People who ship (or just plain talk about Harry Potter) often compare Harry to his father. People say he is James, to Ginny’s Lily. That doesn’t hold true for me. One constant theme in OoTP was that Harry is NOT James. Molly says it. Sirius says it. Harry is not James. However, what occurred to me while reading HBP is that it’s more likely that Harry is Lily to Ginny’s James.
Harry has Lily’s eyes and it’s been said that the eyes are the windows to the soul. I think that translates here in a way that gives Harry Lily’s sensitivity, her delicacy. I don’t mean those as signifiers for weakness–I consider neither Harry nor Lily weak. I just mean that like his mother, Harry is good at sensing and understanding the delicate nuances of situations. It’s what made Lily great with potions. Snape himself describes potion making by saying, “I don’t expect you [students] will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses…” (Rowling 137). But Lily obviously did understand the delicacy of potions.
Harry displays that same kind of ability with people–he sees them and through them. More so in HBP than any of the other books, certainly, but all along really. It’s just that HBP shows a more mature focused Harry–a Harry very much similar to his sensitive and temperate, though passionate, mother. Meanwhile, brash, smart, popular, outgoing Ginny is much more James-like.
Moreover, I think Harry’s similarity to his mother is going to really come to mean something big. All through HBP I wondered if perhaps Snape hadn’t been in love with Lily when they were in school. True, as seen in OoTP, he wasn’t exactly nice to her–but then when he was working as hard as he could to SAVE Harry’s life, he wasn’t being nice to Harry either. One gets the feeling that Snape doesn’t much appreciate goodness and what it does to him–as though he still hasn’t matured emotionally enough to handle the intense welling up of LOVE or HAPPINESS. Because of that, he lashes out instead.
If he does love her, or at least did, it would certainly shed greater light onto why he hated James and why James hated him. It would further explain why the sight of Harry inflames Snape so much. To see Lily in Harry’s eyes, trapped in the face that James gave him…well that would inflame his jealousy and anger and pain. Furthermore, I think it might have spurred him on toward leaving the Death Eaters. He didn’t know when he delivered the prophacy that it would result in Lily’s death. He didn’t know that Voldemort would choose Harry. And when Lily died, I think Snape couldn’t take it–couldn’t ever again really side with Voldemort. So he came to Dumbledore. So he spends his time torn between wanting to help Harry for Lily’s sake and wanting to hurt him because of James.
cited:
Rowling, J. K.. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. New York, Toronto:, Aukland, Sydney, Mexico City, New Delhi, Hong Kong, Buenos Aires Scholastic Inc., 1997.
Neville Longbottom: Odd man out is a very appropriate way to describe him. He doesn’t quite fit in with the main pairings (Ron and Hermione, Harry and Ginny), but he also can’t really be left out. Without divulging too much, it’s also possible to say this story hinges on him as much as it does Harry. So, what about Neville??
I don’t know. I don’t really know how I see him or where I see him ending up when the series concludes, but I do know this: he is incontrovertibly tied to Hermione. For instance:
- The first time we meet Hermione, she is paired with and helping Neville as he looks for his toad.
- The first time Hermione casts a hex it is on Neville and it’s a full body bind to boot–in essence giving her control of his whole body.
- Hermione helps him every chance she gets in class.
- He obviously has a crush on her–having asked her to the Yule Ball.
Yes, I see Ron with Hermione, but I can’t deny that the idea of Hermione pairing up with Neville is intriguing.
Of course, one can’t deny that Neville also clicks with Ginny. They actually attend the Yule Ball together and when Umbridge’s goon squad apprehends the gang in OotP, Neville gets himself caught trying to protect Ginny–even though he wasn’t in on the disturbance.