So there’s this fun little theory that seems to have started on Reddit and moved into the popular theory sphere. It concerns Harry Potter’s status as a Horcrux, and how it might have affected his extended family the Dursleys, leading to their mistreatment of him throughout childhood.
And it doesn’t hold water.
Look, I can see where the impulse comes from. It’s really hard to stomach the way the Dursleys treat Harry. It would be nicer to believe that their abuse was the result of outside sources beyond their control. That said, the theory doesn’t stack up when we take a closer look.
Here is the idea: a bright fan noticed that Horcruxes can have a deleterious effect on people who are exposed to them. We see the effect manifested most strongly in two Weasley kids—Ron under the influence of Slytherin’s locket and Ginny under the spell of teenaged Tom Riddle’s diary. Both of them display behavior that’s not very nice. Ginny writes some scary things on a wall and opens the Chamber of Secrets without intending to, and Ron abandons his friends at a key point in their quest. Even Harry and Hermione get suspicious and irritable when they’re wearing the Locket. Horcruxes are bad news.
By the same token, it was hypothesized that perhaps the Dursleys weren’t such bad people. Perhaps they were simply acting under the influence of a Horcrux… who happened to be a living person. After all, Harry does contain a piece of Voldemort’s soul, trapped inside him the minute that the Dark Lord attempted to take his life as an infant. So clearly they’re not to blame—it’s all Voldemort’s doing.
But it’s just not true.
Let’s start with the simple and obvious; Harry is a living Horcrux and as such, we cannot automatically assume that the same rules that apply to inanimate Horcruxes apply to him. Nagini doesn’t seem to have ill effect on people (outside of terrifying the crap out of them due to being a gigantic snake), and she is also a living Horcrux. A live Horcrux is likely a very different way of containing part of someone’s soul. It’s not as though Harry is constantly possessed by that little bit of Voldemort he’s got floating around inside—which can be a side effect of some of the other Horcruxes we observe in the series. Safe to assume, it’s a new game entirely when you’ve got that piece of someone’s soul resting alongside another, entirely intact soul.
In addition, while Harry bears the label of Horcrux due to the fact that he carries a piece of Voldemort’s soul, he is not the same as the others; he was created accidentally, without the necessary procedures and incantations that go into making a deliberate, fully realized Horcrux. This is often forgotten when considering Harry’s status alongside the others—it means that the rules that we observe for Horcruxes in general probably don’t mean anything where the Chosen Kid is concerned. It’s important to note that Lily’s magical protection is not at play here, as that only functions to keep Harry from being killed by Voldemort up until the end of his fourth year at Hogwarts. The issue is that a Horcrux requires intent to be created, and very powerful magic has to be concentrated into its formation. The piece of Voldemort’s soul that resides in Harry essentially chipped off on the Killing Curse’s rebound because he’d done so much damage to his soul already by creating multiple Horcruxes prior to the attack—it was rare enough to create just one of them before Tom Riddle started.
But let’s dig deeper. In the final installment of the series, Ron asks Hermione about the nature of Horcruxes, about how they affect people, recalling what happened to his sister in her first year at Hogwarts. This is what Hermione had to say:
“While the magical container is still intact, the bit of soul inside it can flit in and out of someone if they get to close to the object. I don’t mean holding it for too long…I mean close emotionally. Ginny poured her heart out into that diary, she made herself vulnerable. You’re in trouble if you get too fond of or dependent on the Horcrux.”
Matters of the heart give Horcruxes a way in. Ginny needed a confidante, felt she could trust the Tom Riddle she encountered in the diary, and those emotions opened a doorway. It’s notable that Slytherin’s Locket affects Ron for the worse after he hears that his sister has been punished back at school for attempting to steal Gryffindor’s sword with other members of Dumbledore’s Army. He’s afraid for his family, for the people he cares about, and that’s when the Locket finds a way in. In order for Horcruxes to sway a person, you have to care deeply, to be vulnerable, as Hermione says. (It’s also possible that the Locket’s hold on people has nothing to do with it being a Horcrux and everything to do with the magical protections that Tom Riddle put on the Locket to prevent its destruction.)
