Personal sacrifice, personal loss: Who suffered most?

A friend, who is also a bit of a Harry Potter fan, sent me this captioned picture today and it got me thinking: of all the characters in the Rowling world who themselves survived the entire situation, which one would you say suffered most as a result of the Voldemort's rise to power and the war to defeat him?

The caption would suggest that Hermione made the greatest sacrifice and I might be willing consider this possibility (that Hermione made the greatest sacrifice of all by erasing herself from her parents’ memories) if it weren’t reversible.

But she can reverse it.

What cannot be reversed are the Weasley family’s losses (one son dead, two sons injured), nor the losses suffered by Mrs. Tonks (her husband [Ted Tonks], daughter [Nymphadora Tonks], son-in-law [Remus Lupin] and sister [Bellatrix Lestrange] were all killed, leaving her alone with a half-werewolf grandson). 

And you have to figure that Hermione and Ron set out for Australia fairly soon after the war ended with Voldemort’s death to track down her parents, reverse the obliviate spells she cast on them and remind them who she is!

Note, in Chapter five (the last chapter I’ve finished) of The Way Forward, my fan fiction post-Deathly Hallows novel, I make it clear that Hermione and Ron go to Australia to retrieve her parents!

I will have to take some more time to think about this question as I am sure there are a whole cast of characters, minor or major, who suffered great losses as a result of the events of the Rowling books.

The "club-house leader" is Mrs. Tonks, by the way. But is there someone out there who sacrificed more?

J.K. and the art of the family

I'm on a bit of a break from Harry Potter, to be honest. Not for lack of interest, just too many other projects and priorities getting in the way.

I can't say I'm lamenting having to leave HP on the shelf for a while: it should mean that, when I finally come back to him, I'll be coming to him fresh again.

Of course, the simple fact that I'm not reading Harry right now doesn't mean I'm not thinking about Rowling's world. I have... and I've been having some interesting thoughts.

For example, I've been wondering about J.K. Rowling's relationship to families and her representation of family relationships in her books.

It started when I realised that, despite the fact that we meet and get to know a number of Harry's teachers pretty well in the novels, we never actually meet any of their spouses or partners. In fact, not one of the teachers we know pretty well even has a spouse or partner.

Think about that: Dumbledore, McGonagall, Snape, Sprout, Hagrid, Lupin, Lockhart, Flitwick, Trelawny, Moody, Slughorn, Quirrell, Pomfrey, even Umbridge... they're in live-in positions and yet not one of them is shown with a spouse and not one of them mentions a spouse. Sure, Lupin eventually marries Tonks but, at the time they're teaching, they are single. No matter their age.

So what does that say about Rowling and her thoughts about family and longterm relationships?

Now let's count how many actual couples exist in the books. Yes, we have the Weasleys. And the Durlseys, the Malfoys, the Lestranges, the Grangers, the Longbottoms, and the Potters. Who else? Ted Tonks and his wife. Lupin and Tonks.

How many lead normal lives to natural deaths?

The Potters were killed as a young couple. The Longbottoms were tortured into insanity also as a young couple. Lupin and Tonks die just after having their first child.

And then ask yourself the question: how many of the families in the Harry Potter series have more than one child?

The characters who have no siblings include: Harry, Dudley, Hermione, Neville, Voldemort, Draco, Hagrid, Luna. The only multi-children family we see are the Weasleys, the Blacks, the Dumbledores, the Creeveys and the Patil twins. Oh, and Lily and Petunia.

Do you not think of this as strange? Do you not wonder about Rowling and her attitudes toward families based on this incredible under-representation of even moderately normal families in her books?

The average family in the magical world of Harry Potter is a single parent, single child family. Of the five main child characters in the novels (Harry, Hermione, Ron, Neville and Voldemort), three are parentless, one abandons her parents to join the magical world and the fifth is Ron of the massive family.

I don't really know what this all says about J.K. but I just find it strange. And telling. What do you think?

Pondering the complexities of Remus Lupin

I really like the character, Remus Lupin, in the books. He's a good guy but a tortured soul. He knows he what he could have been but he hates what he has become.

I very much liked the way J.K. describes Lupin in the flashbacks Harry experiences to his father's time at Hogwarts. She always says that Lupin wears an expression of delighted surprise at having been included in the cool group at his school.

I think that's a really nice thought and great insight into the character he displays throughout the novels.

The scene in the kitchen at Grimmauld Place in the final novel, where Lupin offers to abandon his family and join up with Harry, Hermione and Ron, though really hard to read, rang true for me in every sense. I thought J.K. captured both Lupin's desperation and fear in that moment and Harry's genuinely angry reaction to his offer.

Most of all, I remember feeling very sad when both Lupin and Tonks die in the seventh book and I worried about their new-born son. I'm going to interpret the epilogue to The Deathly Hallows as implying not only that Teddy does all right as he grows up but also that Lupin's fears that he will be a werewolf too turn out to be unfounded.