Fanon VS Canon
James became a reformed character for Lily's sake.
In OotP Sirius and Remus tell Harry that James and Lily began dating in seventh year after James "deflated his head a bit" and "stopped hexing people just for the fun of it". Based on this passage, it's common to see Marauders fen stating as canon that James became a reformed character for Lily's sake, and often saying that this made James a better man than Snape, who didn't reform until after her death.
In fact, Rowling has said that Snape joined the Death Eaters at least partly in the hope of impressing Lily - which is not as daft as it sounds, because the Death Eaters in Vold War One weren't as hostile to Muggle-borns as they would be once Umbridge got involved (it's interview canon that they actually tried to recruit Lily) and he had good reason to suspect Lily of being attracted to thugs who threatened her with violence ("Don't make me hex you"). So he did change for her, albeit in a monumentally stupid way which turned out to be disastrous. Quite apart from this, the evidence for James's reform is ambiguous at best.
To begin with we have the prequel-ette which Rowling wrote for charity, which shows James and Sirius already members of the Order of the Phoenix and valiantly fighting Death Eaters, but taking time off to jeer at and bait two innocent Muggle policemen. She couldn't make it plainer that she sees them at this age as liking to pick on anybody they perceive as weaker than themselves. She's given this piece a date which puts it in the summer between their sixth and seventh years but if, as is quite possible, she miscalculated and meant this scene to be taking place the following summer, just after they finished at Hogwarts, that's actually worse because it would mean James was still Muggle-baiting after he took up with Lily.
Then, Sirius is honest within the limits of his own prejudices, and describes himself and James as "arrogant little berks" (which incidentally is a stronger swear than it appears as it's short for "Berkshire Hunt", which in turn is rhyming slang for cunt), but he's still a biased source when it comes to Snape, and Remus will say whatever he thinks Sirius wants to hear. They admit to Harry that James went on hexing Snape during seventh year and that he concealed this from Lily. "'She didn't know too much about it, to tell you the truth,' said Sirius. 'I mean, James didn't take Snape on dates with her and jinx him in front of her, did he?'" Remus makes it sound as though Snape was the instigator by this point and James was just retaliating - "[Snape] never lost an opportunity to curse James so you couldn't really expect James to take that lying down, could you?" - but then Remus was also the one who said that the original cause of the enmity between Severus and James was that Severus was jealous of James's popularity and Quidditch prowess. We now know the latter to be flatly untrue, both because DH has shown us that James attacked Severus without provocation first, solely because he wanted to be in Slytherin, and because JKR has said at interview that James picked on Severus in part because James was jealous of Sev's friendship with Lily.
So, Remus is not a reliable source when it comes to young Sev's relationship to the Marauders, and anything he says about it should be treated with caution. The fact that James was able to conceal his ongoing hex war with Snape from Lily, despite dating her and sharing a Common Room with her, and the fact that the staff evidently didn't find out about it either, suggests that their antagonism was at the very least mutual and that James was using the Marauder's Map to to make sure they only fought when there were no staff or prefects nearby.
As far as it concerned Snape, then, far from reforming his aggressive behaviour in order to please Lily, James simply learned to deceive her as to what he was doing, and only pretended to be reformed. Worse, he was carrying on this secret hex war when he was Head Boy and it was his duty to uphold the school rules, so he also showed dishonesty in office.
[If you want to make the best of James, and you believe Remus's claim that Snape was the instigator in their continuing battles during seventh year, you could argue that James acknowledged in his heart that Snape had good reason to want to curse him, and felt that simply pulling his Head Boy rank and taking points from Snape instead of giving him a fight would be cheating.]
Then, we're told on Pottermore that one of the reasons the Dursleys resented Harry was because James had been quite obnoxious to them and had swanked to them about how wealthy he was. We don't know when this occurred or when Tuney and Vernon started dating, but this incident had to have happened after James and Lily started dating, so again it shows James still being arrogant and bullying Muggles, at least in a minor way, after he and Lily got together - and apparently having no respect for Lily's family. Then we learn from Lily's letter to Sirius that James is impatient and wants his Cloak back so he can go out wandering, even though he's supposed to be in hiding, so he's still restless and irresponsible in the lead-up to his death, whether or not he's still a bully at this point.
James does seem to have been a doting father and that's a point in his favour, but not one which makes him better than Snape. Snape's protection of his Slytherins and his refusal to admit when they misbehave suggests that given the chance he would be a very indulgent and protective father, who was convinced that his little darlings could do no wrong.
One thing we can say about James is that if he knew that it was Harry who was Voldemort's target, he could probably have saved himself by deserting his family, and he didn't. Again, it doesn't make him better than Snape who takes such huge risks for the cause, but it does mean that James loved his family, and was brave.
Sirius loved Marlene McKinnon.
This is another one which is 100%-pure fanon. What we know about Marlene is this: Marlene was an Order member; she was in the Order photograph; she was killed by Death Eaters, along with her whole family, two weeks after the photo' was taken; and her death occurred not very long before Lily wrote a letter to Sirius ("Wormy was here last weekend, I thought he seemed down, but that was probably the news about the McKinnons", which sounds as if he'd only just heard about it), which letter was written soon after Harry's first birthday party, and therefore probably in early to mid August 1981.
