I Think @wisteria-lodge Is Right. Hogwarts And The Ministry Probably Have A Standardized Procedure For

I think @wisteria-lodge is right. Hogwarts and the Ministry probably have a standardized procedure for this. It would just be weird for the Ministry to hand out a rare magical item to a random thirteen-year-old, if there wasn't already a precedent for this. And yes, at this point in the narrative, Hermione is just a random thirteen-year-old, at least for the Ministry. Yes, smart and studious, but still just a random thirteen-year-old. And a muggle-born at that. With other students, they might have given out time-turners because they are attached to important names or families. But Hermione is a complete newbie without anyone who could vouch for her except her head of house.

Hogwarts/the Ministry handing out time-turners under certain circumstances, would explain both: Why Hermione got one in the first place and how other students achieved their unrealistically high O.W.L. counts.

Hermione got a time-turner, because McGonagall knew how to acquire one for her. McGonagall knew that the Ministry had time-turners in stock and she also knew how to request one (and she was confident enough to do so). In my opinion, it would be really odd for a teacher to have that knowledge, unless there is precedent.

It's a little different with Dumbledore, of course. He definitively knows about shit like this. However, unless this is a common procedure, he had no reason to get one for Hermione. He's not a seer, after all. I don't think he knew that the solution to the evil shenanigans of that book was to staff Hermione with a time-turner. It is more likely that he seized the opportunity when it presented itself.

It would also explain how characters like Bill and Percy (and probably Barty Jr.) were able to achieve the amount O.W.L. they did. And if they actually got time-turners, that would set a precedent for Hermione getting one too.

The reasons why we don't know anything about other students with time-turners are quite simple.

The first reason is demonstrated by Hermione: She was required to keep the time-turner a secret in order to get one. Students who are not trustworthy enough would probably not get one.

The second reason is the perspective. We see the story from Harry's point of view. He isn't interested in taking any more courses than he already has. While he is a good student, he isn't really interested in going above and beyond academically. Additionally, people like Percy and Bill have simply no reason to talk to him about this.

All other explanations would require extra steps for this whole thing to work.

It would be pretty weird, if this was a one-time thing for a muggle-born third year. Especially, because this would require the Ministry to play along as well. (And why would they?)

If Dumbledore had foreseen that Hermione would need a time-turner at the end of the year, it would have massive implications on the other books. (As it is, Dumbledore is smart and great at playing 4D chess with both his enemies and his allies, but foresight is out of his wheelhouse. Could he see the future, it would make some of his already pretty iffy decisions even worse. Especially when you look at his treatment of both, Harry and Riddle.)

Could people take O.W.L. without taking the corresponding courses first? Maybe. You can apparently take your GCSE privately, and O.W.L. are just the wizarding version of this. Still, we don't see anyone doing this. Had this been an option, Hermione probably would have done this with muggle studies, but she didn't.

Of course, the real answer to this is: Rowling's writing is simply not that deep. She wanted to write a book with time travel, so she wrote a book with time travel, consequences be damned.

(By the way: If we really want to poke holes in this, a good follow-up question would be "If Hermione got a time-turner at thirteen so she could get more courses than she could handle, who got one next? Are there still time-turners floating around, because some Hogwarts student in 1995 was just a tiny bit megalomaniac?")

Lowkey feel like Percy Weasley had a time turner during his school years.

Is it possible to do 12 classes basically in a year when they all seem to be year round?

One of my favorite pieces I've done! A little hummingbird dragon :)

Harry Potter should have been a quidditch player for a few years and then switch to teaching is a hill I will die on.

Like let him enjoy his youth and not fighting for his life for once. Let him work in a place that he feels safe in and was his first home.

‘Tis Autumn

This is a great analysis!

I would like to add that the first two or three books really are children of their time. They belong to a very specific kind of children's literature that was still popular when they got published. In this type of literature, violence and abuse get exaggerated. The goal is to make them absurd and hilarious instead of serious and disturbing.

So the violence the Dursleys commit against Harry is basically supposed to cross the line twice. The Dursleys cross the line the first time, because they abuse him. But then their methods are so exaggerated, that the whole thing loops back around and crosses the line again. The scene with the frying pan and the cat flap aren't supposed to be taken literally. They are on the books to take off the edge of abuse.

I think a big factor in this, that the early books were written in the 1990s, when corporal punishment of children by their parents/guardians was legal and normalized. No, FUCK THAT, it's still legal and normalized in England to this day. And it is also legal in way to many other countries, too. (My country started to prohibit it in the 1980s, but they had to rework the law to include all forms of corporal punishment. And then they had to rework it again, to drive home the point that No, it's not legal for you to hit your kids. No, not even if you only hit them a little bit. What part of No do you not understand?!)

