Featured Image Credit: Warner Bros
Topics: Harry Potter, TV And Film, Warner Bros
Harry Potter fans are only just learning who Harry’s grandparents were, and what happened to them in the story.
In the tragic tale of Harry Potter our protagonist is cursed to live his life as a survivor, his parents not so lucky.
Harry’s family tree might be explored more extensively in the upcoming HBO Max reboot series
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When we first meet the boy who lived he’s being raised by his horrid aunt and uncle. We all know his parents didn’t survive the battle with Voldemort but his grandparents are never brought up, leading many to wonder what happened to them.
Turns out that J.K Rowling actually thought of this, and while not including it in the story she’d written out his grandparents by killing them off before the story even began.
A Reddit thread enquiring about Harry’s grandparents revealed as much, as a commenter shared an excerpt from Pottermore from Rowling herself explaining what happened to them.
In short, Rowling said: “It was more interesting, plot-wise, if Harry was completely alone. So I rather ruthlessly disposed of his entire family apart from Aunt Petunia … There's nothing serious or sinister about those deaths. I just needed them out of the way so I killed them.”
Harry’s grandparents on his mother’s side apparently died of natural human causes, whereas the grandparents on his dad’s side were apparently very old in wizard years and succumbed as well.
Rowling did have a point, the story only really works if Harry is by himself and you wouldn’t really feel for him if he had a reasonably happy life with his grandparents before starting his wizarding world adventures.
Still it would have been nice to have this explained in the books or at least the films, just a line or two explaining why we’d never even heard of them.