Acceptable Abuses?

[squeakinby]

No: HPFGUIDX 96299

vmonte wrote:

<much snippage>

> I keep invisioning 2 year old
> Harry, unloved, neglected, and crying in a playpen...)

I'm one who doesn't think the Dursleys are all that bad.

If we work Harry backwards ie the young man we have before us is a 
product of his upbringing, a kind and sensitive child, intelligent, 
well-balanced, "normal" and we attribute one's personality in great part 
to their nurturing, it bespeaks well for the Dursleys.  They did 
something right.  We have living proof of that.

Perhaps Petunia, in mourning, crying over the loss of her sister (it was 
her *sister* witch or not), needing comfort herself, stole into the 
cupboard when Vernon was fast asleep to hold little Harry, to sing him 
lullabys, to read him stories of brave, true, warriors knowing full well 
what had to await him and terrified that he, too, like Lily, would be 
murdered horribly and there was absolutely nothing she could do to 
prevent it.

During the day, Petunia's cold and remote facade would be in place, a 
woman desperate to maintain the illusion that all was well, that there 
is order in Little Whinging, in the world, but deep in her heart, 
knowing the truth, that one day she could lose every member of her 
family to a madman.

I don't know how anyone could live with that pressure for that many 
years and come away unscathed.

And it is Little Whinging (little whining to we Yanks).  To whine is to 
complain.  And if there is suffering it is in silence in Little Whinging 
because warriors, whatever their guise, do not whine.

Jem