"That awful boy" (Was: Comparing Lupin and Harry )

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 142806

Jen wrote: <snip> I know, Snape was my first choice too, and really
was an 'awful boy' it looked like! I suppose that's just my denial,
not wanting to find out he and Lily were friends and *gag* especially
not that he had a crush on her. But Petunia was so biased by the WW
that probably anyone Lily brought home would be awful. So I'm still
considering Snape and even Peter as prime candidates, with Lupin as an
outside possibility because he did look a bit ragged and poor-- that
might be enough for Petunia to consider him awful. :-) 

Carol responds:
Why not go with the obvious: *James* as the "awful boy"? We know that
he was "an arrogant little berk" (Sirius Black's description of
himself and his friend James in OoP, with the Pensieve scene as
evidence for the accuracy of the description), and he may well have
been somewhat contemptuous of poor Muggle Petunia--which would explain
her hatred of him, including an unwillingness to speak his name. Harry
obviously thinks that's who she's referring to: "If you mean my mum
and dad, why don't you use their names?" (OoP Am. ed. 32). (Petunia
refers to Lily as "*her*" [italics in original] as if she's avoiding
her sister's name. She'd have even less reason to mention her sister's
wizard boyfriend or fiance or whatever he was at that time.

Granted, we don't get Petunia's viewpoint directly in SS/PS chapter 1,
but we have "they normally pretended she didn't have a sister" (SS Am.
ed. 7) and "The Potters knew very well what he [Vernon] and Petunia
thought about them and their kind" (8). In chapter 4 we have her
reaction to Lily ("my dratted sister being what she was . . . a
freak," 53) followed by "and then she met that Potter at school and
they left and got married and had you, and of course I knew you'd be
just the same, just as--as--*abnormal*. . . ." (53).

If James (aka "that Potter") is "strange" and "abnormal" (presumably a
"freak" like Lily) I see no reason at all why he can't be "the awful
boy" who told Lily about Dementors in Petunia's hearing (as Harry thinks).

Yes, I know that Harry is often wrong, but why automatically assume
that James can't possibly be the "awful boy," especially given
Petunia's known dislike of him? 

Obviously Petunia knows more about the magical world than she lets on
and she has been suppressing both her feelings and her knowledge all
this time (we'll undoubtedly hear more from her in Book 7--I'm hoping
that she'll show Harry the letter tha DD left on the doorstep), but I
see no reason to suspect that her resentment of Lily and her dislike
of "that Potter" are anything other than real--in which case, "that
awful boy" is at least as likely to be James as to be one of his
friends--or Severus Snape, who probably had no desire to step into a
Muggle house--and would have been about as welcome there as Kreacher
in the Dursleys' sitting room.

Maybe "that awful boy" is someone else, but why not go with the
straightforward reading here? Doesn't anyone besides me think that
Harry's right and the boy is James?

Carol, who thinks that Petunia, despite some knowledge of the WW and
Voldemort and what happened to Harry's parents, is just a jealous and
resentful Muggle who fears magic in general and "abnormality" in
particular