Under the shower i thought about the life of Vernon Dursley.
The guy is just some normal British bloke. We don’t know much about his background, but given his sister is breeding bull-terriers, he’s probably from some lower middle class countryside family.
He falls in love with a women who is heavily traumatized because a freak genetic mutation or something gave her sister “special powers” and made her sister her parents favorite.
He doesn’t get any of it, but he rolls with it, because he loves his wife. He works hard, gets in the corporate ladder and sucks it up so his wife can stay at home and raise their recently born son.
Then some freaks show up and drop his nephew on the doorstep. Turns out his sister in law and her husband have been engaged in some vigilante paramilitary group that was fighting in a secret war against a very potent terrorist. The terrorist murdered his sister in law and her husband. Somehow their little baby survived and apparently killed the terrorist. Or the head terrorist isn’t really killed because of how this freak genetic stuff works, but Vernon doesn’t get any of it.
The freaks who left the child only left a letter with it, saying the child will be safe at their house, but is otherwise in mortal danger as the terrorists are still out there and also the head terrorist some day somehow might return.
Despite this bringing danger to his family, Vernon takes in the child. He figures that the best thing to protect his family and the child is for the child not to be engaged in all of this freak stuff, so he tries to get it out of that cursed child. Again he doesn’t really understand any of it, but weird stuff keeps happening around that child.
Because of that he develops anger issues and kind of locks the child in, which of course isn’t okay, but he doesn’t know what else to do. There is no government resources to help him. He doesn’t know how to reach the people who dropped the child off, however they seem to keep tabs on him and his family. Again from all he understands they are involved in some paramilitary actions.
Despite all of this he remains loyal to his wife who he understands must suffer a lot from this, but they cannot seek counseling or other help as any psychiatrist would just lock them up for psychosis.
Then the boy starts going to the school for the freak kids like his parents. He starts getting involved in fights with that terrorist, who apparently is still alive, people show up at their house through the chimney, blowing half of it away, the godfather of his nephew is a wanted murderer he knew as an armed prison escapee from the news, his own son almost gets killed in an assassination attempt on his nephew involving some sort of invisible monsters and finally the leader of that paramilitary group shows up and demands them to leave their house for a while into the unknown.
The Dursley’s are left alone to deal with all of these things that are way beyond their comprehension or ability. They try to do the right thing, but often fail the task. Instead of getting understanding they are considered the evil ones by everyone who seemingly understands whats going on.
That skips a lot of the abuse they put Harry through.
Yeah… Except he makes the “freak kid” live under the stairs and neglects him compared to his own son. Kinda hard to redeem the guy by him being otherwise average.
Because of that he develops anger issues and kind of locks the child in, which of course isn’t okay, but he doesn’t know what else to do. There is no government resources to help him. He doesn’t know how to reach the people who dropped the child off, however they seem to keep tabs on him and his family. Again from all he understands they are involved in some paramilitary actions.
Petunia was just jealous. She wrote a letter to Dumbledore asking if she could attend Hogwarts with her sister and was rejected on the basis she was a muggle. She held scorn for the magical world from that day on and hated seeing her sister do things she couldn’t and her parents were excited by. So she told her husband of it’s existance and called them all “freaks” for the rest of her life. In truth she probably loved her sister, but never got a chance to make ammends. After all, her sister died shortly after she got out of Hogwarts. 21 or 22
He doesn’t know what else to do?
And it’s not like living under stairs is a new thing for Harry. He’s been there his whole life, not just after he does magic.
Does he love his wife? I can’t recall a single sign of actual affection. A wife is just one more thing to check off the “list of things to have”, along with a house, a job and a son to carry on… Well, I don’t think Vernon knows what exactly. Probably some ill-defined set of Proper British Traditions. To be fair Petunia is using him in the exact same way for for precisely the same reason. And the money, of course.
Kind of like how trans people just want to exist and J.K. R-word just won’t leave them alone
What’s there to understand? It’s not like magic or people with magic are from call of cthulchu rpg and damage sanity from interaction, they are as normal as you can get I don’t think you can make magic any more boring and mundane then it is in Harry Potter.
I mean, yeah, your points are valid as long as you squint hard enough and disregard some cartoonisly evil shit.
Someone with the flick of a piece of wood can just murder you outright, with you having no way of defending against it. Before they learn to control it, the magic of the children just “flows” in uncontrollable ways. Maybe doing something silly like coloring hair, but maybe also destroying things and hurting people. For a non magical person in an entirely unpredictable way, without any possibility to intervene or repair the damage as easily.
Keep in mind that there is no mention of the Dursley’s ever receiving any sort of guidance on how to deal with a magical child. They are just expected to figure it out by themselves. Imagine you would have to deal with a special needs child, just that nobody is giving you any information, you can not reach out to anyone about it, you must keep it a secret as otherwise you get booked in the closed psychiatry and on top of it all the child at any point may burn down your house.
Someone with a gun can just murder you outright with you having no way of defending against it. It doesn’t make guns something that’s beyond understanding. Same with anything that can damage another person.
Why would they need to keep secrecy and who exactly is going to get them into psych? People can deal with a child, and magic in harry potter universe is reversible and not permanent for the most part. There are multiple new families with magical children every year and they don’t recieve any guidance as well, yet they manage somehow without being assholes for the most part.
The man should be in jail for child abuse.
Yeah, there’s still the fact they didn’t even let him celebrate a birthday until he started going to that school, because they were scared of him.
Remember the times Harry pulls out his wand at home? Remember how freaked out they were when he does? Or even the fact that he (unwittingly) blew up his step-aunt and refused to change her back (even if he knew how, I doubt he would). They only start giving him leniency when they realize that he could literally change their entire reality with a thought.
To be fair his aunt was really shitty to him. But that makes me remember the whole thing how from their perspective Harry ruined the once in a lifetime business deal of Vernon when he tossed the cake onto the business partner over dinner. They couldn’t know about the whole Dobby business. And even if they did. Some strange run down creature just popping into your house to cause havoc, so your nephew gets kicked out of school, what the heck is that madness?
I wouldn’t waste too much energy thinking about the ravings of a deranged TERF billionaire transphobe.
