Well this particular essay is a source of considerable embarassment. Because I finally found the reference that the original extrapolation was based upon. And it turned out not to have been from Rowling, after all.

I probably ought to just delete the piece, or move it over to the 7th Son collection, but by now it has grown a bit, and the new growth is perfectly valid extrapolation from canon (well, mostly, even after DHs), and ergo; admissable. I could just edit and retitle it, but that would make it hard to find, and be rather more disruption than I am prepared to deal with while still in the throes of mortification. But I have to admit that I like the silly theory, and would be sorry to see it go.

But, for now, it is being downgraded to something on the order of the essays on Snape’s fatal weakness, or Aberforth and the goat. i.e., semi-fiction or flight of fancy.

Please accept my confession and apologies: “I is covered with rue”.

As to the portions which are still valid; it used to be a broadly popular belief throughout much of early fandom that James Potter, and possibly Lily as well, Like Frank and Alice Longbottom, were employed as Aurors at the time of their deaths at the end of October, 1981.

Post-OotP, however, we seemed to have discovered that this was unlikely to have been the case. There simply did not appear to be enough time for James and Lily to have finished their training and become established as Aurors between the time they finished Hogwarts and the time that they were killed. Particularly not if you took the HP Lexicon’s timeline on the matter as being accurate. (Which I didn’t, but Rowling has since endorsed it.)

According to Minerva McGonagall’s list of the challenges one must meet in attempting to become an Auror (OotP, Chapter 29); Auror training takes three years to complete. If we accept the Lexicon’s statement that James Potter was born in 1960 then he could not have started Hogwarts before the Autumn term of 1971. If he did not start at Hogwarts until September of ’71 he could not have finished before June of 1978. This finishing date leaves only enough time for a marriage probably within the year, his wife’s pregnancy established by 16 months after finishing Hogwarts, a child the following summer and an early death 15 months later. Even if James, and/or Lily had entered Auror training immediately upon leaving Hogwarts they would barely have had time to become qualified before the summer of ’81.

The Longbottoms, consequently, must have been at least a few years older than the Potters. Perhaps some 4 or 5 years older. Possibly a few more than that. But probably not more than 10. And, for that matter, if the Callidora Longbottom née Black who shows up on the Black family tapestry sketch as having been born in 1915 is Frank Longbottom’s grandmother (Augusta’s mother-in-law) then he is unlikely to be significantly older than Andromeda Tonks née Black, or Lucius Malfoy.

Even if one chose to favor my own original interpretation of the Poterverse timeline in preference to that of the Lexicon, wherein James Potter and his classmates were born in 1959 rather than 1960, the likelihood of James Potter’s having been an established Auror was not much better. True, he might have passed his Auror qualifications about the time his son was born, if he had, in fact, been accepted into Auror training immediately after finishing Hogwarts. But the fact is that as an Auror trainee he would have still been engaged in classwork at least as much — if not more than — fieldwork for most of the ensuing three years, and, as a trainee, would have been subject to whatever restrictions apply to the not-yet-qualified (surely there must be some, or what is the point of qualification?). As a trainee, he would probably have had less opportunity to draw Voldemort’s attention to himself than if he were a private party, with no connections to the DMLE.

It all seems highly unlikely. They would still have been trainees at the point that Sybil made her Prophecy, and the idea that they were targeted because they were Aurors does not really satisfy. It is far too random and arbitrary.

James Potter was never in the quite same position as Harry. He was not the child foretold of some maybe-prophesy related to the fall of the Dark Lord. Frankly, James is unlikely to have ever been anything like as important to Voldemort as Harry is. But he may very well have been a continuing annoyance to Voldemort’s followers. One who, in the Dark Lord’s opinion, needed to be swatted, like a fly.

And, as such, he had evidently needed to be swatted well before the Prophecy was made. The Prophesy stated that by the time the child was born, those to whom he would be born would have already “defied” the Dark Lord three times.

