Why do dursleys keep harry

Hagrid may not be allowed to use magic, but seeing a Muggle try to square up to him is laughable. This scene between Uncle Vernon and Hagrid is one of the first glimpses the audience had into the magical universe, and one of the most memorable. This quote from Dudley Dursley is undoubtedly his best line in the franchise. This scene is one of the first instances in which Harry discovers his magical ability. She's currently studying for an MA in Gender, Society and Representation and has a special interest in diversity and representation on screen.

When she's not writing, Amii spends her time reading and staying up to date with the latest cinema. By Amii Johnson Published Sep 28, When september came he would be going off to secondary school and, for the first time in his life, he wouldn't be with Dudley.

This doesn't clearly tell me whether Stonewall High is a boarding school or not, but I don't see why it wouldn't be, given that Dudley is sent to one as well. Incidentally, they were never actually planning to send Harry to the St Brutus's Secure Centre for Incurably Criminal Boys: that was just a lie Uncle Vernon invented when Harry was already going to Hogwarts and Uncle Vernon wanted to keep this secret.

Here's another perspective about it. Petunia lost her sister and she believed that it would have not happened if her sister wasn't a witch. She envied her sister, still there was some sisterly affection. She feared the same fate for Harry and so the Dursleys didn't want Harry to study in Hogwarts. From reading through the books, my impression along with the obsession for normalcy was that magic is a source of power which they had no control over.

They witnessed the power of magic through Lily, while not understanding it. This leads to their fear, and frantic attempts to prevent Harry from learning it. The Dursleys have several motivations for not sending Harry to Hogwarts to learn magic.

As mentioned by Alex, the Dursleys "carefully constructed" their life. Image means everything to them, and they exert all their power to maintain it. Magic to muggles, by definition, is disorder and chaos, and threatens to change the life that they have manufactured.

And that perhaps, is what not just the Dursleys, but you, me, and everyone else fears in the world: change that we cannot control. Sending Harry to Hogwarts introduces this element and, having witnessed its effects on Lily, imbibes their lives with this uncontrollable force.

In Vernon's words, they would rather 'stomp it out' than tend and nurture it. The Dursleys have absolute control over Harry. To them, he is an object, a dark secret that must be stowed away and hidden. Harry currently only has one possible outlet to upset the Dursley's tyrannical hold on his life: Magic. If he learns how to use it, he upsets the balance of power in the Dursley household. Magic is the Dursley's greatest threat, and Harry's only hope.

It is the key to acquiring his freedom. They knew Harry would be coming back during the summer, Petunia would remember from when Lily was in Hogwarts.

They probably would prefer a non trained wizard than a trained wizard in their household. They also wanted nothing to do with abnormal things, and Harry going to Hogwarts made them more associated with magic. Ah you see I disagree with all that say that the dursleys absolutely hAted Harry. I doubt that, because take in the simple fact that it was NOT their responsibility to raise him. When they first received Harry on their doorstep they could have easily given him up for adoption or sent him to a home when he was slightly older.

I believe that the reason they kept him was because of Petunia. Vernon loved Petunia and so vice versa the back story of their love is mentioned by jk Rowling in pottermore I believe. Vernon obviously knew about magic and he loved Petunia enough that he wouldn't leave her after finding out about magic, so we can have the reason to believe that Vernon would agree to keep Harry just for Petunia. Now why would Petunia want to keep Harry? Now although Petunia was quite jealous of her sister, we can't just say that she hated her sister.

They grew up together for eleven years and the conflict didn't quite start until the acceptance letter from hogwarts to Lily. So she loved lily, and after finding out about her death she had to be heart broken because it was her sister! Her sister whom she grew up with for eleven years! So she had to take Harry in because he was a part of Lily. Now the same reason could go for the awful way they treated him.

It reminded petunia too much of Lily so she treated him terribly and so did Vernon. I almost get the feel that she wanted to make Harry feel the way she felt when she was a child by giving all the attention to Dudley. Now why did they want him to stay and not go to hogwarts?