So this is the reality: even if Harry is capable of affecting the mental and emotional states of others by virtue of being a sort-of Horcrux—and that’s already a theory on thin ice—the Dursleys would first have to be emotionally invested in him for that to even begin to apply. And they clearly aren’t. Their neglect is active disengagement: they treat Harry as a practical servant when he’s a boy and ignore him at the best of times. Even if (as many of us would prefer to believe) Petunia had ever managed to care for her nephew, her husband and son never did. Vernon was vehemently against Harry’s mere presence in his life. Dudley was raised to think that mistreating his cousin was humorous and acceptable. Actual affection and concern was never part of the package. They are never fond of Harry, or reliant on him. Even if we were to argue that the magical protection that Harry’s residency extends to their home is a form of reliance, that’s a practical sort that still doesn’t require them to emotionally engage with him. And engagement is key when letting a Horcrux take hold.
What’s more, Harry doesn’t have that effect on any of the other people in his life, other people he is around for years. If anything, Harry inspires the opposite in people—he makes them want to do good and more and better. It’s part of what makes him an excellent leader.
So that’s the long and short of it. Living Horcruxes are liable to be completely different from non-living ones, and Harry isn’t even a gold standard Horcrux to begin with. But the other factor here is simple, if it applies at all: the Dursleys never cared enough about Harry for him to be affecting in any meaningful way. Their cruelty is not handily explained away because they were exposed to a fragment of Voldemort’s soul while Harry was living under their roof.
It’s still hard to stomach. But it’s unfortunately true.
So I hope that people stop trying to pass off the Dursleys’ behavior as anything less than abuse. It’s not cool. As hard as it might be to accept, they were terrible guardians to a child left in their care. They don’t get an an excuse to hide behind.
Emmet Asher-Perrin thinks it’s super relevant that Harry is not a “normal” Horcrux, and it needs to get talked about more often. You can bug her on Twitter and Tumblr, and read more of her work here and elsewhere.
You know, sometimes it’s hard to accept that people are just terrible. There’s more than enough evidence that the Dursley’s were terrible BEFORE Harry came to live with them. Petunia hated Lily because she was jealous, and she nursed it and grew that hatred over the years.
What’s more, Harry doesn’t have that effect on any of the other people in his life, other people he is around for years.
My first thought when I read this.
You know, I always get a little angry when people try to excuse other people’s bad behaviour, even in fictional places, stories. I have had a taste myself of what it’s like to be neglected by parents and, you know, there isn’t any excuse, even though I try to make up millions for my parents, it doesn’t really make it ok. It’s horrible. People shouldn’t forget that. .. rant over
Besides which, Voldemort has taken some of Harry inside himself when he came back. It was why Harry was able to come back after being “killed” as well as why Voldemort was able to kill him after book 4.
So your argument seems to be, generally, “It’s not true because we don’t know if it’s true and I don’t buy it.”
“We don’t know if living horcruxes follow the same rules” … but we don’t know that they don’t, do we?
“We don’t know if accidental horcruxes follow the same rules” … but, again, we don’t know that they don’t.
“They have to be emotionally invested, and yet they treated him as a servant”… yes, but there were probably straight years as a baby we didn’t see, and you’d have to be completely irreedemable not to be emotionally invested in a baby (at least as much as a locket that isn’t even directly connected to the people it’s affecting, it’s affecting them while they’re emotionally invested in something ELSE).
It’s just as easy to assume that the horcrux’s influence affected them early on and caused the pattern of behavior that continued through his life, or that they shut themselves off from Harry BECAUSE they subconsciously realized they were being affected the more they cared as a child.
As for his friends… well, they tend to go off the rails when emotional involvement gets there too. Maybe the other redeeming factors (Harry’s own soul fighting for dominance etc) come into play there, but they don’t disprove the theory as a whole.
Nor do they prove it, mind you. I don’t particularly hold with the theory. It’s something mildly interesting to think about when you have a few minutes that you have nothing better to do. I have no problem with somebody not believing it, for whatever reasons. But I just have a pet peeve of somebody claiming to disprove something when their reasoning’s just as specious and speculative.
Although…
We don’t know that Draco Malfoy wasn’t always a sweet loving boy until he ran into Harry Potter in the costume shop. Perhaps he had a schoolboy crush on his new classmate, and this engagement opened him up to the influences of the Horcrux.
