On the other hand (was Re: Disliked Uncle Vernon)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 93166

Pippin: 
>  <snip> Where else would Harry have been safe? With Dumbledore? 
> Hardly--even with  a wand to defend himself, Harry has just 
> barely survived his five years at school. Dumbledore has 
> managed to rescue him only with surprise on his side.
> 
> Dumbledore could have placed Harry with a wonderful family, 
> and it  would have lasted until Bella or her like caught up with 
> them. Then Harry would have lost his family *again.*  
> 
> In my view the Dursleys aren't so much immoral as stupid, 
> ignorant and locked in a destructive family dynamic. The sad 
> thing is that Harry would have been just as bad off if the 
> Dursleys had loved him. They'd have turned him into another 
> Dudders, I'm afraid. 


Exactly! What wizarding family wouldn't have been thrilled to raise
the infant everyone regarded as a hero, and how could they have kept
it quiet, even if they resisted the impulse to brag about it? Harry's
whereabouts would have been known and his chances for survival would
have been slim (assuming that the scar protects him from Voldemort
and/or Avada Kedavra, but not from death from other causes). And why
put a wizarding family at risk? The only safe place was outside the
WW, where Harry himself wouldn't know he was a wizard.

Setting aside the crucial question of survival, I also happen to think
that it was good for Harry not to grow up as "a pampered little
prince" (Dumbledore's phrase) seeing himself as a hero for an action
(or reaction) that was not even in his control (his own survival and
the rebounding of the curse onto Voldemort). "Famous before he can
walk and talk! Famous for something he can't even remember!" as DD
says (SS 13). Much better that he make a few real friends by his own
effort at Hogwarts than come to school with a ready-made fan club
(like Krum's or Cedric's--or James's). He is emphatically *not* the
popular, autograph-giving celebrity that Lockhart imagines him to be,
nor is he the arrogant egotist his father was, and which he could
easily have been with better cause. And that, IMO, is all to the good.

Carol, who expects that no one will agree with her second point but is
pretty sure that it represents JKR's own view