Headcanon - Vernon Dursley vs. Voldemort
I have a headcanon that Vernon Dursley intimidated Harry more than Voldemort did, or could ever hope to. Let me explain:
Yes, Voldemort tried to kill Harry on multiple occasions, and even succeeded once. He tortured Harry a few occasions, and possessed him. Voldemort killed many of Harry’s friends and family. He was the most powerful Dark Lord of the age. Pretty fucking terrifying. Intimidating, right? However, despite this, Harry was always able to stand up to Voldemort, openly oppose his rule and views, call him out when he was wrong, taunt him to his face (straight up called him Tom), walk right into the Ministry of Magic while it was under Voldemort’s control and tell off Umbridge in the process. Harry has always been brave, proud, loud, and loyal to his cause above all else when facing Voldemort.
Here’s where we get a little outside point of view.
Vernon Dursley was absolutely horrible to Harry. He was the primary reason for Harry’s abuse, because he “would not have any of that nonsense in our house, Petunia, we agreed—”, and he was as normal and boring as a muggle could be. He was not jealous like Petunia was. He was not raised to think magicals as freaks like Dudley was. He was simply a horrible human being that saw something he didn’t like and tried to smother it.
Putting a child, a child, who could not possibly know any better, into a dirty cupboard away from sight? Their nephew? My guess is that it wasn’t Petunia’s idea, no matter how terrible she was herself. Starving that child, repeatedly, until he became malnourished and his growth stunted to keep him short and thin? J.K.R. also mentioned that she was going to add physical abuse, but kept it out as it would’ve been too graphic for the book’s theme. What kind of fucked up shit did they do to Harry that it had to be censored and edited out? It is a miracle this kid didn’t become an obscurial.
Harry’s reactions to Vernon give us a lot of headway on his thoughts about all this as well. When faced with an angry Vernon, Harry ducks his head and flees. He mutters under his breath, but rarely ever says the insults to Vernon’s face (though when he’s particularly angry, he gives us some real gems of sarcasm, my lovely son). Harry straight up flinches several times in the scenes we get with him and the Dursleys when Vernon yells at him. At the Dursleys’, Harry is not the perfect Gryffindor Golden Boy he is at Hogwarts. His inner Slytherin cunning tends to come out more often than not at the Dursleys. He lies and dodges and manipulates his way through his summers, and I have no doubt that it was even more frequent before Hogwarts, but with less efficient results.
But why should any of that matter, right? It’s Harry Potter! The Saviour! The Chosen One! The Boy Who Lived! Why should a couple stupid, angry muggles affect him when he’s faced so much worse?
But he was never any of that at the Dursleys, was he? He was just Boy, and Freak, and Ungrateful Brat, and A Waste of Space.
Well, for one, let’s go back to Voldemort. Voldemort did not have direct access to Harry for most of the series. Voldemort could not take away his freedom. Voldemort could not withhold or deny him food or water. Voldemort could not physically attack Harry within the safety of Hogwarts, and, even if he did, Harry wouldn’t be left to suffer in silence afterwards, as he would always go to Madame Pomfery. And, most importantly, as a Dark wizard whose entire goal was to eliminate/ostracize muggles from the magical world—Magic Is Might—why would he condemn Harry for his magic, the one thing that comes naturally to him, that acts as his saving grace, that keeps him afloat in difficult times, that Voldemort himself understands so closely? Harry could be tried for many sleights against Voldemort, but merely using magic, being himself, is not one of them.
Secondly, Harry grew up in an undeniably abusive household. He was with the Dursleys from the time he was one year old. Children are very impressionable, especially so young, so when this large, fat, loud, purple-faced man shoved Harry in his cupboard, denied him food, forced him to do housework, and (most likely) beat him for doing anything out of the ordinary, it formed a deep psychological connection in his brain: this human equals pain. As a primal instinct, the natural response to pain is fear. I have very little doubt that Harry Potter was afraid of Vernon Dursley on a very base, primal level, that only continued to worsen as he grew, even if he got better at hiding it.
But then Hogwarts came along. A large man, larger than his uncle, had stomped up to Vernon and basically wiped the verbal floor with him. Then he took Harry away from the Dursleys, away from his uncle, and into a magical place where, sure, he was expected to save the world, but he’d done it once before, hadn’t he? How hard could it be?
Unlike Harry’s first impression of Vernon, Harry’s first impression of Voldemort was that of a madman who went after a baby that he saw as a threat to his reign (and what kind of villian sees a baby as a threat) and somehow managed to kill himself while trying to kill said baby. Not very intimidating. Further on, Harry meets Voldemort for the first time. As a skivving, eternally weak parasite, needing to feed off others to survive, stuck on the back of his follower’s head. It’s more comical than scary, really. From then on out, I don’t truly think that Harry was ever really, deeply afraid of Voldemort. After seeing what Voldemort had been, no matter what he would become, Harry would always have that image of a weak, power-blinded man in the back of his mind.
At fourteen, Harry stood in a cemetery, the body of a friend at his feet, and faced off Voldemort when he knew he wasn’t strong enough to take him, when he knew that he was most likely going to die but dammit he was going to die fighting!
At fourteen, he lets a man with much less power, much less prestige, and much more human looking features that aren’t really scary at all, lock him in a room and shove meals at him through a catflap.
Do you see the problem here?
My bottom line, my point, is that if you were to take Harry and put him in a room with Vernon Dursley, he would immediately turn tail and get as far away from him as possible. If you put Harry in a room with Voldemort, he would stand his ground and fight and scream and duel until his last breath.
And if that doesn’t say something about how fucked up Vernon Dursley is, then I’ll eat my fucking hat.
titsay
turnnoffyourmind
germansingergirl
theartofmadeline
dailybridgerton