Or maybe he was just a putz the whole time…
There’s really plenty of evidence of their horribleness without having to go wandering off into thaumaturgical speculation. We see a bit of Petunia as a child through Snape’s memories and she’s pretty nasty. Those memories might be a bit colored, since we now know that the “horrible boy” was Snape and not James, but it has been strongly implied that memories in the pensieve aren’t subject to that sort of twisting (other sorts, yes, like Slughorn, but that took a conscious effort).
On the Dursley front, we need only look at Vernon’s sister Marge to get some idea of the sort of person the upbringing he had creates. There seems to be a sense that there is this nasty streak in the British middle class. Vernon is very much on a spectrum not that far from Hyacinth Bucket. I’m sure Vernon is a solid Thatcherite Tory, but I bet he’s been at least tempted by UKIP.
I have to agree with 5. Peter D. There is no compelling evidence that Harry the Horcrux did not affect the Dursleys. Especially when we see how the locket affects Ron. Notice that Ron had to be wearing/holding the locket for a while for it to affect him. The Dursleys are the only ones holding the baby Harry for an extended period of time. The adult Harry is not actually being held by his friends and no one is holding Nagini either.
Not to mention, we know that the Dursleys are horrible people BEFORE they even encounter Harry… (Chapter 1 of the first book, and various ‘behind the scenes’ info from JK Rowling on Pottermore).
@peter D – Rowling has stated outright in interviews that Harry is not a “true” Horcrux because he was not created the same way as the others. The idea that a true Horcrux and an untrue Horcrux would have the same properties and affects on their surroundings seems a much larger leap in logic when we view how other people in Harry’s life react to him. So I wouldn’t view both of these theories as “equally specious and speculative” at all.
@Dr. Thanatos – Rowling has insisted that Draco is basically a bad person, though. In fact, she’s gone to pretty great lengths to assure people of that, since she was disturbed at how many young women wanted to “rescue” the poor baby. ;-)
@adjbaker – I find it really hard to believe that Vernon ever held baby Harry if he could help it. The Dursleys run a pretty old-fashioned house hold in the first place, so I suspect that Vernon tried to keep away from baby-duty as much as possible, moreso where Harry was concerned. And Dudley certainly didn’t hold him, what with them being near to the same age. Plus, if that’s the theory, then it would stand to reason that his affect on them would wear off when they were no longer holding him. And it doesn’t.
@@@@@ Peter D and adjbaker.
I think that ignores what Emily said about how differently Harry acts from the other Horcruxes. The others seem to have a consciousness of their own derived from Voldemort; they deliberately take control of Ginny and Ron. Of course, we don’t know exactly how Horcruxes are created, but their does seem to be some complex spell work involved, rather than simply transferring a piece of your soul to another object. Otherwise, why would they be so difficult to create?
On the other hand, their is plenty of evidence that the Durselys were always like this. We see how Petunia developed her intense dislike of anything Magic related as a child, and we see that attitude displayed by both Durselys in the first book, before Harry came to live with them. Furthermore, if Harry was causing the Durselys to behave abusively, then why did Dudely’s turn good at the end? Isn’t it easier just to accept that they were bad people who had the potential to change, than good people turned evil by Harry’s presence? Saying otherwise really just ignores everything we know about their backstory. The same is true about Draco Malfoy (assuming you were serious about that).
@Emily 10 I do not disagree. Hence the second part of my post. “Maybe he was a good boy who was twisted by outside forces. Or maybe he’s just a little nazi twerp…”
@@@@@EmmetAP – We learn from Ginny’s experience with the diary Horcrux, that a link is formed so that the diary was able to influence her even after she tried to flush it. It got her to come back and get it. Even after Ron got rid of the locket it took him a little while to recover from the influence. The Dursleys had 10 years to be influenced by the Harry Horcrux. I am sure even Vernon picked up a baby occasionally and brothers of the same age are playing with each other constantly. It took 6 years of Harry being away at school before they recovered enough to have some compassion for Harry at the end.
@@@@@dadler – There is plenty of evidence that the Dursley’s had a strong hatred of anything magical, but there is no evidence that they were child-abusers. Don’t you think it is strange that Harry’s experience with the Dursley’s mirror Tom Riddle’s childhood experience?
