Identifying with Muggles - The Dursley and 'Terrifying' Abuse

[Bruce Alan Wilson]

No: HPFGUIDX 158235

Jordan wrote:
> It's not clear where this "legal obligation" comes from....

BAW:
Petunia is his next of kin.  Orphans are normally placed with relatives if they have any living relations.


Steve wrote:
> > but until they refuse it, the obligation is theirs.

Jordan replied:
> There's no evidence either way for whether they were offered the
> option to refuse. We've seen no evidence otherwise of any wizard
> offering any muggle the option to refuse anything, from Hogwarts
> attendance to obliviation, so it doesn't seem likely this is an
> exception.

BAW:
Since when do Muggles attend Hogwarts?  If you mean Muggleborn wizardling children,the MoM doesn't kidnap them--they are sent letters inviting them to attend, and a Hogwarts professor or a MoM official comes to explain to the parents/guardians.  We do know that children with magical abilities have 'breakouts', like the python incident, or the incident with the sweater; certainly a few such would give any parents with any brains that there was something odd about the child, and the letter and explanation would come as a
relief; they'd at least some idea of what was going on.  

In Ursula K. Leguin's "Wizard of Earthsea" there is the statement "To keep dark the mind of the mageborn is a dangerous thing."  Many other fantasy subcreations with working magic have similar sayings.  It would not be hard to persuade Muggle parents that the little wizard/witch they produced needs training for his/her peculiar
abilities.

As for the Dursleys having a choice, DD does say that Petunia agreed to take Harry; this implies that she could have disagreed.

Bruce Alan Wilson