Identifying with Muggles - The Dursley and 'Terrifying' Abuse

[a_svirn]

No: HPFGUIDX 158352

> > a_svirn:
> > And Harry's parents appointed Sirius as his guardian, yet nobody 
> > bothered to honour their wish, least of all Dumbledore. Which 
only 
> > goes to show that he observes the law only if it suits him. 
> 
> Pippin:
> Sirius, or possibly someone impersonating him, relinquished Harry 
to 
> Hagrid at Godric's Hollow. The fact that Sirius (or whoever) gave 
> up the child so  reluctantly but didn't insist on protesting to 
> Dumbledore in person would be one of the things that made Sirius
> look guilty at the time.  
> 
> Once Sirius's innocence was established, Dumbledore seems to
> have regarded him as a co-guardian, since he was allowed to sign
> Harry's Hogsmeade permission form.

a_svirn:
And none of that has anything to do with the law, doesn't it? I mean 
who died and made Dumbledore god? We have it on an excellent 
authority that he's no Jesus Christ at least. Yet *he* was the one 
who decided to give Harry to the Dursleys – against both the law and 
his parents wishes. He was the one who regarded Sirius as co-
guardian, without bothering even apprising the Dursleys of this 
change of pace, I might add. 

It's true that Sirius, who was Harry's appointed guardian, shouldn't 
have agreed to the request Dumbledore shouldn't have made in the 
first place. The ties of kinship shouldn't have mattered more than 
the ties of love, and Dumbledore should have known it better than 
anyone. Only he didn't. 

> 
> Pippin:
> Perhaps in that era it would have violated the Statutes of Secrecy
> to tell any Muggle, whether parent or guardian, about the nature 
of 
> Hogwarts. In any case, a child has the right to an appropriate 
> education, and in my country, at least, the state will enforce that
> right against the wishes of the parents or guardians if need be.
> 

a_svirn:
I guess it all comes down to the concept of the appropriate. Would 
the state in your country force a parent or a guardian to send their 
child, say, to Phillips Academy instead of a public school? Or to 
Harrow instead of a grammar school? The Dursleys were completely 
within their rights – as guardians – to send Harry to the local 
comprehensive. If – as you seem to imply – the wizarding law leaves 
them without a choice of the matter, it shouldn't allow muggle 
relatives to assume the custody of wizarding children at all. This 
would be much fairer.