Dursleys or Death

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 164508

bboyminn wrote:
>
<snip>

> In a sense, by seeing, living, and feeling injustice,
> Harry very clearly feels and empathizes with injustice
> done to others. Again, that doesn't credit the Dursley,
> but does credit Harry with being far more morally
> and intellectually developed that they are.
<snip>

> I'm not sure Harry would have the level of understanding
> that he currently has if he had grown up with James as
> an active father. I'm sure Harry would have grown up to
> be a fine boy, but I'm not sure he would have had the
> same sense of empathy for the outsider and the underdog.
>
> It is really impossible to say though, on one hand Lily
> and James seem like fine people who are well respected
> by all who knew them. But on the other hand, James seems
> to have an agrogance that comes from growing up
> priviledge. It is possible, that Harry would have had
> that same sense of entitlement <snip>

> So, yes, Harry has gained personally by living with the
> Dursleys, but again, that gain comes from Harry's own
> strength of character, intuitive sense of justice, and
> his own fortitude and perseverance. The Dursleys were
> simply the anti-model that re-enforced all those aspects.
<snip>

Carol responds:
I agree to some extent. We can't know for sure, but growing up with
James as a father might well have produced a boy rather like Draco but
without the Dark wizard/DE father background and pureblood supremacy
ideoology, or perhaps more like Zacharias Smith, whose father is
described in HBP as "haughty-looking" (HBP Am. ed. 633). But growing
up with James is immaterial. If James had lived (because the Prophecy
wasn't revealed or the Secret Keeper was loyal), Lily would also have
lived, and Harry wouldn't be the Prophecy Boy--no scar, no fame for a
deed that wasn't even his own, no future as the nemesis of Voldemort.
(Of course, the probability of any member of the Order--the Potters,
Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, or anyone else, living long enough to get
Harry into Hogwarts with an unvaporized Voldemort on the loose was
slim to none, but that's immaterial, too.) We're not talking in this
thread about normal Harry, Just!Harry with no powers other than his
own and no premature fame for vaporizing a Dark Lord, the person he
would have been if his parents had raised him, whether or not they
indulged him as James's parents (according to a JKR interview) indulged
him. We're talking about the Boy Who Lived, an orphan who needs to be
raised by someone other than his parents because his parents are dead.

The advantage of choosing the Dursleys, aside from the blood
protection (which *of course* is the primary consideration) is that
living with them (or Mrs. Figg, who unfortunately can't provide the
blood protection) is that it removes Harry from contact with the WW
except for a few wizards, whom I take to be Order members like Dedalus
Diggle, shaking his hand or bowing to him in the street (which only
confuses him rather than going to his head, as it surely would if he
were living in the WW and regarded as a hero for something he didn't
even do). The DEs don't know about Harry's Muggle relatives, and if
they did find out through a traitor in the Order, they couldn't attack
him because of the blood protection.

In the WW, a boy with a scar on his forehead could not be safely
hidden. Either he'd have to stay indoors, hardly a normal life, or
he'd be pointed at everywhere he went. And he'd be hidden or pointed
at because he was "special." So, without being raised by James, there
was a good chance that he'd grow up thinking he had special abilities
that he didn't have, that he was better than all the other wizard
children, none of whom were worshipped as heroes from infancy.
Instead, he reaches his eleventh birthday not only safe from the DEs,
who have not figured out where he lives, but humble and innocent,
viewing himself as Just!Harry. Granted, the Dursleys have not treated
him kindly and I give them no credit for Harry's attitude, which, as
Steve says, is a mark of his strength of character. But he does not
see himself as some sort of superhero, either. Would an "arrogant
little berk" like James Potter or Sirius Black have been a suitable
future opponent of Voldemort? Could Berk!Harry have defeated Voldemort
four times, from the age of eleven onward which IMo, he managed to do
largely as the result of his own innocence and humility)? Considering
that James died in battle with Voldemort at twenty-two and Black was
sent to Azkaban, also at twenty-two, for rashly seeking revenge on the
friend who betrayed him and James and Lily, I seriously doubt it.
Neither their abilities nor their courage were enough, and their
arrogance was not an asset.

