.

Either way, my main point is that James and Lilly most likely were not head boy and girl.

Re: Who knows

[snapes-witch.livejournal.com]

Yes, actually I do prefer the Watsonian; otherwise my brain hurts.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Just a few hours later, he will tell Harry, "There’s not a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn’t in Slytherin," completely glossing over the fact that man who betrayed Harry's family was a Gryffindor.

But Hagrid didn't know that at the time.

I'm trusting Hagrid on this one; James was Head Boy. It fits in beautifully with Rowling's whole mind frame, the King and Queen of Gryffindor, Harry then matching up with Ginny (I'll be you a dollar Miss Weasley was officially annointed as Queen of Hogwarts in her last year), then James & Lily being recycled anew through the third generation.

Yeah, nothing was too good for Lily or Harry. James was most definitely Head Boy!

[snapes-witch.livejournal.com]

Just a few hours later, he will tell Harry, "There’s not a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn’t in Slytherin," completely glossing over the fact that man who betrayed Harry's family was a Gryffindor.

But Hagrid didn't know that at the time.
----------------------------------

Oh but he did -- remember everyone thought Sirius Black, a Gryffindor, was the traitor.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Gah! I got my wires crossed and forgot that Sirius was the white sheep of the family.

Well, maybe Hagrid was as stupid as me and forgot that Sirius was a Gryddindor, then? :-)

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

If Hagrid was dumb enough to forget that Sirius was a Gryffindor, then he was also dumb enough to forget that Lily and James weren't actually head boy and girl.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Hmmm ... except the two mistakes are wholly different in the 'severity' of the error.

Sirius was one supposed Death Eater out of tens or hundreds. Making a mistake and saying that Sirius was (also) a Slytherin is a case of incorrectly attributing the House of one Death Eater out of many. If there were a hundred Death Eaters then Hagrid's error rate, the 'gravity' of his mistake in this case, was something like one percent. A mistake that's easy to make. Almost negligible, we get the idea, practically all the bad guys are Slytherins.

But the James/Lily thing - that's specific. It's a fact that's tailored to those two and no-one else. Impossible to get wrong unless you're really really stupid.

In terms of (a) the probability of making the mistake and (b) the 'incorrectness' of the mistake I think the thing with Sirius is much more condonable, acceptable, understandable and possible than the one about James and Lily being Head students.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

I can believe he was head boy. It's clear Scumbledore didn't give a rat's keister about James's bad behavior in any other context, so I don't see why he should care about it in that one, either. Such favoritism would also make James and Lily more inclined to join the Order, and even support it financially. (I got that idea from The Best Revenge, in which Harry is bankrupt because his parents beggared themselves to defeat Voldemort. I know Harry's rich in canon; I just wanted to give credit for my idea where it's due.)

I've always believed James and Sirius got away with so much in large part because of bribery. They both came from rich families, and even when Sirius got kicked out by his parents, he still had money from his uncle. I can easily imagine Dumbledore making Floo calls to the Potter and Black parents, asking for another "contribution" to cover up their kids' latest crimes. It's true we have no direct canonical evidence of this, but (1) we have plenty of evidence of such corruption in other parts of the wizarding world; (2) it happens a lot in RL.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Actually, in canon, Harry has enough to see him comfortably through school. Even Rowling has admitted that he's going to need to work for a living, although James didn't, really.

The fabulously Rich!Harry is fanon.

Admittedly, the contents of his vault do make him *look* rich next to the Weasleys who apparently spend whatever they get whenever they get it. Even windfalls don't take up residence for long in *their* vault.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

I don't usually read Rowling's interviews, mainly because, as you've pointed out many times, they contradict both each other and canon. I was just thinking of those book descriptions of the piles of gold in his vault.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Quite true, but then she is as erratic about the prices of things in the ww as she is with anything else that comes out in numbers, and I suspect she keeps forgetting just how much a galleon is supposed to be worth, or how many of them one can reasonably stack without falling over.

In any case, wizarding galleons certainly don't seem to be worth *anything* like their intrinsic value in gold ought to be, and either they are some alloy with really very little actual gold in it, or the goblins are making out like bandits.

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

Those piles of gold turn out to not be worth all that much, though, since a galleon is only worth about 5 pounds.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

next to the Weasleys who apparently spend whatever they get whenever they get it. Even windfalls don't take up residence for long in *their* vault.

Probably because they tend to spend whatever extra money they get on silly things like trips to Egypt.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Actually, there is a certain mindset, largely associated with the working classes (although I suspect not confined to them) which seems to regard it almost as a point of honor to live up to the very last penny of their income without ever tipping over into debt.

One can manage a fairly comfortable lifestyle thereby, but one major emergency and it's bad news, because there is never anything saved in reserve.

The Potter fortune, plugging the plothole

[urbanman1984.livejournal.com]

I think the Best Revenge premise, that the Potters expended nearly everything in the magical war makes sense. It would also explain why James was made head boy when Lily was head girl. Dumblesnore probably manipulated them into becoming an item so that James would have more of an incentive to be in the Order (being the spouse of a muggle born whom the Death Eaters hated) and this also fits with Sirius getting away with trying to kill Snape - Dumblesnore would have been currying favour with James in order to eventually get him in the Order and ready to expend everything he had.