I agree that it could be the desire for normalcy, but I do think there's more to it and here is my theory: They were protecting Harry from the wizarding world. I mean they had to have grown fond of him throughout the eleven years he lived with them as a non-wizard. No matter how much they hated him, even Dudley mentions it in later books. Also aunt petunia knew the wizarding world had cost her sisters life and it pained her, so she may have been trying to protect Harry from the same fate.

She didn't want a child, a child who was related to her, to suffer the awful fate his mother had. So she took him in, fed him, clothed him and gave him a place to stay. I do not believe for a second that the dursleys hated Harry with all their guys.

Petunia and Vernon were both scared of the wizarding world but they had to take Harry in because he was their nephew. I don't believe that a character can only be bad or not be good, especially in the Harry potter books. Each character has it's good and bad, and it may not always be written with clarity, however it is always hidden underneath their actions.

According to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child , Petunia main goal in taking in Harry was to try to make him into a "decent human being". You know, when we agreed to take you in, we hoped we could improve you — build you — make you a decent human being. We have real-world examples of this exact kind of thinking: Every single dictatorship on Earth.

They all have dissidents, and instead of simply letting them go, they first try propagandizing them into compliance, and then intimidating them, and then torturing them, and then destroying them outright. This is because dictatorships believe that they literally own their people.

They rarely state this explicitly, of course, and perhaps do not even recognize that the difference between Stalin's attitude towards the Russian people and a antebellum plantation owner's attitude towards his slaves was purely semantic.

But they claim the authority to determine every single detail of their subjects' lives, including where they work, where they live, what they wear, what reward they get for their labor, what they hear and see, and ultimately what they may say and what they may believe. This is ownership; show me something that a slave owner claims as his right towards his slaves, and somewhere under every dictatorship I can show you someone who is being treated according to that notion. With the Dursley family we see this on a smaller scale.

Vernon talks and acts as if Harry is his chattel, even when it does him absolutely no good to talk and act in this way. And like every dictator, he speaks as if what he has done for Harry was the expression of a wholly undeserved magnanimity.

He has the same attitude towards Dudley, only that in Dudley's case it is intended to be benign. To the best of his ability he has molded that unfortunate boy into his own Mini Me. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. It has been previously theorised that the Dursleys hated Harry because he was one of Voldemort's Horcruxes — thus the magic around him warped their minds.

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He had a perfectly correct car, and wanted to do completely ordinary things, and by the time he had taken her on a series of dull dates, during which he talked mainly about himself and his predictable ideas on the world. During one particular date when they were sitting in his car in front of a chip shop she tearfully confessed about her strange sister.

As she had expected, Vernon was quite shocked, though he comforted her and told her it was not her fault for having a "freak" for a sister and that he would not hold it against her. He finally proposed to her in his mother's very ordinary living room, it was all very emotional.

Due to Petunia's maternal connection to Harry Potter, he was sent to live with the Dursleys after his parents were murdered by Lord Voldemort. This would provide Harry with magical protection against Lord Voldemort and his followers when Harry was outside the powerful protective spells around Hogwarts Castle.

Due to his wizarding background, Harry was treated with fear and negligence by the Dursleys. He was originally kept oblivious to his wizarding heritage and told that his parents had died in a car accident. He believed this until Rubeus Hagrid revealed the truth to him on his eleventh birthday , over the Dursley's objections.

The Dursleys lived at 4 Privet Drive in Little Whinging , Surrey, [2] and often went out of their way to keep their neighbours oblivious to anything odd about their family, usually explaining away anything odd by telling people that Harry was a delinquent who went to a reformatory school far away.

Despite his mistreatment of Harry, Harry's cousin Dudley Dursley eventually came to regret his cruelty towards Harry, and the two reconciled later in life; this was mostly due to an incident in the summer before Harry's fifth year of schooling that involved him saving Dudley from a Dementor. Dursley is a town in Gloucestershire, England. Vernon was taken from the town of Vernon, Eure , France. It is also an English name of Norman origin meaning "place of alders ".

Petunia 's name is taken from the flower and the origin of the name is English. Dudley is also taken from the map, it is a large town in West Midlands, England.