We can say that Lily herself may have been fond of Marlene, because she says in her letter that "I cried all evening when I heard", and this was at a time when Order deaths were so common you might have expected her to be somewhat hardened to them. You could even, at a stretch, take her letter as evidence that Peter was fond of Marlene, since she expects the news of Marlene's death to distress him. But there's nothing to suggest that she is addressing someone who had a special connection to Marlene, other than being fellow Order members - and if Sirius and Marlene were an item, why hide it?
Nor is it at all likely, as sometimes portrayed in fanfiction, that Marlene and Lily were close friends. In her letter to Sirius, Lily refers simply to the deaths of "the MacKinnons" as something which may have depressed Peter, with no suggestion that Marlene was more significant to her than Marlene's family.
McGonagall is very caring towards the students.
McGonagall is pleasant to Harry, and clearly fond of him, although she punishes him far more often than Snape does. [That may just be because she's his head of house.] She doesn't seem to provide any sort of pastoral care, though, or to intervene when Harry is ostracized by his housemates, and her record on student safety is dubious. It's also Pottermore canon that she is nursing a lifelong grudge against Slytherin - at least as far as wanting to see them thrashed on the sports pitch goes - just because a Slytherin player fouled her during a Quidditch match when she was about eighteen.
She began working at Hogwarts in 1956 - initially as a teaching assistant under Dumbledore, according to Pottermore. We don't know when she became head of house for Gryffindor. It may have been when Dumbledore became Headmaster, circa 1963. If she is responsible, as head of house, for most punishment of her students then it may have been her doing that when teenage Arthur Weasley was caught canoodling with Molly after hours, circa 1966, he was (according to Molly) punished in some way so severe that it physically scarred him for life. It's quite possible the then caretaker, Apollyon Pringle, who caught Arthur at it, may have punished him without McGonagall's authorisation; but it certainly seems that severe corporal punishment at Hogwarts continued well into Dumbledore's time as headmaster, and so possibly into McGonagall's time as head of house.
According to Pottermore, during her tragically brief marriage to her former Ministry boss Elphinstone Urquart [thus spelled on Pottermore, although the name is usually Urquhart; either way it's pronounced Ercott], 1982-1985, McGonagall lived in a cottage in Hogsmeade and commuted to work. If she was already Head of House this suggests some carelessness, since although she could be summoned by Floo in an emergency, she wouldn't be on the spot if her students misbehaved in ways they didn't want her to know about. It could be taken as evidence that she didn't become Head of House until after her husband's death, and was therefore probably not involved in Arthur's severe punishment.
By her own account, she was hard on Peter Pettigrew because he wasn't as good a student as his friends. Believing him to have died a martyr, she feels bad about this - but her guilt doesn't stop her from being hard on Neville, or from reminding him of his inadequacies in front of the whole class: "Longbottom, kindly do not reveal that you can't even perform a simple Switching Spell in front of anyone from Durmstrang!"
If she is paying any attention to her house students, McGonagall ought to be aware that Neville has some sort of mild learning difficulty involving poor memory, and that having to remember a different, elaborate password every day would be difficult for him. She doesn't know, of course, that Neville wasn't really being careless by writing the passwords down, since they were on a sheet of paper which was inside the password-protected area, where nobody should have been able to get at it who didn't already have the current password. He couldn't really have predicted that a housemate's pet would turn out to be in league with Sirius. She doesn't know this, but she doesn't try to find out either: instead she gave him detention, barred him from Hogsmeade for the rest of the year, and forced him to stand outside in the corridor until a housemate let him in, for weeks, at a time when she believed that a mass-murderer with a big knife was hanging around trying to get into Gryffindor Tower. It's true there were security trolls around but it was still a risk, and must have been terrifying. And we're told that this was done as a punishment, not as a security measure.
In PS, she sends four first-years, including Neville, on a midnight detention in the Forbidden Forest at a time when she probably knows that Voldemort is hanging around looking for one of them. As Deputy Head she really ought to know that Hagrid takes silly risks with student safety, and that there are Acromantulas in the woods. But student safety doesn't seem to be her priority. When she sees false!Moody slamming ferret!Draco repeatedly against a stone floor as he screams with pain, she protests against the Transfiguration but not the beating, and allows Draco to be dragged away by his abuser, without even checking him for broken bones or internal injuries first.
[If you wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt you could postulate that any injuries sustained by the ferret will be healed when he is turned back into a boy, and McGonagall knows this. Even so, she has no evidence "Moody" won't continue to batter Draco in human form, and she still lets him drag the boy away.]
She's not great with animals - although that seems to be normal at Hogwarts. She does tell Lee Thomas off for doing something unspecified to a mouse, but she teaches her class to Transfigure live animals into inanimate objects.
