was Potterverse, now Muggle Child Abuse

[k12listmomma]

No: HPFGUIDX 167374

snipping greatly to start a new thought line:
> Pippin:
> As Harry slowly comes to realize that the WW isn't any refuge
> from the problems of the Muggle world, the reader realizes
> that JKR is using her fantasy landscape to explore some ethical
> thought problems, and to create a fable about adolescence,
> both of which entail a certain lack of realism.
snip
> But in the Potterverse, we're expected to accept JKR's
> limited alternatives as given. Harry can be safe and miserable
> at the Dursleys or happy and short-lived anywhere else, because
> JKR wants to explore that dilemma. That in the real world
> people would want to know why Child Protection Services
> wasn't doing their job is irrelevant.

I would like to explore for a second this notion that Child Protection
Services wasn't doing their job. While I believe what the Dursleys did to
Harry was ethically and morally wrong, I am of the opinion that even if the
CPS did look at this family, that they would not have the authority to do
anything. Harry wasn't starved, although we are led to believe that he was
thin. We aren't told of any hitting. Harry does have clothes, and a room to
himself. The areas that get grey most certainly are the bars on his room,
and being locked in his room for punishments, and the constant difference in
the way they treat their "favored" son over Harry. You could make a case for
psychological abuse, but if you interviewed Harry, you wouldn't come up with
a kid that has been traumatized. Harry appears healthy in all aspects. Thus,
I think even if they did look at this family, the Dursleys would have been
let off scott free. Frankly, I know first hand of a child that ended up in a
hospital with stitches to her head from a telephone that her mother
violently threw at the child at very close range, they interviewed the
family and then nothing came of it. The incidences have to be 1) grave and
2) repeated, and you just don't have that in this story. Even if they "made
recommendations" that the Dursleys had to feed Harry more, give him clothes
that fit him, and not lock him in his room, I don't think the Dursleys would
have heard from CPS again. Many kids have suffered far worse than Harry, and
were still left in the home.

What I find most interesting is who it is that the Dursleys fear when it
comes to Harry's treatment, and that is the Wizards. This then causes me to
ask of why they weren't intervening sooner. If I had the "Boy Who Lived"
being sent off to live with the Muggles, I would still want to keep an eye
on him. But we have no indication that they followed up on Harry to make
sure that this was the "right sort of home" for their precious survivor. Do
they just assume that these Muggles would automatically do right by Harry?
Do they just assume he's going to get the love that his parents would have
shown him through his aunt? Did Dumbledore even have a clue that the
Dursleys never told Harry the truth about his life and his family? Judging
by the first Hogwarts letters, and DD having to send Hargrid personally,
apparently not.

So then becomes the real question for me: not why the Muggles failed to love
and protect Harry, but why did the Wizards in his life fail to love and
protect Harry? He has a Godfather. Moreover, DD knows of the prophesy, and
can put two and two together to get Harry's name- and if he thought for a
minute that this child would grow up to soundly kick Voldemort's ass, then
why the Muggles for his early years? I don't buy for a second that he
thought "an innocent childhood" would make Harry's task any easier; on the
contrast, I would have wanted him raised under the finest and most powerful
Wizards I could find to insure the Harry knew about as many spells, potions
and magical possibilities as possible so that he had the best chance of
surviving that future encounter. Surely, Muggles would not explain how Magic
worked or would show Harry even the simpliest things such as nonverbal
spells, portkeys and the powers of potions. So, DD is essentially
handicapping Harry by cutting his education short for those first years.
That's a greater abuse, imho, than the Dursleys giving Dudley thirtysome odd
presents and forgetting about Harry's birthday. I find myself more angry at
DD than I am at the Dursleys.

Shelley