Harry at the Dursleys

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 118308


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "dumbledore11214"  
> Pippin:
> 
> snip.
> 
> > Granted  it would have been better for Harry to grow up in a 
safe,  stable, loving home. But  Dumbledore knew that if he 
found such  a home in the wizarding world, the love and stability 
would last  only as long as the safety did. 
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Some will argue that some love and stability is better than 
nothing  at all.<

Pippin:
"Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all" is a 
very mature way to look at things, I agree. But we are talking 
about a young child, and I 'm not sure children look at things that 
way.  At least Harry was only orphaned once. Who knows how 
many caregivers he would have lost to violent death or 
abandonment, one after another, if he'd stayed in the wizarding 
world? 

Not the sort of upbringing I would choose for a child I feared 
might have paranoid tendencies acquired from Voldemort.


> Pippin:
> I don't think that Dumbledore left Harry with the Dursleys for any 
 kind of life lessons reason, but I do think that he may have felt 
 that any pressure on the Dursleys would have a bad effect
 (especially on Vernon) and take away the one advantage, 
besides a  whole skin, that Harry might glean from being with 
them. <

> Alla:
> 
> I am glad that we agree on "life lessons" part, but I am unclear 
> what is the other advantage besides being alive Harry has 
from staying  with Dursleys?<

Pippin:

The Dursleys do not act like the kind of  abusive or neglectful 
parents  who are cruel and affectionate by turns, and expect their 
mistreated children to love them one day and can't be bothered 
with them the next. 

 I think that Tom had a lot of treatment like that, and it made him 
paranoid. The Dursleys always treat Harry, and each other, the 
same way, so Harry learns to think that people are predictable. 
He didn't have anyone to love or trust at the Dursleys, but at least 
his ability to love and trust wasn't destroyed. Tom's was.

 
> Pippin: 
> > I think we sometimes exaggerate how miserable Harry is at 
 Privet Drive. Voldemort has made him feel much worse than the 
 Dursleys have. The Dursleys have *never* made Harry wish he 
 were dead. Voldemort has.
> 
> 
> Alla:
> 
> I don't remember Hary "wishing" that he was dead at Dursleys, 
but I  sure remember him being AFRAID that he will die there at 
least once.<
> 
> 
> "Yet life at Privet Drive had reached an all-time low. Now that 
> Dursleys knew they weren't going to wake up as fruit bats, he 
had  lost his only weapon. Dobby might have saved Harry from 
horrible  happenings at Hogwarts, but the way things were 
going, he'd probably starve to death anyway" - CoS, p.22, 
paperback.
> 
> Sounds to me that he was being miserable enough there.<

Pippin:

Miserable, yes, afraid he might die, yes, but not so unhappy that 
he wished he would. The canon you have just quoted says that  it 
was *never* worse than that. And what caused it? Interference 
from the magical world, in the form of Dobby. 

Pippin