[HPforGrownups] Re: DD at the Dursleys: Better Manner to Accept.

[Sherry Gomes]

No: HPFGUIDX 158056

Marion wrote:
Yes, I feel very sorry for the Dursleys. They never asked for Harry to be
delivered on their doorstep. They were never asked to foster a magical
child. They were forced into it, and when they do not perform good enough as
hosts, they are browbeaten into submission. Every interaction between
wizards and the Dursleys leaves me with a dirty taste in my mouth.


Sherry now:

Canon please?  Where in canon does it say that the Dursleys were 

*forced*

to take in Harry?  No wizards barged into their home, waving wands in a
threatening manner.  No meade, no toffee, no giants.  It was just a small
child with a letter on their doorstep.  Dumbledore, who believes so much in
choices, I cannot imagine him ever forcing the Dursleys to take Harry in
against their will.  The Dursleys made their choice, for whatever reason
they did.  and then they spent the next ten years abusing the helpless
child, who was not to blame for anything that happened to them in the years
before he came.  He did not deserve to be starved, locked in a cupboard
under the stairs without air and sunlight to help him be healthy and to
grow, locked in his room without enough food to survive for days, bars on
the windows too, so that if there'd been a fire he would have been trapped,
nor to be physically abused in other ways--thinking of Harry's thoughts in
HBP he'd learned it was best to stay out of Uncle Vernon's reach.  They
called him names like Freak, told the neighbors he was such a delinquent
that they sent him to a school for incurably criminal boys, made him wear
such oversized and horrible clothes that he was the laughing stock in his
school, allowed Dudley to use him as a punching bag, let Marge say such
dreadful things about his parents and set her dog on him.  Oh yes, I can see
how the Dursleys are so terribly put upon and tortured and terrified by that
little boy.  

Frankly, though I can understand simple sympathy for any human being, if
someone thinks it's unfair for Dumbledore to chastise the Dursleys a bit,
but I can't understand at all the idea that it seemed to me you were setting
forth, that everything they did to Harry was something he deserved to get
because he was supposedly forced on them and is now a miserable little bug
parasite in their home, destroying them from the inside out.  I genuinely
cannot understand having any sympathy for them and none for the poor child
Harry.  Where Harry's experiences growing up with the Dursleys are
concerned, my heart is 100 percent with him, because whatever happened to
cause them to take him in, none of it is Harry's fault, and no child
deserves the treatment he got.  

Of course, this is all just my opinion, naturally.

Sherry