Harry's upbringing, bad as it is, has helped to shape him, to bring
out his strengths in a way that a loving, indulgent family could not
have done. He has not learned too much too soon. He did not come to
school, like Severus Snape, knowing more hexes than most seventh
years. He did not come to school, like Draco and Ron, knowing all
about Quidditch and Hogwarts. He did not come to school full of his
own fame, expecting to be worshipped as a hero, Lockhart-style, for
something he didn't even do. He came to Hogwarts fresh from the Muggle
world, so used to adversity that he thought nothing of it (like a kid
born in a time before electricity and modern plumbing) that he thought
nothing of it. Having grown up with Dudley and his gang, he had no
fear of bullies and no respect for a boy who would try to bully his
father into buying him a racing broom. Having slept in a broom
cupboard full of spiders, he had no fear of them (unlike Ron, who grew
up in a loving household but with mischievous older brothers). Living
with the Dursleys might have shaped Harry into another Tom Riddle, but
it didn't. It helped to make him who he is, a brave, resourceful, and
compassionate.

Dumbledore, of course, didn't anticipate these benefits. He didn't see
the Dursleys (the HBP encounter shows that he's never met them
before), and he didn't see them as McGonagall did and judge them
(alas, a bit too harshly) as "the worst sort of Muggles." (If the
Dursleys were as bad as it gets, the Muggle world would be lucky.)
Instead, he assumes, perhaps naively, that they'll learn to love Harry
and treat him well. After all, he's left them a letter. . . . He
expects them to tell Harry who he is and what happened to his parents
when he's old enough to understand. (In the meantime, I think DD would
understand their giving him a cover story about a car accident. It
would be extremely difficult for Harry to attend a Muggle school and
live in the Muggle world if he thought of himself as a wizard,
especially one who somehow vaporized a Dark wizard at the age of
fifteen months. He *might* have turned into another Tom Riddle under
those circumstances, and he'd certainly be regarded as delusional and
dangerous if he mentioned his history and not-yet-developed powers to
anyone.) 

BTW, I realize that DD says later that he knew he'd be condemning
Harry to "ten dark and difficult years," but that's not the impression
I get from SS/PS, twinkle or no twinkle. He seems to think that the
Muggles will take good care of Harry, and he certainly see the
advantages of keeping him out of the limelight. (He also, of course,
knows about the blood protection and the presumed dangers of allowing
Sirius Black to raise Harry. I think it's not just the DEs he's hiding
Harry from. It's the supposedly traitorous godfather. But we don't
know any of that because DD is hiding his primary motives from
McGonagall and JKR is hiding them from us.)

But in the HP books, actions have unintended consequences. Good comes
out of evil (in this case, unintentional evil on DD's part) just as
evil sometimes comes out of good (as when Harry prevents the killing
or Wormtail, unintentionally allowing him to escape to Voldemort). The
sacrifice of Lily Potter not only saves her son's life but gives Harry
the powers he needs to defeat the Dark Lord. Snape's eavesdropping and
Wormtail's betrayal result in a double murder, but one of those
murders brings eleven years of peace to the WW. So it's not surprising
that the Dursleys' mistreatment of Harry, in itself a bad thing, has
good consequences, regardless of Dumbledore's intentions. Harry knows
what adversity is (he can compare his own state with Dudley's), and
consequently he can feel compassion for others who have little money
and few comforts (the Weasleys and later, Sirius Black living on rats
in a cave). He can feel compassion for Buckbeak, unfairly sentenced to
death (and for Hagrid, grieving over the impending execution) and for
Sirius Black, a man imprisoned for a murder he didn't commit
(however much he wanted to). He can empathize (eventually) with
Neville and other victims of the Dark Lord. He can stand up to Snape,
and later to Umbridge and Rufus Scrimgeour, because he's learned to
stand up to Uncle Vernon.

Carol, who knows from experience that adversity can build character or
destroy it, and who thinks that Harry's reaction to it has helped to
shape him into the person he needs to be to defeat Voldemort (with no
such intention on Dumbledore's part and no credit whatever to the
Dursleys)