Dudley's Dementor encounter (Was: CHAPDISC: DH3, The Dursleys Departing)

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 177225

Aussie wrote:
> > <snip> Dudley saw himself without loving relatives or friends
facing danger ... exactly what Harry saw every day of his life at the
Dursleys until Hagrid brought the Happy 11th Birthday cake.
> 
Laura replied:
> I just thought of something.  Maybe Dudley's greatest fear is that
he will somehow turn into Harry and be treated like him by his parents
and friends.  That would tend to give him a bit of empathetic
understanding of Harry.

Carol responds:
I think both of you may be confusing Boggarts, which impersonate a
person's (or wizard's?) greatest fear, with Dementors, which cause
people (wizard, Squib, or Muggle) to relive their worst experiences.
Dudley can't be reliving anything that has not yet happened to him. I
do agree that his greatest fear is Wizards (later, no doubt, it
becomes invisible Dementors), but that's because of what has already
happened to him. 

The only bad things we know of that have happened to Dudley before the
Dementor attack are the "giant" Hagrid breaking down the door of the
hut and giving him a pig's tail and the Weasley Twins giving him a
candy that caused his tongue to grow about four feet long, causing him
to choke and his mother to pull on it and make his pain and fear even
worse. When the wizards arrive at 4 Privet Drive in GoF before the
toffee incident, he puts his hands on his bottom to protect it
(obviously remembering the pig's tail). When the Dementor attacks him,
he covers his mouth (in part because Harry is telling him to do so,
but in part, IMO, because he remembers what happened to his tongue
last time magic was used on him).

I'm quite sure that those incidents are the experiences Dudley relived
during the Dementor attack--the worst experiences of his life, which
is what both Lupin and Hagrid say happens when a Dementor is sucking
out a person's happiness. Harry, we know, relives his own worst
memory, his parents' murder, in all of his encounters with Dementors.
That memory is not his greatest fear; it has already happened. 

In contrast, a Boggart reflects a person's (or wizard's?) worst fear,
realistic or otherwise, whether that's the full moon (Lupin), a
Dementor (Harry), the death of a family member (Molly), or failing
marks (Hermione, at least pre-HBP). What Dudley's Boggart would be,
assuming he could see one, we don't know. What his worst experiences
are, we *do* know--and so should Harry if he thought about it. And
it's those experiences, not a fear that has not yet materialized, that
he would have relived when the Dementor was sucking out his happiness
and preparing to suck out his soul.

Note that Dudley isn't immediately grateful to Harry. In fact, he
blames Harry, thinking that his cousin cast some spell that caused him
to feel the cold and despair. Only on reflection, apparently, does he
realize that Harry saved his "life."

Carol, who thinks that Petunia's acknowledgement that Dementors were
real must have caused Dudley to realize that Harry was telling the truth