The bottom line is that all the behaviors of the Dursley’s is consistent with Harry the Horcrux having some negative influence on them. (Bringing out the worst of their feelings) Even the small feeling of shame/compassion that they finally showed at the end after being away from the influence of Harry for most of the past 6 years.
I feel like there’s this tendency in the world for people to ignore evil acts and say that people aren’t really bad; I’m thinking this mainly in regards to fiction. I also notice that in fiction sometimes people don’t accept that people are really good, either, saying it’s “unrealistic.” So there’s this tendency to bring good people down, and bad people up (again speaking just of fictional characters). I feel that this is a very problematic view to have.
@@@@@ EmmetAP – The whole “Draco” thing is one of the examples of JKR appearing not to understand the characters she’s writing, though. I remember once seeing a rationale of hers as to why “Draco’s not a tragic figure who needs rescuing, he’s a bad person” and it read to me like a textbook case of “tragic figure who needs rescuing”. She somehow manages to get Harry thinking Snape is a brave man and worthy namesake for his son despite the fact that Snape in the books is an unmitigated ****hole to him for the better part of seven years. Her grandfatherly Dumbledore has a disturbing attitude to child safety, particularly when you realise he’s a teacher (Dickensian stereotypes of teachers aside), to say nothing of his more debatable actions with regard to Harry. She’s gone on record saying Harry wasn’t abused despite clearly showing him being abused in the books (I don’t care if the Dursleys didn’t actually hit him with belts like they do in some fanfic, a household where you live in a cupboard and have to duck frying pans is an abusive household).
I agree however with your main point that it’s not the Horcrux, it’s the Dursleys. Because the Dursleys are just toned-down Roald Dahl villains, and they never have a good excuse. Plus I honestly don’t think she planned that far ahead, and if she did my opinion of her writing just went down a notch because if she’d planned a treasure hunt from the beginning then she had plenty of time to work out how to do it better than DH. You don’t get all the enemy-defeating items in the last dungeon, you get one in each dungeon then have to use a selection of them in the last dungeon. What do you mean this isn’t Zelda?
@13: In those other examples though, the affected individuals never really tried to do harm to the Horcrux because of its influence. They tried to destroy the locket because it was their mission, their reason and good nature told them it was something they had to do, when the locket would’ve tried its best to prevent that. Ginny threw the book away in the toilet because of her good nature coming through and realizing it was something bad…and as you point out, the diary compelled her to come back for it even then.
So do you think the Dursleys had a good nature which told them abusing a child was ok? It doesn’t jive. And then Harry the Horcrux doesn’t influence them to come back and care for him. His affect on the Dursleys would in fact have to be the complete opposite of any other Horcrux we see. The diary had the affect on Ginny of getting her to open the Chamber and set the Basilisk on Muggle-borns, because that was its specific intended function as described by Diary Riddle. The locket put people in a bad mood, but directed towards others, not towards the locket. If anything, the affect of Horcrux Harry should make the Dursleys abuse their own, Muggle-born son. Sorry, this theory just does not make one ounce of sense.
Also, again, as others have pointed out, read CHAPTER ONE of the FIRST BOOK before Harry is living with them to get an idea of what the Dursleys are like.
@@@@@adjbaker
How does Harry’s childhood mirror Tom Riddle’s? Tom grew up in an orphanage were he bullied kids and stole valuable items. Harry lived with his relatives who bullied him, and made him sleep in the cupboard. Besides, even if Voldemort’s soul was influencing them, and Harry’s childhood did parallel Tom’s, why would it try recreating a part of its life that it absolutely hated?
@13 but there is no evidence that they were child-abusers
Yes there is. Look at Dudley
@@@@@crzydroid – The Horcruxes were a piece of Tom Riddle’s soul and had all the complex motivations of a person. If the piece that was in Harry could influence the Dursley’s, it seems to me it would influence them exactly how they behaved. It would encourage Dudley to be a bully and encourage the parents to mistreat Harry. Remember that above all the Horcruxes will hate Harry.
Your view that people are only “good” or “bad” seems to be overly simplified and not realistic. If Dudley is only “bad”, why does he show some compassion for Harry at the end? People are much more complex than that and are influenced by multiple factors. The Dursley may have been influenced/encourage to “bad’ by the “evil soul” that was living in Harry. Lily influenced Snape to choose “good”, just as Harry influenced many students to choose “good”.