One of the few things which we know from canon, is that somehow, between the end of his 5th year, in 1976, when we got our first glimpse of him, and the birth of his son in the summer of 1980, James Potter managed to escape from Voldemort’s “attentions”, or those of his followers, the requisite three times which featured so prominently in the Trelawney Prophecy. Actually the cut-off date of that timeline should probably be adjusted to the date of James Potter’s finishing Hogwarts and the point that Trelawney made that Prophesy, some months earlier; narrowing the time to the period between the end of June 1978, and some point shortly after Halloween, 1979, the earliest possible date that the Prophecy might have been made. Although it could have been made in early 1980.

Fans living in Scotland have pointed out that the leafless trees on that windy hilltop where Snape turned up and confessed having told Voldemort what he had heard would put that scene at a point around mid-November or afterwards. Which would have been after Harry’s birth and anything up to a year after the Prophecy was made. Rowling is not to really be relied upon for weather and the state of the seasons, however. She tends to paint pretty word pictures without regard to verisimilitude.

We have never actually been told anything which would suggest that James, himself, would be a natural target of Voldemort’s wrath. The lack of any such compelling reason for James’s having been so targeted is largely responsible for the widely held belief that he must have been an Auror and actively engaged in the war. Targeted for his function rather than on his own account.

****

However, the “defiance” stated in the Prophesy may not have all been of the passive “escape” variety that Dumbledore cites. I originally thought there may have been defiance of a more active, provocative order as well. Possibly in the matter of public statements, on the part of not just James Potter himself, but that of his family.

Apparently the answer is not so simple. A further complication to our reasoning was added to the issue in Sirius Black’s summation of his own life and his own associations with the Potter family before his being sent to Azkaban. Sirius claims to have left home around the age of 16, i.e., at some point after the end of his 5th year at Hogwarts, and he tells us that he had essentially camped out during the term breaks with the Potters until after his 17th birthday (probably some time during 6th year) and the death of his uncle Alphard who left him enough money for him to get his own place. He states that he was still welcome at the Potters’ after this point, which would appear to confirm that James’s parents seem to have survived until at least the end of their son’s years at Hogwarts.

In fact, it does nothing of the sort. It only suggests that Sirius Black decided to pay for his own bachelor pad during the summer before his last year at Hogwarts.

And it is widely known from interviews that by the time of his own death, less than a handful of years after finishing school, James Potter had inherited enough money that he did not need to actually work for a living. And that by the time of Voldemort’s first defeat at Godric’s Hollow, Harry’s only surviving close relatives were the Dursleys.

Part of this mystery was explained in Rowling’s joint interview of July 2005, following the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The answer turns out to have been far less dramatic than the fans had expected. James Potter’s parants had been “getting on” in years, even by wizarding standards, when he was born. He was an only child, tresured and widely indulged (much like Draco Malfoy) and both of his parents died suddenly of some magical ailment.

The rest of the mystery appeared to have been cleared up by the release of the Black family tapestry’s information. On that tapestry is the notation of one Dorea Black, who married a Charlus Potter with a notation of “1s”. If these are intended to represent James Potter’s parents, his mother would have died by the end of the Autumn term of her son’s 7th year. Since we know that James was orphaned young, it is assumed that her husband did not long survive her. Indeed, may have predeceased her. Dorea’s death was recorded as having taken place in 1977. James, born in what now has been officially established as 1960 would have been 17.

Which may have contributed to James and Lily’s early marriage. James, who was certainly anything but cold-blooded, did not enjoy being left alone in the world before he was 18. But this does not get us any farther in explaining why Voldemort would have wanted him dead.

****

On that matter we do at least have one clue, however.

By all accounts, particularly that of Sirius Black, James Potter honestly loathed the Dark Arts and everything to do with them. The adversarial stance he took with Severus Snape, a suspected student of the Dark Arts, (“famous” for it, when he was at school) makes it clear that this was a stance which had already been established by the time he reached his school days. His public choice of a Muggle-born bride, as well as the long association with a renegade like Sirius Black as his best friend would probably also have contributed to painting that target on his back. Three fifths of the Black family, in their generation, had already aligned themselves with the Dark Lord.

