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

Re: The Potter fortune, plugging the plothole

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

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.

It seems kind of a pity that "oh it's just for kids so it's OK if everything isn't internally consistent" seems to be a pretty common excuse among a lot of children's writers. Kids can actually be pretty sharp, and to shrug off this sort of thing seems a bit patronizing, really.

Re: The Potter fortune, plugging the plothole

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's a lazy writer's cop-out. One of the things I liked about the Warrriors series is that, while not great literature for the ages, it's as intelligent, well-written, and internally consistent as the vast majority of adult mysteries and thrillers I've read, sometimes more so. And the Series of Unfortunate Events is positively ingenious: Violet's inventions are always creative, unusual, and make use of the materials at hand. And the overall story is tightly-plotted, with clues sprinkled throughout the 13 books, every one of which eventually pays off in some way intrinsic to the plot. Most adult writers could learn a lot about mystery and series writing from Lemony Snicket.