@@@@@dadler – Voldemort’s soul hates Harry. Why would he want to make Harry’s life miserable? Why would he encourage Dudley to be a bully? Do I really have to answer that?
@19: I’m not sure what comment of mine you’re referring to. I didn’t say that people were only extreme good or extreme bad. I said I find it difficult to believe the Dursleys were acting out of a good impulse to reject Harry upon realizing something was up, when that means abusing a child. If you are referring to my earlier commented, it’s also not what I said, just the opposite. I said people have a tendency, especially in fiction, to make people NOT good and NOT bad, and therefore diminishing the complexity you speak of by only reducing people to a middle ground, especially in fiction where characters are supposed to be archetypes or role models.
So anyway, is Horcrux Harry also influencing Harry to beat himself up and abuse himself out of hatred of Harry then? I’m still not seeing it. The behavior is still incongruous with that of the other Horcruces, and as others have pointed out, some of that behavior is because those were created with other specific protective spells and purposes. Harry was a complete accident. Again, there is plenty of textual evidence that the Dursleys were NOT NICE people. If you want to say that the Horcrux in Harry made them a tiny bit extra ornery, I might be willing to entertain it, but it is not the REASON they abuse him. Also notice that it is not making them angry towards others, just Harry. They still manage to put on a nice face for everyone else.
Sorry, starting a new comment because the new Tor text boxes are just way too slow when leaving a big comment, so it’s easier to just start a new one then waiting for the text to show up.
The texts are pretty clear that the Dursleys mistreat Harry out of a strong desire to appear “normal,” something that was part of them before ever taking Harry home.
And again, I explain Dudley because of the textual evidence. He changes because he changes, because he realizes (mainly because of the Dementor attack) that he has been an asshole, and doesn’t like that. It’s not because Horcrux Harry is losing an affect on him, especially since Dudley starts being nice and shook his hand when Harry was still a Horcrux.
my reaction to this theory was that a) it ignores that the dursleys are the sort of horrible relatives one often finds in children’s fiction: the aunts in “james and the giant peach” or uncle olaf in lemony snicket’s books.; b) it assumes rowling had thought of horcruxes when she wrote book 1; c) why doesn’t harry as horcrux turn harry into an asshole? he doesn’t display any more dickishness than the average teenager and really, it’s only book 5 that he veers into full-on prick mode. not to mention the dursley’s treatment of harry actually improves, ever so slightly, as time goes on. they become less caricatures and more characters. hell, dudley even thanks harry in the end.
Horcrux Harry sounds like a small-time grifter in a Damon Runyon story…”Did you hear? Horcrux Harry’s in town and he’s looking for a little action…”
@@@@@crzydroid: I think we are in total agreement. People are complex and can be good or bad. When they are good they are good and when they are bad they are bad. The behavior of the Dursley’s is consistent with “possibly” being influenced by “evil”. People can change based on influences and experiences. Just like Ron changed to being angry and unreasonable when he was influenced by the locket, he then changed again when he left and realized he made a mistake. Dudley changed because of his experience with Dementor and the realization he may never see Harry again. It is also possible that Dudley was the way he was because of bad parenting and “possibly” influenced by “whispering evil thoughts” for 10 years. Yes, the text says that the Dursleys mistreat Harry out of strong desire to appear “normal”, but I don’t think anyone would argue that it is rational to believe that locking Harry underneath the stairs is “normal” or would make then appear “normal”. Obviously, the Dursley’s are not thinking rationally and “may” be under the influence…just as the other people were around the other horcruxes.
@25: I don’t think anyone was trying to say they were behaving rationally. Just like people can be good or bad, people can also be irrational. The irrationality doesn’t have to come from a Horcrux. Having someone sleep under the stairs is irrelevant to them appearing normal, because no one knows about it. They do it because they are shunning the magical world in favor of “normalcy.” And anyone trying so hard to be normal has got to be a little not normal. It’s more of Vernon’s hatred of things not normal more than anything else, and Petunia clinging to him out of a desire to be normal in running away from her rejection of the wizarding world.