According to Lucius Malfoy, our only other source of information on this issue, Harry’s parents had been “medlesome fools too”.

Well, we have known for some time that Lily Potter was offered an authentic choice of whether or not to save herself when Voldemort finally confronted her. So it really doesn’t sound as if she had mixed into anything that meant that she must be killed for it. But James, evidently had.

Post-HBP, we realize that the Death Eaters are really a much smaller organization than we had ever been led to expect. And they’re a much more petty organization, too. And James Potter and Sirius Black had been at school with rather a lot of them, and they were not friends. I rather doubt that either James or Sirius would have shied off from mixing into some business of Malfoy’s, or that of the Lestranges’ if they learned of it and damn well felt like it, just to do them a bad turn and thrust a spoke into their wheel. Given the opportunity, they would probably have considered it a point of honor to do so. And if it would also constitute one in the eye for Severus Snape, all the better.

Voldemort himself probably wouldn’t have known James Potter from a hole in the ground, and did not care, either, but he approved the selection of him as a target. Why not? The young twerp was an avowed blood-traitor, make an object lesson of him.

And, from what we have been told about James Potter himself; if he managed to escape a DE attack, he is unlikely to have chosen to keep his head down and live forever looking over his shoulder, trying to keep from being noticed. He is far more likely to have stepped forward, publicly screaming defiance at the whole Death Eater movement in the pages of the Daily Prophet. Which would constituted a tird acto of defiance and probably have positively invited subsequent attacks.

I postulate that James Potter was not targeted through anything like a work-related association, but because he had become something on the order of the Blood Traitors’ faction’s poster child. James may not have been a major wizarding celebrity on the order of his son Harry, perhaps, (from the indications in HBP, if one of the Potters was any kind of a rising star, it is more likely to have been Lily) but he was widely known. Particularly in so small a community as the wizarding world. One belatedly recalls that even on the first of November, the day after Voldemort’s defeat, everybody seems to have already known exactly who the Potters were.

But this doesn’t tell us anything about his source of income.

****

A number of alert fans have noted that the inventor of the Golden Snitch, a halfblood wizard by the name of Bowman Wright (1490-1560), hailed from Godric’s Hollow, and have speculated that Wright may have been an ancestor of James Potter’s and the invention of the Snitch the basis of the Potters’ fortune. This is an extremely likable theory, but we have no information to either confirm nor to contradict it.

For that matter, at this point we cannot be altogether certain whether the house in Godric’s Hollow was the Potter’s own home or one that had been found for them to go into hiding at. Post-DHs it could have been the Dumbledore house.

But in any event, the Potters had, by the middle of the 20th century, amassed enough of a fortune for its possessor not to need to hold down a high-paying job, and to be to at least to some extent engaged in the sort of “money-farming” which is generally regarded as occupying the time and energies of the likes of Lucius Malfoy.

Among other considerations, such a financial safety net would allow James the leisure time necessary for taking an active public stand in whatever action passes within the wizarding world as a “war effort”. But that (and money farming) aren’t likely to have been the only things that James Potter did. After all, neither of those activities is likely to have a lot of potential for creating fun. And James Potter did certainly like to have fun.

Well, I thought I was reasonably sharp. But sometimes I’m just not too swift. For herein follows a half-baked illustration of how sometimes it takes an amazing amount of time before the penny finally drops.

And how the coin can drop into the wrong box altogether, given enough time to become fuzzy about your sources. And, boy howdy, did it ever manage to drop into the wrong box this time.

How to feel like a fool in one easy lesson.

****

I am sharp enough not to confuse actual fanon with canon. I did NOT read the germ for this particular flight of fancy in a fanfic.

It lives in the author’s notes of a fanfic.

Excuse me whle I writhe in mortification for a moment.

