Dumbledore's letters to Petunia (Re: Petunia's Eyes)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 169963

Carol earlier:
> > > However, I've always considered it interesting that the first
part of the first chapter of SS/PS, is from the arch-Muggle, Vernon's,
pov rather than from Petunia's. She reminds me of Lupin in PoA, very
touchy and obviously hiding something. Vernon's explanation for
Petunia's becoming upset every time her sister is mentioned, given to
us by the limited omniscient narrator, is simple embarrassment at
being connected with abnormal people: "He didn't blame her--if *he'd*
had a sister like that" (5). 
> > <snip>
> > > To me it's obvious that she knows something that she's
concealing from Vernon. Maybe she hasn't heard from her sister
directly, but I think she may have heard from Dumbledore, who has only
recently suggested the Fidelius Charm to the Potters. Maybe he's
mentioned it to Petunia, along with the name of the supposed Secret
Keeper? And *somebody* has told them both that the Potters have a son
 named Harry only a month younger than Dudley.
> > 
> > Jen:  You're saying JKR couldn't use Petunia as the limited 
omniscient narrator in this chapter because she would give too much 
away? That's a new idea to me and it fits so well with a comment by 
JKR that you touched on in your post (from FAQ section of her  website): 
> 
> Dung:
> That's brilliant! It's new to me, too. (Goodness, Carol, you're on
form at the moment! The pressure to come up with new takes before the
end of all this fun is showing!)

Carol responds:

Thank you! Small correction; I didn't say that JKR avoided using
Petunia as the narrator (JKR doesn't use first-person narrators), just
that, IMO, she avoided having the limited omniscient narrator report
events from Petunia's perspective and chose Vernon's instead because,
as Jen states, using Petunia's more knowledgeable perspective would
give too much away. (I think that she uses Frank Bryce's naive pov in
GoF for a similar reason; she doesn't want the reader to know what
Voldemort and Pettigrew are thinking or how they interpret their own
conversation. In "Spinner's End," she doesn't use a pov character at
all because all of them know more than she wants the reader to know.
Instead, she uses a third-person dramatic narrator who reports the
actions and conversation from an objective pov without entering the
minds of any of the characters.)

BTW, someone in this thread attributed the quote from JKR's website
explaining that "Remember my last" indicates a previous correspondence
between DD and Petunia to me, but the words, as Jen states in her
post, are JKR's own. ("We have corresponded," says DD when he meets
Petunia in HBP, and evidently he doesn't just mean the "last" letter
he left on the doorstep or the Howler itself.) I expect that we'll
find out what Petunia is concealing not only from Harry but from
Vernon in DH. 

BTW, we have more of what I suspect to be the unreliable narrator when
Aunt Petunia looks out the window in PoA after seeing the escaped
prisoner Sirius Black on the news:

"Aunt Petunia . . . whipped around and peered intently out the window.
*Harry knew* [Neri alert!] Aunt Petunia would simply love to be the
one to call the hot line number. She was the nosiest woman in the
world and spent most of her life spying on the boring, law-abiding
neighbors" (PoA Am. ed. 17). 

But suppose that Aunt Petunia "knew" that Sirius Black had been the
Potters' Secret Keeper and had reason to fear that he would show up on
Privet Drive? Maybe he's also "that awful boy" who told Lily about
Dementors--"awful" because he grew up to "betray" her sister and
brother-in-law to their deaths and "murder" thirteen people?
> 
> Jen:
> <snip> Now that you've mentioned the bit about the narrator, I want
to take one last stab at deducing why Dumbledore would have contacted
Petunia prior to the night he delivered his 'last' letter along with
Harry.
> > 
> > It's seems highly unlikely the blood protection would come up
prior to the night of Godric's Hollow since the outcome of Lily's
sacrifice was such a phenomenal event and it had to take place in 
order for Dumbledore to place his charm on Harry.  Dumbledore says as
much in "The Lost Prophecy," that he made his decision after Lily  died.  
>
> > I suppose it's possible Dumbledore revealed the Secret Keeper and
the fact that the Potters were hidden by the Fidelius like you 
mentioned, Carol, but it's not Dumbledore's modus operandi to give out
more information than necessary to anyone, let alone someone he 
wouldn't know well.  It would more likely be up to Sirius (Peter) to 
contact Petunia on Lily's behalf if Lily wanted Petunia to have such
information.
<snip>

> > Maybe during the time Sirius was Secret Keeper, Lily, estranged
from her sister, requested Dumbledore contact Petunia about being
Harry's guardian should something happen to herself, James and 
Sirius.  And that would have started a communication from Dumbledore 
to Petunia. (It's not clear if it was a two-way communication.)  The
only thing I'm not sure about is why Lily would want Petunia to be
guardian since there's nothing to show they cared for each other.  
> > Unless Lily thought Harry would be safer in the Muggle world. 
> 
> Dung:
> I think the last thing they'd have been planning for was orphaned!
Harry. James and Lily were the last line of defence, if they died, 
they imagined, so would Harry. They could never have predicted what
happened at GH. Although... thinking about it, if they didn't know 
about the prophecy, they might have thought that Voldy was after them,
rather than Harry, so they could have wondered if Harry would be
orphaned, I suppose. But if they did know it was Harry that Voldy was
after, I don't think it would have occured to them that they might die
and that Harry might live. <snip>

Carol responds:

Not being particularly prone to speculation, I just want to point out
that Petunia's behavior (a tendency to blurt out information that
she's previously concealed on two occasions, one in SS/PS when Hagrid
shows up and one in OoP after the Dementor attack; that peeking out
the window when she sees Sirius Black on the news; and her touchiness
and avoidance of the subject of her sister in the first chapter of
SS/PS) combined with her knowledge, however limited, of Voldemort,
Dementors, the exploded house, etc.; her reference to the conversation
with the "awful boy," and her "correspondence" with Dumbledore (which,
IMO, implies two-way communication), suggests that Petunia is bursting
to tell Harry the secrets she has kept in all these years and that
we'll learn them in DH.

Regarding the "correspondence, which is clearly with Dumbledore
himself, perhaps he told her that he suspected that the Potters were
in danger and that he had given them and their son Harry a hiding
place in Godric's Hollow. It's quite possible that she didn't want to
think about it or talk about it, or that he had extracted a promise
from her not to discuss what he told her with her husband or anyone else.

Carol, who knows only that "there's more to Petunia than meets the
eye" and suspects that that "more" relates to the Potters' backstory
rather than to Petunia herself