I have a question. Maybe it should be in the pet peeves thread, but I'll try here.

In the "Harry is abused by the Dursleys" trope, what was Petunia's plan for surviving? So, they get this orphan left on their doorstep in November. At first, they might think the wizards care about the kid and are afraid to harm him, but one day they starve the kid or beat the kid and no wizard comes to turn them into newts and they figure nobody cares about him, nobody will come, they can do whatever they want. So Harry gets abused. For real, not like canon. Either Petunia doesn't notice his accidental magic or she convinces herself it isn't real or it will pass or whatever, and they figure he can never harm them (though, even a muggle teenager who has access to your kitchen and has reason to want you dead is very dangerous).

Then, on Harry's 11th birthday, he gets his letter. At this point, Petunia knows for sure that exactly six years from that day, if Harry and she are still alive, he will be a reasonably powerful, reasonably well trained wizard who can do anything to her. If Harry was seriously abused, and especially if they keep abusing him once he knows he's a wizard, what is their plan? I can see only a few options:

1. They try to make peace with him (unlikely).

2. When he goes to sixth year, they move and hope he won't find them.

3. They have reason to believe he won't survive to his 17th birthday; perhaps Vernon bought another shotgun.

4. They are committing suicide. If Dudley is involved, a Darwin award.

So, how can this trope work?

 

Maybe that's why they went to such extreme lengths to ensure that Harry wouldn't go to Hogwarts?

 

Add:

5) The Dursley's are terminally stupid, so they're not even considering any sort of retribution.

6) Harry is so honorable (or such a pussy), that they don't need to worry about it.

 

Because Dumblesnore is mind-controlling them, to make them kill Harry so he dies after making Ginny pregnant and gives control of the Potter Vaults, mansion, holiday home (in France), and Wizengamot seats to the Weasley Patriach, who is held in a bond of Fealty to Lord Dumbledore.

Not that mind control means Harry won't cruciate them all into oblivion when he realizes all magic is grey.



I've seen it work when the Dursley family are either scared into submission by Vernon, or Petunia actually has mental health issues, or they planned on leaving the country.
But for the most part, the author's don't think on that - they just want Harry to have a worse childhood, either to make him more virtuous, or to give a 'valid' reason he turns into a sociopathic monster.

 

There, fixed it - and I do think that's the answer.

 

I'm not sure if the Dursleys connect magic with the idea of power. I think Vernon is fairly convinced it's all stuff like pulling rabbits from hats, and that the Potters' death was some sort of freak anomaly that'd never happen to them, because they're not freaks.

 

What is any abuser's plan for surviving? Even without magic the only hard part about killing someone you live with is getting away with it, and it's reasonable for Petunia to not know (or just not consider) that wizard on muggle violence may not be taken vary seriously by the law enforcement. The fact that he's a wizard just isn't particularly relevant; even if he were non-magical by the time he was a teenager the main thing stopping him from fighting back would be that abuse victims frequently never even consider the idea, not a lack of ability to do so.

 

Is there any canon behind the goblins being in charge of wills?

Just about every independant Harry fic has the will reading at Gringotts or the wills held by Gringotts which gets boring. It would be like the police being in charge of recording births, or air traffic controllers being in charge of taxes.

Why do people do this? I remember faintly in book six Dumbledore mentioning Sirius leaving stuff to Harry but not where the will was read or who was in charge.

 

Goblins control roughly 90% of the wizarding economy, and they also control vaults. There's a decent chance that the contents of a vault will be left in a will, such as monies to be given to person X. It's simply cutting out the middleman.

But no, I don't recall any basis for it in canon.

 

I was just about to ask the same thing.

First and foremost Goblins ≠ Gringotts, despite what fanon may think. Gringotts' is run by goblins, yes, but the idea that it's the centre of all things goblin is just not supported by canon IMO. We certainly know they live elsewhere in Britain, the family Voldemort killed near Nottingham during his first rise for example.

Second, Gringotts certainly doesn't control '90% of the wizarding economy'. They run the safety deposit boxes wizards use to keep their money in. '90% of the wizarding economy' is going to be shopkeepers like those we see in Diagon Alley, the big Broom Companies, the people who make and sell the patented potions and stuff like that.

There's also Harry's inheritance of 12 Grimmauld Place. Didn't Dumbledore worry that some spell on the house would cause it to be inherited magically or something, skipping Harry?

 

Chalk that up to me thinking that controlling the money = controlling the economy. Like it or not, Goblins control the money. Their weird sense of ownership that Glimmervoid mentioned was also a factor in my figure, I just assumed that they'd do something like take the contents of a vault if it was inactive for 10+ years.

That leads me to an interesting idea. Because Sirius was in Azkaban, the Goblins take everything that was in his vault and he truly is destitute outside of Grimmauld Place. It'd certainly kill the fanon of him having one trillion gold for everyone and their mother.

I believe he was worried that Bellatrix would inherit ownership, which is why he set up the defense with his shade or something like that.

 

That was Moody's. Against Snape.

 

No. This is yet another example of making Gringotts more important than it has any right to be. It's just a bank/safety deposit box vendor. It can no more stand up to the government than any muggle bank could, less since they don't seem to lend money just store it. As we see in Deathly Hallows, the Ministry can move in and take over whenever they want. To quote,

Second, Harry exlicitly inherited some gold from Sirius. To again quote,

You're misremembering. Here is the quote.

 

Different topic completely:

Can "bint" be used playfully between a boyfriend and girlfriend.

For example:

Or would using "bint" in that way be taken as an insult, much like "bitch" or "whore" is almost always an insult?

 

Almost anything can be used 'playfully', as you put it. It just depends on the context.

 

Wench would work, as well.

 

Depends on the girl. I've had a couple of girlfriends that didn't mind being called bitch, though they generally gave as good as they got.

 

Most of the dictionaries and American/British slang dictionaries just said it was "Girl," but I've come across it too often to know by context that's not exactly what it meant. I didn't know it had the connotation of slut or whore, though.