Re: The Potter fortune, plugging the plothole

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

It makes a *vast* difference to be writing a fic that you *know* from the get-go is going to be read by a primarily adult audience and subjected to adult scrutiny -- as every fanfic ultimately is -- opposed to one that the author knows is going to be deliberately marketed to an audience which will purchase the book to give to their children and may never even glance at it themselves. With the publishers' marketing department trumpeting to the skies that the book is *for children* all the while. Rowling seems to have used the difference as an excuse for lazy scene-setting.

The point of the Potter's vault of gold was to underscore the classic Cinderlad of the opening of the story. The child with nothing, living on the grudging charity of his nasty relatives turns out to have a vault of gold to supply all of his worldly needs. It also eliminates any point in the later part of the series where something might need to be dealt with, but can't because there is no money. But the vault of gold is not a major element of the *story*. It's just another of her "use once and dispense with" bits of scene-dressing. Once we get the punch line, we scarcely ever hear of it again. Nor should we. The story isn't about Harry's fortune.

Tucked away in the official site are statements which strongly indicate that James supported himself, Lily, Remus, and even Sirius during the years that they were Order members, and that none of them had outside employment. They were "full time fighters" of the Order. Never mind that Rowling has never given us a plausible reason for why Albus should even have an Order to duplicate the efforts of the Ministry, except to stand in symetrical opposition to Tom's Death Eaters. And given that they were fighting a shadow enemy who was always the one in charge of choosing the ground, I don't see what was so "full time" about it, either.

But Arsinoe de Blasenville extrapolated what really was at least a plausible explanation for what happened to the Potter fortune -- assuming that it was ever as large as fanon makes it. Rather a lot of the readers/reviewers of the fic waxed wroth over it though.

But in canon Harry has never been stated as having any more money than would get him comfortably through school. And, after all, up until Tom used his blood to resurect himself, Albus undoubtedly supposed that that would be all the boy would ever need.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Even Rowling has admitted that he's going to need to work for a living, although James didn't, really.

Did she really? Even after inheriting what was left of the Black fortune too?

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Actually, since I think the statement may be tucked away on the official site someplace, I'm not convinced that it wasn't made during the 3-year summer.

No, I don't think she was considering that. But then Sirius kinda/sorta implies that the Black fortune was much diminished by that point. Certainly there had been no one bringing in an income from a job since dunnowhen. We never got the impression that Orion worked, and whether he lived until '92 (the original sketch) or '79 (the version modified for the movie) the fact that a profession was never mentioned suggests that he was living on family money. If they were living on the principal who knows where the family fortunes stood by the time Walburga died.

So far as anyone can point at, the last person in the family to have held a paid position was Phinius Nigelus.

[stephanie-draws.livejournal.com]

Hmm, interesting catch re James' and Lily's headships never being reiterated to show how wonderful and special they were ("special" among about 40 students, before the next batch came a year later) after Hagrid's initial blurb.

But I do think it was an oversight by JKR. It's totally in character. From her view about the Potters and her astonishment whenever someone questions actions of her Gryffindor "heroes" (especially those she consistently portrayed as ~villains~) it makes perfect sense to have them be head boy and girl. And only to her, in James' case.... Never mind, that he must have been, from the ~official~ punishment records alone she created, one of the very worst delinquents at school!

But the Potters senior were surely among AD's Gryffindor chums and political allies (though likely not Order-members: they were elderly and AD never played with people close to his own age and level of influence, even the members Harry views as old are barely more than half his age) in addition to being established and monied. Easy enough to indulge the spawn everyone knew they spoiled from a position of absolute authority and with favoritism a beloved Hogwarts and WW staple. Hell, AD might have done it even if he personally didn't like the boy, as long as he was Gryffindor!

Re Lily's prefect-status: I think of her as one, despite lack of further evidence. It makes sense with only 4 - 6 girls in the run anyway. She was apparently a good student, feisty and self-righteous - perfect prefect material in Gryffindor-canon. And Slughorn with his massive crush on her would have probably CAMPAIGNED just to get her appointed if Minerva showed the slightest hesitation to nominate her ^_^

The lack of mentioned prefect badge could be easily explained, even without using Harry's challenged observational skill. Students are required to have at minimum 3 different sets of normal school robes: it must happen frequently that someone still has the badge pinned to one of the robes not worn. And it's not as if, in a school as small as Hogwarts, students wouldn't know just who the 22-24 prefects are - if only to avoid them at convenient times ^_^ At least the few who actually do the job....

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

Here's a question, though. How much does Rowling view being a prefect or head boy or head girl as a good thing to be? Tom was an evil psychopath. Percy was a sycophantic toady (in Rowling's eyes). With a few exceptions, most of the characters who officially have power are undeserving of that power. They are either weak or evil. Ambition is not a positive trait in her world. Her heroes are nearly all renegades. They work outside of the law.

[oryx_leucoryx]

But Bill was Head Boy too! (And I bet Molly got her obsession with her children being prefects from somewhere.)

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's true. I'm mostly just disagreeing with the opinion that it makes *perfect sense* that Rowling still envisioned James and Lily as head boy and girl in the later books because many of the authority figures are cast as the "bad guys" and the rejection of power is often seen as a sign that someone is one of the "good guys."

I think it would make just as much sense for James to have refused to be head boy if he had been offered the position.