Who's really in charge?

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 90401

Ravenclaw Bookworm wrote:
As Carol mentioned, Vernon and Petunia operate as a team.  Sometimes 
one or the other takes the more prominent role, depending on the 
circumstances.  In the scene where Petunia found out that Mrs. Figg 
has broken her leg and can't take Harry while the Dursleys take 
Dudley and Piers to the zoo, they are both making suggestions and 
objections to each other.  In CoS, when they are getting ready for 
the Masons' arrival, Vernon is the one in charge of setting the 
stage. And when the letter from the Ministry arrived, it was Vernon 
who locked Harry in his room.
> 
> Sawsan here:
> 
> I dont know about Vernon and Petunia, I agree about Petunia wearing
> the pants in the family. Vernon almost seems to fear her reaction if
> he were to mention Harry at the beginning of PS/SS. I think she is
> definitely the one in charge. That's why I hope to see her become a
> witch, perhaps that fire she has got in her will be put out, and she
> would have to come to terms with being a "freak" and then finally
> realize that it wasn't all that bad after all. IF she does develop
> powers, then we will see who is in charge; because if it is Vernon,
he will probably either divorce her or treat her badly for a while
after recovering from shock and a possible hernia. If it is Petunia, I
can imagine her acting as if she were sick and Vernon would be
pampering  her while loathing Harry even moreso because(perhaps in
Vernon's eyes) Harry infected her with his abnormality. 

Carol:
As I said in one of my book-length posts that probably got skipped,

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/90322

I think that Vernon and Petunia are acting as a team to suppress
Harry's magical impulses, but for different reasons. Vernon, the
arch-Muggle, is just afraid of what the neighbors and his business
contacts will think if they find out he has an "abnormal" nephew.
Petunia's motives are much more complex and much less clear--partly
hiding from the neighbors (which Vernon thinks is her whole motive),
partly long-standing jealousy of Lily, and partly knowledge of the WW
that she's hiding even from Vernon. The suppression is difficult for
her--she strikes me as the gossiping type who hates keeping a secret,
and in the few instances in which she has a chance to tell part of
what she knows, it comes bursting out of her. But there's something
going on between her and Dumbledore (maybe the secret of Harry's blood
kinship to her as the reason he has to stay with her and some
incentive for keeping her end of the bargain).

At any rate, both Vernon and Petunia suppress Harry at different times
and for different reasons. Petunia is definitely *not* in charge at
the time Vernon is nailing up the mail slots and searching madly for a
way to escape the owls, but she clearly *is* in charge after the
Dementors appear (but at that time she's not suppressing Harry, she's
saying that he has to stay).

I don't see Petunia as a Squib who'll become a witch. Her parents were
Muggles, and as JKR has said in an interview, Muggles don't have Squib
children (though they can have witch and wizard children like Lily).
In fact JKR says straight out in that interview that Petunia is *not*
a witch. But she definitely has some knowledge of the WW which will
come to light in the later books. Maybe we'll even see her attitude
toward Harry change. She might even tell him what happened to her
parents. If it's as terrible as I imagine it is, her hostility toward
the WW is perfectly understandable (even though it's wrong to take it
out on Harry).

Carol, who will try to keep her posts shorter so they won't deter readers!