[HPforGrownups] Respecting the Dursleys( was:Re: Hi everyone -- banning the books)

[Marion Ros]

No: HPFGUIDX 159521

Tesha:
>>>Perhaps Petunia fed her Dudders as a replacement for love. Did she
feel guilty for not having the heart to mother him correctly. It's
pretty clear that she's a warped individual, spitting hateful words
out about her family loving her sister more.<<<

Marion:

Well, in that case I'm a warped individual too.

My two sisters were the Sisters From Hell. The eldest a manipulator, the second a bully. Especially the second one made my life an absolute Hell. She tried to convince me that I was a horrible, ugly and abysmally stupid individual, and she succeeded insofar I couldn't look into a mirror for more than twenty years because looking in a mirror, caring about what I looked like, meant that She Had Won (it took me a couple of years of therapy to understand that this was Not A Healthy Attitude)
When I was 13 they both left home, but not my life. At that time both my parents were going through a bad time. My mother had major surgery nine times over the next ten years (twice for cancer) and my father had a stroke and heart attack, which cost him his job. I stayed at home and looked after my parents. I gave up all my desires for going to Art School because I could not leave my parents on their own.
My sisters hardly visisted during those years, but my parents longed for them with a desperate longing. When the telephone or the doorbell rang there was always the gleam in their eyes; "is it Louise? Is it Jacky?"
I gave up on my sisters on my 21st birthday, when Jacky still persisted in bullying me. I decided I had to cut such toxic people out of my life. Which I did. I haven't seen either of them for the past 20 years.
My parents never stopped longing for them. I detested that. They were treated like shite, but still they'd worship my sisters. I never doubted I was loved, but I was the plain bread and butter. My sisters were the three-layed cake. My mother finally had the shells falling from her eyes three years ago, when my sisters refused to visit my father in hospital when he had terminal cancer and refused to go to his funeral ("I'm not interested in dead people")
But bitter? Oh, yes. You better believe it.
It's hard to work your butt off to be noticed by people (whom you love) when those who spit on them gets worshipped by them.

I don't want to see my sisters ever again. I wouldn't spit in their faces if their noses were on fire.

Am I warped? No. Bitter. Ohh you better *believe* it, honey!!

If ever the son of my sister appeared on my doorstep, I would send him away. He might be a very nice boy, and I wouldn't blame him for the years of pain and bullying his mother inflicted on me, but memories would be dug up and relived and that would hurt too much. 

So, back to Petunia.

Why does everybody assume that Lily was such a nice sister? Because Lily gave her life for her son? So would Petunia. 
Just because people act heroically once as an adult doesn't mean they were nice people during their life or in their youth. We saw that with James. James was a worthless person. A rich bully. The only people who actually liked him were his Marauder friends, and what does that mean? He was liked by a werewolf, a traitorous sycophant and a juvenile deliquent who tried to murder another schoolboy when he was 15!
But you'd never hear an adult wizard (apart from Snape) tell Harry that James was a rotten bully because James is the Dead Hero, the Guy Who Defied Voldemort, and any bitter feelings one might have about James Potter were buried with him. Convenient.

But what about Lily?
Fans seem to think that she was a saintly, kind person because she Gave Her Life For Her Son and because She Stood Up For Snape in the Pensieve scene. But did she really? Stand up for Snape, I mean.
When we look at that scene carefully, we see that she's not interested in what happened to Snape at all. She does not say anything to the prostrate miserable boy on the ground. She does not help him get up. She's ranting to James. And 'ranting'? Say 'flirting'. (read Red Hen's essay on this)
Apparantly, James and Lily are flirting with eachother for a while using the "I'm such a Bad Boy" and "Ooooh, you're so *impossible*!" mode. And they're flirting over the body and dignity of Severus Snape.
No wonder he spits 'Mudblood!' at her. She only notices he is a real alive human being after he does that (and this flusters her: it makes her look just as callous and heartless as James, and she apparently likes to be thought of as a Good Girl. She was a Popular Girl. Popular does not necessarily mean 'kind')

Maybe Lily wasn't such a paragon of virtue. 

Maybe she did bully and terrorize her sister with her powers. Maybe she did turn Petunia's teacup into a rat and laughed her head of when her sister shrieked in fear. Maybe her parents worshipped their pretty talented daughter in the same way the Dursleys worship Dudley. Just as undeserved. Creating just as much trauma.

I still say that Dumbledore should never have left Harry with the Dursleys. Not because of Harry, but because Petunia does not deserved to be put through that kind of Hell again.

Maybe Petunia Dursley is no stellar human being, but she has been enough childhood trauma to make her this bitter, this neurotic. She should've been left at peace by the WW.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]