I always thought the Dursleys’ behavior had a pretty simple reason behind it. They were cartoonishly terrible because the early books in the series, particularly the first, struck me as being heavily influenced by Roald Dahl. The Dursleys are like the Twits, or the Wormwoods. I never thought any more deeply about it than that, because it didn’t feel as if we were really meant to.
We don’t know the full content of Dumbledore’s letter. It is possible, knowing that Harry is a Horcrux, part of his warning was about this effect of Horcruxes, giving the Durselys extra reason to fear Harry. Perhaps not in those words, but a warning that close contact might make them feel out of sort.
Then it turned out that Harry didn’t have the same effect as a purpose created non-living Horcrux, but the damage to the relationship was done.
This would be in addition to the threat of vulnerability to Voldemort if they didn’t take Harry in, which also would make them resent him more, as well as their fear of his magical nature, and Petunia’s resentment of magic as the thing that took her sister away, first to boarding school and then killing her.
Dumbledore might be good with magic, but he was rather bad with dealing with people.
@adjbaker
I wasn’t saying it wouldn’t hate him. However, I still don’t see any parallels between Harry and Tom during their childhoods, other than they were unhappy and raised with muggles. In every other aspect their pre-Hogwarts years were completely different.
Also, if this piece of Voldemort has an active will like the other Hocruxes, why didn’t it affect Harry? While Harry does gain a link with Voldemort, and several of his abilities, his personality is never affected. Did that piece of the Dark Lord’s soul drive the Durselys to child abuse but just decide to leave vulnerable baby Harry alone? Why give him powers at all if it is actively malignant towards him?
@28: Why are we bending over backwards trying to make this idea work? Dumbledore–DUMBLEDORE!, who played things so freaking close to the chest that he didn’t tell Harry super important things that were very relevant to him until after the fact–told the freaking Dursleys, of ALL PEOPLE, that Harry was a Horcrux.
We also don’t know that Dumby’s letter didn’t talk about unicorns either. Maybe he threatened Petunia with her lifelong fear of unicorns to get her to comply. He actually sent Rickon Stark on a secret mission to get unicorns to keep Petunia in line. You can’t prove I’m wrong.
There is another flaw in this theory – forgive me if I’m repeating someone else – but another issue with this theory is that only two of the Horcruxes have been shown to have the ability to posses and alter people’s behaviour – the Diary and the Locket. The diary was the first horcrux created (so had half of Voldermort’s soul in it) and the Locket (probably) was the third*, so it had 1/8 of Voldermort’s soul. In contrast Harry had something like a 1/64 of Voldermort’s soul. It is possible that once you have created a set number of horcruxes, they no longer have the power to posess or influence anyone but the most emotionally fragile. While the Dursleys were by my reading emotionally brittle but rarely emotionally fragile, nor as Emily points out, were they emotionally connected to Harry in any real sense.
This horcrux theory really needs to die a slow, painful death. It is bad enough that people are trying to present Draco Malfoy as a totally misunderstood character but the Dursleys?… Even Dudley barely begins to redeem himself by the end of the books.
*I’m going by the assumption that Voldermort would want to turn the symbol of his House into a horcrux first instead of the symbol of Hufflepuff.
@teg
Just to add to that, Harry would have had at most only 1/128th of Voldemort’s soul at best, seeing as he was his seventh horcrux (1/2 to the seventh is 1/128). It may have been even less, given that the horcrux was just a piece of his fragmented soul that flew off and stuck to Harry.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione were effected by the Horcrux when they were wearing it. Once they took it off, they stopped being effected by it. Being in contact with it seemed to give it influence. Once that contact was gone, the influence faded.
Clearly, the Durselys were not hugging or touching Harry enough to have that kind of effect.
thank you for writing this! I’ve been trying to explain to my friend why this theory makes zero sense but I’m not the best debater.
The school was terrible. They knew Harry was being abused. The only magic that could possibly protect Harry was his own.The Dursleys didn’t love Harry so they didn’t protect him. He would have been safer at Hogwarts. They even sent Harry back to the Dursleys during the summer. Voldemort had to know where he was. Dumbledore was responsible for Harry being abused. He treated Harry like crap when he was at Hogwarts. They were lucky Harry didn’t join up with Voldemort. Sure Voldemort killed Harry’s parents but he did more to keep Harry alive than anyone else. He even offered to made Harry his partner. Voldemort loved Harry more than anyone else.
