Excellent essay. I agree, I find Rowling's portrayal of families very realistic, which is why I'm baffled when people single out any HPverse family as a model of 'perfection'-because like you said, families are not perfect. Even the most functionning ones. And I just realised that word, so often applied to families, seems to imply an 'in spite of'. As in 'this family is functionning *despite* its members driving each other up the wall on a regular basis'.

Perhaps in the afterlife the family will be somewhat healed--at least I hope so. I can't help but see Sirius and Regulus finally making up two halves of a whole--two brothers and two Shadows, etc. Sirius was good but ultimately impotent and kept from doing anything. Regulus was the bad one but possibly able to act in the end. (Personally, I can't help but always picture Sirius as actually being the favorite despite being the black sheep, but that's a different essay.)

OMG, yes. I've only recently succumbed to the appeal of Regulus (I blame lilith_morgana's fic, but there's something about the perfect symmetry of Sirius and Regulus' experiences that I find fascinating. It's all about choices, and lost opportunities, and the two halves being stronger as a whole. And my own conviction that if those two brothers hadn't fallen off so completely, a lot of tragedy could have been prevented.

The only time I feel even vaguely sympathetic towards Neville is when seing the way his grandmother treats him. There is undoubtedly love there, but it's just a perfect illustration of how much unreasonnable expectations can crippled a child.