We're not told whether the animals are ever brought back or whether they've all been casually killed. She encourages the students to turn hedgehogs into pincushions and then stick pins into them, even though some of them are still alive and aware and suffering, and must be terrified and confused. When she sees false!Moody slamming a screaming ferret repeatedly against a stone floor, she is concerned that it might be a Transfigured student but apparently not worried about cruelty to what might be a genuine pet. According to what Dumbledore says about Transfiguration in Beedle, even though the ferret is Draco he will still think he is a ferret and not know he is a boy, so however you look at it it's a little pet which is being tortured here, but McGonagall doesn't seem concerned about the cruelty, only the misuse of Transfiguration.
The scene towards the end of DH, where Harry Cruciates Amycus, is rather creepy. OK, McGonagall no doubt has every reason to loathe Amycus, but her student, who is forty-five years younger than her and for whose moral development she should be responsible, has just tortured a man and thrown him through a sheet of glass just because he spat at her - and instead of telling him off for disproportionate thuggery, she calls him "gallant" and appears to be in some sense flirting with him over the unconscious body of his victim.
To be fair to her, however, she was very shocked by Harry's sudden re-appearance and it's not entirely clear whether she really means it when she calls Harry's action "gallant" or whether she's just waffling while she tries to get a grip on the situation. And although the viciousness with which she attacks Snape (her former student) in DH seems upsetting in light of what we now know about Snape's enduring loyalty to the Order and his refusal to fire on her, it was understandable from her point of view. As far as she knew, the colleague she had worked with and perhaps even been fond of for fifteen years had never existed - had been nothing but a false mask being worn by a deadly enemy who'd been plotting to betray her trust from the outset. Indeed, the depth of her spite against him could be an indication that she really had been very fond of him and had seen him as a friend, and now felt not only betrayed but made a fool of. The revelation two years previously that her vague unease about false!Moody's behaviour had been wholly justified, and that he had been a Death Eater plant, would also predispose her to believe that she had again been misled and betrayed.
One also has to allow for the fact that like Snape she works about an 85-hour week just teaching and marking, plus she has her duties as Head of House, Deputy Head and Order member, so she is probably exhausted and irritable most of the time. Indeed, since she appears to teach a single-house Transfiguration class rather than doubling up two houses, her teaching hours may be even longer and crazier than Snape's, although her lessons probably require less preparation than his.
James and Sirius were Aurors.
This Fanon irks me whenever I read fics, this Fanon is so prevalent even in Severus fics. James and Sirius never showed interest in becoming aurors or having any inclination for that. My personal headcanon is James would become a Professional quidditch player and Sirius would've become a curse breaker if they survived the war.
I think you've been rating these dunderheads higher than the careers that I envisage for them but each to their own.
James Potter is the magical equivalent of a trust fund baby. Had he survived, I think he would've spent the rest of his life coasting on his parents' money – I don't see him getting an actual job.
I think the same is true for Sirius. I know his home life was a bit more complicated, but I still think he would've lived off of his family's inheritance once his mother passed. He and James would've been each other's biggest enablers, always out drinking and carousing and having a good time while Lily was stuck at home with the kids.
If this seems unfair, I'd just point out that there's plenty of evidence for it in canon. James never shows any interest in gainful employment, and we know that him and Sirius liked to go out and cause trouble (e.g. the policeman incident). We also know that he hated being "cooped up" with his wife and infant son, even though they were only in hiding for a short time. Even if you accept the excuse that he wanted to be out there fighting, I think it's notable that being at home with his family makes him feel trapped.
At first, I thought that James wanted to go back out and continue the good fight, but then when I realized he just wanted his cloak so he could do shenanigans, I started to dislike him even more.
Quote from Heatherlly on May 4, 2023, 12:07 amJames Potter is the magical equivalent of a trust fund baby. Had he survived, I think he would've spent the rest of his life coasting on his parents' money – I don't see him getting an actual job.
I think the same is true for Sirius. I know his home life was a bit more complicated, but I still think he would've lived off of his family's inheritance once his mother passed. He and James would've been each other's biggest enablers, always out drinking and carousing and having a good time while Lily was stuck at home with the kids.
If this seems unfair, I'd just point out that there's plenty of evidence for it in canon. James never shows any interest in gainful employment, and we know that him and Sirius liked to go out and cause trouble (e.g. the policeman incident). We also know that he hated being "cooped up" with his wife and infant son, even though they were only in hiding for a short time. Even if you accept the excuse that he wanted to be out there fighting, I think it's notable that being at home with his family makes him feel trapped.
This is also my headcanon and perfectly canon compliant. He and Sirius would've lived off their inheritance money.
The most charitable career I could give them is as investors. They invest in businesses and get something out of it. But that would require effort.
Quote from The Gestalt Prince on May 4, 2023, 12:26 amThe most charitable career I could give them is as investors. They invest in businesses and get something out of it. But that would require effort.
They would've lived like Lucius Malfoy in my opinion, he also didn't have a job. The most I can see them doing is sort of a joke shop business like Weasley Twins and even that they would've handed over to Lupin and Peter to run.