So, a lot of readers grew up in an environment, where they themselves were hit by their caregivers and where this form of punishment was considered to be normal. Including Rowling herself. So she needed a way to show that the abuse Harry suffered, exceeded the abuse that was considered normal and socially acceptable, back then. That's where stuff like the frying pan and the barred window come in. It shows that the abuse exceeds the societal limits, without scaring the target audience and without being "too close to home".

I think that's the mistake some fanfic writers do, when they try to portray the abuse Harry suffered as realistic. If one wanted to portray this in a more realistic manner, the abuse would need to be toned down, not dialed up even more. (Because the abuse is already horrible in an absurd kind of way. Making it even worse doesn't make it more realistic. Often, it makes it even more absurd instead.)

That said, I'm personally not very happy about how the books handled abuse. The absurd punishments the Dursleys dish out in the first books may fit the genre, but they really clash with the more serious, less whimsical tone of the later books.

What irks me more, is the parentification (if you can call it that, in Harry's case, because they didn't treat him like an additional parent, but more like a servant), so him being forced to cook and clean for them.* Because that shit isn't dealt up to eleven, but portrayed pretty realistic instead. I have the feeling that this is caused by Rowling not really understanding non-physical forms of abuse. Because, let's face it, the Weasleys were parentifying their kids, too, but it isn't portrayed as bad in their case.

(* I do agree that this is a rather recent development, especially the cooking. You just can't expect a young child to cook meals, without them burning the food, burning themselves and/or burning the house down. The daughter of a colleague of mine almost managed to do the latter with a couple of ready-made hotdogs and a microwave. And she was eight at the time.)

how bad do you think Harry's abuse was? like, okay we all know he was neglected his entire childhood. Do you think he really didn't know his name until he went to school? That he was forced to help around the house the moment he could walk? He prob also didn't know his birthday at some point :(( I love him so much, i want to throttle the dursleys

I mean, just from his behavior I feel like it was pretty bad. I talked about it a bit before and he's very aware he is being mistreated. Harry literally makes a joke about Vernon beating him:

“You don’t seem to need many qualifications to liaise with Muggles. . . . All they want is an O.W.L. in Muggle Studies. . . . ‘Much more important is your enthusiasm, patience, and a good sense of fun!’ ” “You’d need more than a good sense of fun to liaise with my uncle,” said Harry darkly. “Good sense of when to duck, more like . . .”

(OOTP, 657)

As for the abuse itself:

Dudley and his friends beat him often. As mentioned repeatedly.

He slept in a cupboard under the stairs until the Dursleys thought someone else might notice. Only when they got the Hogwarts letter that mentioned the cupboard did they move Harry to Dudley's second bedroom. (The title of the room itself and where Harry was sleeping show how much of an afterthought he was).

The house had no pictures of him, no belongings, no sign Harry lived there, he only got Dudley's cast-offs.

So, yeah, it's definitely neglectful to an insane degree.

As for the more fanon portrayals of the Dursleys' abuse.

They did starve him as a form of punishment:

Uncle Vernon waited until Piers was safely out of the house before starting on Harry. He was so angry he could hardly speak. He managed to say, “Go — cupboard — stay — no meals,” before he collapsed into a chair, and Aunt Petunia had to run and get him a large brandy.

(PS, 23)

And Harry didn't get much food at the Dursleys in general:

This was their encounter with the fact that a full stomach meant good spirits; an empty one, bickering and gloom. Harry was least surprised by this, because he had suffered periods of near starvation at the Dursleys.

(DH, 250)

But he did get to eat with them at the table when he wasn't being punished, seen with Aunt Marge, and when the Dursleys didn't have guests:

Harry, who could see a huge Dudley tantrum coming on, began wolfing down his bacon as fast as possible in case Dudley turned the table over.

(PS, 19)

That being said, Harry seems to be punished at the Dursleys pretty often. (Although, Harry considers sitting with them at the table punishment enough)

So the fanon portrayal of getting locked in the cupboard/his room with no food for who knows how long (or just, not enough food, like in CoS when he shared a canned meal with Hedwig) is actually canon.

He gets physically abused by Dudley, but also by Vernon and Petunia. We saw Petunia try to hit him with a frying pan.

Aunt Petunia knew he hadn’t really done magic, but he still had to duck as she aimed a heavy blow at his head with the soapy frying pan. Then she gave him work to do, with the promise he wouldn’t eat again until he’d finished.

(CoS, 17)

The above qoute mentions how he was forced to do chores with the threat of no food until he's done with his chores. So, yes, he was forced to work at the Dursleys. Another quote indicating he had plenty of practice cleaning over at the Dursleys:

“Filch’ll have me there all night,” said Ron heavily. “No magic! There must be about a hundred cups in that room. I’m no good at Muggle cleaning.” “I’d swap anytime,” said Harry hollowly. “I’ve had loads of practice with the Dursleys. Answering Lockhart’s fan mail . . . he’ll be a nightmare. . . .”

