What would you think Lily and Petunia's parents are like? Like their personalities?
I've always thought they must have been conservative, old-fashioned parents. They had two daughters, so I assume they raised them with traditional values, both Lily and Petunia got married and had children at a very young age; in Lily's case, practically a teenager. So it makes sense that they were taught to see life through the lens of family and children. I imagine the father working and the mother as a housewife, without having big ambitions for either of them.
In Lily’s case, being a witch, they probably believed her life was already “sorted out” because of that, and in Petunia’s case, they probably thought that if she found a husband, everything would be fine. That kind of old-school mentality where not much was expected of women beyond finding a stable position in life, which is basically what both sisters sought by marrying men who were socially above them and could provide a comfortable, financially secure life.
I also believe they favored Lily quite a bit. I can understand Petunia being jealous at first for not having what Lily had, but if their parents had made an effort to treat both sisters equally —to not see Lily as something extraordinary or as the golden child— then maybe Petunia wouldn’t have developed such hatred toward her sister. I've always firmly believed their parents shaped their elder daughter’s personality by favoring the younger one, and that’s where a lot of it stems from.
Lily probably remembered them as loving and understanding parents, while Petunia resented them as demanding and inattentive. Their upbringing must have been radically different, and magic played a fundamental role in that. Overall, they strike me as people without many ambitions or real prospects for their daughters beyond fulfilling what society expected of them, honestly.
