[HPforGrownups] The Dursleys (was many other subjects) long

[Janet Anderson]

No: HPFGUIDX 124781

Tonks_op, in a brilliant post, suggests:

*snips sympathetic Dursley post*

I enjoyed this very much.  Especially since I happen to have pleasant 
childhood memories of hiding in a storage closet under the stairs, in the 
nicest of the houses we lived in (my family has a military background, so we 
lived in a lot of different houses during my childhood).

However, I don't believe it.  It's actually not impossible that a family 
who'd taken in a child whose parents had been murdered, and who had reason 
to suspect that the murderers might want to Complete The Whole Set, would 
devise some way of protecting the child during vulnerable times such s 
night.  Hiding him in a broom closet might well work -- "If they come at 
night when we're all asleep, they'll look in the bedrooms, not under the 
staircase, and that'll give us the chance to hear them, or him the chance to 
get away."

But if that were the case, that broom closet wouldn't be dark and full of 
spiders.  It would be clean, there would be a futon on the floor, and a 
Coleman lantern next to the futon, and a poster or two on the ceiling.

Lots of things would be different.  Harry would have clothes that fit, he'd 
get to join in the family's activities such as watching TV, taking trips, 
etc.  He wouldn't be belittled and treated like dirt.  And even if they kept 
his real background from him, they wouldn't have insulted his parents.

And when Dumbledore told him about Petunia's choice to take him in, Harry 
wouldn't have said "She doesn't love me --" because he would have known that 
she did.  It wasn't the broom closet that was the determining factor.  It 
was the motive behind it that made the difference.  And I think you're 
absolutely right that it was all based on fear -- definitely not on love.


Janet Anderson