Poor little Harry/certain room/wizard medicine/good characters

[lucky_kari]

No: HPFGUIDX 34689

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., Vicky DeGroote <degroote at a...> wrote:

> As a mom I have to take a moment...Thinking about Harry being so 
neglected, abused...especially at a very young age...well, I just get 
very choked up thinking about 1 year old Harry trying to be cuddly or 
>playful etc and just getting ignored or worse!  I have an 
almost-3-year-old and to think about her being potty trained by that 
horrible Petunia...I can just hardly stand it!  Some of you may be 
>chuckling a bit, but it's really the hardest part of it all for me to 
>think about.  

Harry's survival of this abuse is really amazing. People can rebound 
from situations worse that the Dursley household, but I very much 
doubt that they are like Harry while still in the situation. One of my 
favourite books when I was younger was a novel called, "I am David". 
At the time, I didn't understand the plot entirely, but looking back, 
I'll guess that David escaped from a prison camp in some Communist 
regime, and began his track across Europe to find his mother. What 
impressed me about the book then, and I really should look for it to 
read it again, was the realism of David's way of thinking. He did not 
act like an ordinary kid. He is extremely paranoid, he does not expect 
help, and he doesn't even know how to become a part of society. While 
Harry has some characteristics caused by his history (the avoidance of 
questions, for example), he seems largely unaffected and is still 
trusting after his experience. 

Which leads me to wonder. Certainly, something of Lily and James's 
love stayed with Harry. Certainly, the Dursleys' current behaviour is 
so bad that wouldn't be the end of the story.

But I wonder. First of all, there's that reference in "Prisoner of 
Azkaban" to Harry playing musical chairs at a family party, and Aunt 
Marge tripping him with a cane so Dudley could win. But why was Harry 
playing musical chairs? It doesn't square completely with their 
current attitude towards him. Could the Dursleys' treatment of Harry 
have been better in the past? Never loving, of course. But not quite 
child abuse, as it seems to have become? Maltreatment of him would 
have increased as he grew older, as they unconsciously began to 
realize that he was a much better person than their own Dudley (the 
Cinderella complex), and he began to remind them more of his parents. 
Uncle Vernon's crusade against his untidy hair is obviously (to us) 
not a result of any neat-freakness, but of his hate for James Potter. 
Could Harry have picked up any mannerisms(some of these things are 
genetics) from James and Lily? If he's like many kids, his eyes didn't 
start up green. And hair grows darker as one grows up. 

So, perhaps it wasn't always as bad as we now see it.

Eileen