Protection-Abuse / Patron-Client (was:re:Blood protection/ Dumbledore and Harry)

[Tonks]

No: HPFGUIDX 158568

> Betsy Hp:
> But since the Dursleys neither beat nor starved Harry, they don't
> manage to rank, IMO. There needs to be bruising, fainting, etc., to
> make it into the pantheon for me. Harry doesn't even manage an
> emotional breakdown because the Dursleys don't love him. If the
> Dursleys are to rank, Harry needs to bleed. And he doesn't.
> 
> 
> Lynda:
> 
> So I take it Betsy, that the references to Harry being locked in 
his room into which bowls of soup are pushed through the door-flap 
and Harry always staying out of the reach of his uncle's grasp/fist 
do not signify abuse to you either?  Because I tend to think that 
the narrator was not lying to us in the first instance and that 
Harry probably has learned from experience to stay out of Vernon's 
reach...
> 

Tonks:
I think that people can read different things into those scenes. I 
see the scene with the frying pan as just Petunia making a point 
without any *real* intent to hit him. 

If Vernon were really abusive of Harry, Harry staying just out of 
his reach would not protect him. Vernon would go after Harry and 
grab him and beat him. So to me Harry `staying out of Vernon's 
reach" could just mean that Vernon would grab him by the scuff of 
the neck or something. I have never identified with Harry, so I have 
not seen some things from his POV, and therefore I have never read 
the Dursley's as all that abusive.

And as I have said before, I saw the scene with Vernon locking Harry 
in his room as humor. I think that JKR meant for it to convey just 
how much off the deep end Vernon had gone. IMO, it was written that 
way to exaggerate a point, not to show real abuse.

Tonks_op