Harry Potter: A Family Affair

Harry Potter may be an orphan, but that doesn't mean that his story is bereft of families. The wizarding community is relatively small, and family is an important value for wizards. Most half-bloods and pure-bloods at Hogwarts were already acquainted with each other, but there is also plenty of animosity. Like real families, the families in the world of Harry Potter have prejudices, secrets, and black sheep.

SPOILERS

It's almost a little strange to think about how nearly every character in the book is somehow related to another important character (Ron states at one point that one reason wizards and witches married muggles was to avoid incest, otherwise the wizards would have died out because the community was so small). Sirius Black, Harry's godfather, for example, comes from the illustrious House of Black, which is as full of turmoil as it is huge. Sirius is one of the most heroic, although extremely flawed, characters in the book, but his belief in equality with muggles and muggle-borns is what makes him a black sheep in his family. He was one of the sole Griffindors in a long line of Slytherins. His cousin, Nymphadora Tonks, was despised for the same reasons, but she didn't bear the name of Black, so the family was better at ignoring her. Sirius' other relatives include Narcissa Black Malfoy and Bellatrix Black Lestrange, two very important villains. Narcissa is the wife of Lucious Malfoy, a promient Death Eater, and they are the parents of Draco, Harry's main adversary at school. Bellatrix is an insane woman who joined the Death Eaters and took a sick pleasure in torturing muggles and their supporters. She is responsible for the lifelong institutionalization of Frank and Alice Longbottom, two very powerful wizards, and the parents of one of Harry's friends at school.

On the other side of the spectrum is the Weasleys, the family of Harry's best friend Ron. It is an oversimplification to say that every member of the Weasley family has the same values, but they are all firmly planted against Voldemort. Having said that, there are issues that arise among the Weasleys; Ron's brother Percy is a bit of an outcast because of his ambition. Unlike Voldemort, he doesn't desire magical power and immortality, but rather he wants government power. Like our world, the wizard government is fairly corrupt and inefficient, which most of the Weasleys recognize, except for Percy. Mr. Weasely works for the government, and has a front-row seat into the corruption, but Percy only sees the idealism. Two of Ron's brothers, Fred and George, are twins who choose to help the war effort by opening a joke store. It may not seem like the best way to help out, but they are incredibly talented, and many of their creations are more efficient at warding off evil spells than things created by the government.

Unfortunately, the only muggle family we got to know was the Dursleys, Harry Potter's awful relatives. His mother was a muggle-born, and her sister a muggle. When James and Lily Potter died, Harry was sent to live with Lily's sister and her family, and they were, to quote one of the Hogwarts professors, the worst kind of muggles. We may have "met" Hermione's parents once, and even then, it was very brief. It would have been nice to have the perspective on the war of non-magical people, but I honestly don't know where Rowling would have fit it in.

Of course, there was also the matter of Voldemort's family. The sixth book was devoted to the backstory of the Dark Lord, and let's just say that Ron was right about intermarrying. Descended from in-bred wizard equivalents of backwater hillbillies, things only got worse for the Dark Lord. His mother was a somewhat mentally challenged witch (the result of in-breeding) and a muggle father who was under a love spell. His mother died in childbirth, and his father abandoned him to an orphanage, where his anger and loathing festered.

The family stories of Harry Potter not only reflect real-world family dynamics, but remind us that most of our beliefs are created from our home lives. Although we have the ability to ultimately decide for ourselves what is right and what is wrong, as Sirius Black did, many of us follow in the footsteps of our parents, like Draco. Or, for those of us who come to despise where we come from, we end up like Voldemort...

Up next: Some interludes...