Who wants to read about the Dursleys having a bitch fight while Harry's being all emo of their treatment of him?

 

I'd rather read a manipulative!Harry story where he gets them fighting each other, then giggles all the way to Platform 9 3/4.

As for Petunia, yeah, petty, bitter and vindictive are all fair adjectives. But to a lesser extent, conflicted, sad, angry and disappointed also fit.

She was a normal little girl, and wanted, like everyone else, to be told she was special. When that didn't happen, she sought refuge in being perfectly normal, shutting out anything special or magical or out of the ordinary, with a terrible vengence.

She's a walking warning against trying to fit in to the point where you lose yourself, really.

 

I feel bad for Petunia though. Think for a second, here she is with her sister. A sister that just so happens to not only be more attractive, smarter, and more liked by her parents but can do MAGIC. Seriously, the end of the stick she got was so short it might as well not exist.

It seems they were pretty tight when they were children, and then magic happens and Petunia blames that for taking away her sister. At first she was probably afraid of magic, but from the scenes in book 7 it seemed she thought that it was pretty amazing. Then along comes Snape, who can also do magic and drops a branch on her. Lily gets to go to a magic school far away, and do amazing things while poor normal Petunia is stuck at home.

Also, does anyone else kind of get the feeling that the Evans family was poor growing up? Seeing as how Snape was in a park that Petunia and Lilly were playing in and he was shown to be poor growing up I figure that if they were in the same neighborhood then the Evans might just be poor as well. This brings up the money issue. A magical education doesn't seem to be cheap (books, robes, etc.) and that's not even counting tuition (if there is any, this is never really covered). So I'm imaging the Evans family has to stretch that money just a little bit more to make up for sending Lilly to this great school that Petunia doesn't get to go to, and there are some things that Petunia cannot have because Lilly needs this for school or Lilly needs that for school.

This by no means excuses anything that Petunia has done. Just something to think about.

 

I find it hard to feel too bad for Petunia. I mean, the basic reasoning for her becoming so hostile to Harry, as explained by NMB and others, is insightful - I basically agree with it. My problem is with the magnitude of her foulness.

To treat your late sister's son with some coldness and projected loathing is one thing, but the level of mental abuse she and Vernon piled on him goes above and beyond all reason. IMO it suggests that there's something nasty in her core, and it goes quite a ways deeper than even Lily's manifestation of magic.

On another note, since the conversation briefly touched on Petunia fanfic, here's a Petunia one-shot that I kinda enjoyed. I'm not saying it's a masterpiece, but I think the portrayal of Petunia is a bit less one-dimensional than most.

 

I actually really enjoyed that.

It gave a canon-compliant, believable reason for Petunia to be the way she is. It did give her an interesting, albeit emotionally weak, character.

I also found it very interesting that it was Petunia who started the Harry-hate in the house. Usually fics that try to make Petunia more interesting, tend to make Vernon into this angry, stupid and heavily anti-magic person.