It’s a fairly old fanfic, and a very good one. One which I had copied and pasted into a document on my own hard drive for rereading and striped the notes out of, so as not to be tripping over them.

Consequently in the 2-3 rereads that I made over the following 3 years, I never encountered it, and forgot that it had been there. I only remembered having read it online, some years earlier (around 2001, in fact).

In any case, for a year and a half there, I thought I’d finally figured out what it was that James Potter did for a living.

And I’m rather sorry to find out that I was wrong.

What Rowling’s always told us in her interviews is that most of James’s money was inherited. Most recently she’s worded this as saying that James had come into enough money that he didn’t need a well-paying job (or, one presumes, a steady one). But everything we’ve been told, and what we’ve seen of James Potter’s disposition suggests that he would still have chosen to do something with himself, even if it didn’t exactly pay. And he would have wanted to have fun with it, if he could.

Well, at the end of June ’04, somebody over on WIKtT posted a question regarding Patroni, asking whether they always took the form of animals.

This is a reasonable question, certainly. And every Patronus we’ve ever seen in canon has seemed to have taken an animal form, whether natural or that of a Fantastic Beast. However, I have a fairly retentive memory and the question recalled what by that time I thought was a very old Rowling interview (which I could not find any record of, obviously for good reason), from some period after the release of PoA back when everyone was keenly interested in the Marauders, wherein we had been informed — or so I quite clearly recalled — in response to the question of what form James Potter’s Patronus had taken, that the form of James Potter’s Patronus had been a nose-biting teacup. He had evidently been trying to develop one and was so delighted when he succeeded (do we really need to guess just whose nose ended up getting bitten?) that the silly thing eventually dictated the form that his Patronus took.

Well, the notes are indeed in Q & A format, and the style of humor inherent in a nose-biting teacup Patronus is certainly not something that I believe that Rowling is incapable of. Three years later I think that having confused it with a Rowling interview is not that unreasonable.

But; it’s simply WRONG.

However, back in 2004, my only reaction was:

Well, excuse me, but weren’t we told in PoA that nose-biting teacups one of the items sold at Zonko’s?

[Well, yes, they are. I checked. But that didn’t manage to clue me in or head me off. Rather the contrary.]

So, one had to ask; unless he was attempting to improve on the commercial version, why would James Potter try to make a nose-biting teacup if he could have just gone out and bought one? He had no shortage of pocket money.

Unless nose-biting teacups weren’t an item sold by Zonko’s back then.

Unless James was the person who invented them in the first place!

— And either sold the procedure to Zonko (or Zonko’s supplier), or patented it and was paid a royalty on every one sold. Harry’s Gringotts account might still be collecting a steady trickle of knuts from James Potter’s nose-biting teacup. And quite possibly from other similar items that James developed as well. We do not know how long magical patents last. But I doubt that they expire in a mere 10 years.

Hagrid comments that Fred and George Weasley would have given James and Sirius a run for their money, but he never claimed that the Weasleys had outclassed them. Nor can one imagine that Fred and George would hav been particularly likely to “outgrow” their interest in creating ever bigger and better prank devices by the time they reached the age of 21. Which was James’s probable age at the time he was killed.

Even without the Weasley twins’ spur of actually needing to make a lot of money, I simply can no longer imagine any vocation which is so likely to have been as attractive to a young James Potter as the development of the sort of joke items which are sold at Zonko’s.

Rendering Harry’s decision to back the twins financially a singularly apt bit of poetic justice, and an eminently fitting memorial.

But, in the event, the nose-biting teacup Patronus is not a Rowling invention so we find we are stuck in a blind alley.

We are left with No Clue, as to what it was that James Potter really did do for a living, and that for all Rowling really did say in one old interview that it was “important”, and that we would eventually find out, I suspect that this piece of information is one of the minor threads that she discarded in the wake of the 3-month revision which was made to the series outline between GoF and OotP.

And, for the record, even though “James Potter inventor of joke products” is all but guaranteed to be wrong, I still like the idea.