When I read the headline for the article, I thought “well, duh.” But you gave a brilliant explanation of why. Nicely done!
@13: Harry’s time with the Dursleys didn’t mirror the orphanage at all (as far as we know). Mrs Cole was probably a busy woman, so she couldn’t give any of the children the attention, that she needed. But there’s nothing that suggests, that she’s as horrible as the Dursleys.
If anyone was influenced by a Horcrux, I would rather look at Kreacher than at the Dursleys.
Codswallop in my opinion. This is all explained in the books if you read close enough. Harry’s aunt lost her older sister, someone she loved and looked up to first to Hogwarts, where she tried but couldn’t go and then to death by a wizards hand. Imagine yourself in her position. She lost somebody and was crushed by it, not once but twice. She tries to follow her sister but basically doesn’t make the cut. Thats three hits to the psyche and she responds by hating the whole idea of it. Who can blame her? She is left scared by the whole thing and closes up but then along comes Harry who reminds her of her sister and the whole ordeal but has to take him in or as I’m sure Dumbledore explained to her in the letter her current family may just suffer the same fate as her sister. So she scapegoats Harry the only punching bag close enough (her spoiling her son so badly is a direct affect of her being afraid to stand up to him as he might go away, just like her sister). Its not that their bad people its just that bad things happen to good people sometimes and not everyone recovers form it in a positive way.
The Dursleys were horrible, horrible EVIL people. If this had been reality they would have been charged with child abuse. Petunia, excuse my french, was a straight up B word. It takes a truly despicable person to harbor hatred of that scale (with no good reason) towards one’s own sibling and then to turn that hatred onto an innocent child. Petunia and Vernon should have been behind bars for child abuse and neglect. Their equally horrible son Dudley was simply a byproduct of their egregious behavior. It really annoyed me that they were never brought to justice nor did they ever reap any kind of karma as a result of their actions.
What a silly theory.
The one good thing you can say about Petunia is she stops short of sending her nephew out to die but she takes out her resentment against the Wizarding world out on him in every possible way and Vernon and Dudley follow her lead.
I disagree i do not believe Harry was mistreated and abused by the Dursleys as a result from being a horcrux. Professor Mcgonagall warned P Dumbledore before Harry was even brought to private drive to live with his relatives. in both the book and film she stated she saw that awful boy kicking his mother up and down the streets and screaming for sweets clearly she sensed the Dursleys would not treat him right. before Sirius was sent to Azkaban after being set up by Peter Pettigrew for killing twelve muggles he could of became Harry’s legal guardian and took custody of him since he was his godfather. Harry’s abuse probably started the minute he arrived feeling like a burden and also having to arrange two funerals they probably wasn’t feeling charitable. Petunia probably placed her orphan nephew under the stairs in a handy down crib she took care of him but gave him rags to wear and a unwashed bottle. The Dursleys secluded Harry in family gatherings and outings as well as holidays. They spoiled dudley on Christmases and other holidays and gave Harry nothing including on his Birthday for ten years and have Mrs. Figg the batty old cat lady babysit him since his arrival. It’s unclear while Dumbledore allowed the mistreatment and abuse to go on so long even Vernon’s sister was abusive towards him in the book it mentions when he was a child she sicked her dog on him and he got stuck up in a tree all three Dursleys were laughing including Aunt marge and wouldn’t call him off until midnight. another example mentioned in the book was one Christmas in their childhood she got Dudley a bunch of presents and Harry nothing which he wasn’t even allowed to question. they used him to perform housework and fetch their mail he was forbidden to ask about his parents only when he got his Hogwart’s acceptance letter did they panic. im just merely guessing about his earlier childhood as a infant until he went to Hogwarts I don’t think he was a horcrux because he was around others and they were not negatively effected.
Ok I know I’m late to the thread BUT I just rewatched all the films the last couple days and Professor Mcgonagal said to dumbledore as they were taking Baby Harry to his aunt and uncle “are you sure you want to do this? I’ve watched them for a couple off days and they are horrible awful people” and that was BEFORE they got Harry. So it seems they have always been crappy since before they had him in their home