(CoS, 114)

That being said, we see Petunia cooking more often than Harry, and she's also mentioned cleaning on occasion:

At last, at long last, the final evening of Marge’s stay arrived. Aunt Petunia cooked a fancy dinner and Uncle Vernon uncorked several bottles of wine.

(PoA, 26)

“Right — I’m off into town to pick up the dinner jackets for Dudley and me. And you,” he snarled at Harry. “You stay out of your aunt’s way while she’s cleaning.”

(CoS, 14)

I think he wasn't constantly worked like a house elf the way the fandom sometimes portrays it. He was made to clean often enough but he didn't cook that often. The breakfast in PS is likely more of an exception than the norm as whenever any fancy dinner, like with Marge or the Masons, it's always Petunia cooking it, not Harry. So, I don't think Harry cooked or cleaned for them since he could walk, I mean Petunia is a perfectionist about how her house looks, so she wouldn't let a small child who'd do a subpar work do it.

But he was definitely put to work as either punishment or when the Dursleys wanted him occupied. And considering he mentions "plenty of practice" when he's 12 and he spent the last two years at Hogwarts, he likely started doing chores earlier than that, but old enough to use a mop properly. So, I'd guess he started helping to clean the house around the time he was 6 or 7 years old, and started cooking on occasion only very recently before the books start in all likelihood.

The really shitty thing about all his chores is that Dudley isn't doing anything and it's just Harry. This difference is one Harry was always aware of and considers unfair, because it is incredibly unfair. The fact he is forced to do work and gets punished when the other child in the house doesn't adds to the sense of worthlessness the Dursleys already make Harry feel.

Uncle Vernon in general is pretty violent towards Harry, shown in the first quote in this post and in others:

Harry ran down the stairs two at a time, coming to an abrupt halt several steps from the bottom, as long experience had taught him to remain out of arm’s reach of his uncle whenever possible.

(HBP, 45)

I wanted to add the imprisonment in CoS, because the treatment is truly subhuman:

The following morning, he paid a man to fit bars on Harry’s window. He himself fitted a cat-flap in the bedroom door, so that small amounts of food could be pushed inside three times a day. They let Harry out to use the bathroom morning and evening. Otherwise, he was locked in his room around the clock.

(CoS, 28)

They treat him like an actual prisoner. They let him out to the bathroom twice a day! Like WTF! This is so not okay I don't have words.

As for not calling him by his name...

“We could phone Marge,” Uncle Vernon suggested. “Don’t be silly, Vernon, she hates the boy.” The Dursleys often spoke about Harry like this, as though he wasn’t there — or rather, as though he was something very nasty that couldn’t understand them, like a slug.

(PS, 19)

They usually refer to Harry simply as "boy" or "the boy", they also use "you" when talking to him or "him" about him, but not his name, except one time in PS when Vernon is faking being nice:

“Er — yes, Harry — about this cupboard. Your aunt and I have been thinking…you’re really getting a bit big for it…we think it might be nice if you moved into Dudley’s second bedroom.

(PS, 30)

Considering how Harry mentions they often don't speak to him, but at him or about him, definitely suggests they don't use his name often. Vernon seems very odd about using Harry's name, and we see it isn't something common, but it does happen. I think Harry did always know his name though, I'm sure he asked, and regardless of how awful the Dursleys are, Petunia likely told him his name in the same breath she talked about how his father was a drunkard that got both him and Lily killed.

We also know they don't do anything for Harry's birthday, and Harry doesn't think they remember it:

The lighted dial of Dudley’s watch, which was dangling over the edge of the sofa on his fat wrist, told Harry he’d be eleven in ten minutes’ time. He lay and watched his birthday tick nearer, wondering if the Dursleys would remember at all, wondering where the letter writer was now.

(PS, 35)

So, it's very plausible the Dursleys never told Harry when his birthday is and that he had to discover it himself somehow.

TL;DR

Harry's abuse at the Dursleys was awful. It included physical abuse from all three Durslesy and periods of starvation.

He was put to chores like cleaning the house, but it wasn't a constant thing where he worked like a house elf. It actually seems Petunia did most of the cooking.

He probably only started cleaning when he was 6 or 7 at the youngest. And cooking is likely a later development.

Harry was allowed to sit at the table and even watch TV on rare occasions but usually didn't get to choose what to watch. It means Harry should be somewhat aware of muggle pop culture at the time.

Harry, in general, wasn't really treated as human. Not having his name used, only talked at, not having his birthday celebrated, not getting pocket money or anything of his own. Not to mention being forced to sleep in the cupboard or on the floor (in the shack on the sea in PS) and getting his food through a cat flap on his bedroom door like an actual prisoner in CoS.

So, while fanon portrayals make the Dursleys worse than they actually are, they are plenty awful on their own. Believe me, if I could throttle them, I would.

Care for a drink?