Harry James Potter Deserved Better - Tumblr Posts

I cannot, this has to be a joke. I am so tired of TikTok and their takes. No one is torturing Dudley and his family. No is there pointing a wand at them and saying the Cruciatus Curse at them. What happens to them is the consequence of their own actions.

“So when he’s 11 years old his family uproots their life and goes on the run,”

I’ll agree with you, yes it’s stressful but no one was out to get the family. They (Hogwarts) just wanted Harry to come to Hogwarts, and they know (somehow) that Harry didn’t see his letter so they kept sending them. None of that would have happened if the Dursleys just let Harry see the damn letter, like what did they think would have happened? Mind you Petunia knows this process so she easily could have saved them the trouble. Also they wouldn’t have had to go on the run if Dudley hadn’t told on Harry. That’s the consequence of their own actions. Not the wizards. And certainly not Harry. It was Harry’s letter, he had the right to read it.

Let's look at all the stuff Dudley had done to Harry by the third chapter of the book:

“Dudley’s favorite punching bag was Harry,” yes Harry was fast but clearly there were enough times that Dudley punched him for Harry to be considered his “favorite punching bad” also Harry, a 11 year old, is one doing the cooking while Petunia and Vernon, perfectly capable adults, are right there.

Dudley starts crying because Harry has to go to the zoo with him. I have to share my birthday with my whole family (3 other people), he can get over having to take his cousin to the zoo with him.

“Dudley’s gang had been chasing him as usual when, as much to Harry’s surprise as anyone else’s, there he was sitting on the chimney.” accidental magic (in Harry’s case) is triggered by emotion, so they had scared Harry so bad that he apparated, APPARATED! Something that is supposed to be hard, especially for someone younger than eleven. And Harry must have been really scared to do that before the age of eleven or just that powerful. And Harry got punished for it too.

Dudley and his gang is are knowing to target Harry so much that Harry labels it “Harry Hunting”

The snake scene, the snake did nothing to the family, it snapped at them and went away. And Dudley wasn’t trapped in the cage either.

I am sure I didn’t mention all the things Dudley did to Harry before the age of eleven, but some of those things are scattered throughout the books. But this all for mentioned in like the first three chapters, that's a lot considering one of those chapters takes place when Harry is one years old. I do remember one where Marge’s dog chased Harry up a tree while they all laughed. Marge didn’t call off the dog until midnight, MIDNIGHT! So Harry was alone, scared, stuck on a tree for hours. As someone who is scared of dogs, I can't imagine how scary that must have been for him. I'm surprised he didn’t have a fear of dogs.

Hagrid giving Dudley the pig tail was wrong. I'll admit that and he didn’t deserve that, Vernon did, especially since he was the one who insulted Dumbledore which angered Hagrid, and I also don’t like Hagrid but that’s a whole different conversation.

“The year after that was less stressful, but not no stress right? There’s still stuff floating around, his dad’s really angry, and then gets pulled out of a second story window.”

his dad’s angry sure, I don’t recall Vernon ever yelling at Dudley, not even once, if you do, please mention it. As for your second point, he wouldn’t get pulled out of a second store window if they just let Harry respond to Ron’s letters or if they didn’t put any bars in the window. Ron knows how the Dursely’s treat Harry, so he’s obviously concerned when Harry doesn’t respond to him. I would be too if my friend with abusive guardians didn’t respond to me for days. So he goes and rescues Harry, it wouldn't be necessary if they just let Harry respond or even let go to the Weasley’s. So again consequences of their own actions. Not the wizards or Harry’s fault or the good guys’ but theirs. Not to mention they were starving Harry, and he still shared the food with Hedwig.

“And then the year after his aunt inflates, like I know it’s supposed to be funny because she’s fat but again we’re putting ourselves in Dudleys shoes and he doesn’t understand magic or its impact on the human body. Harry loses his temper and she literally blows up.''

Now why does Harry get angry? I'm sure it's not unreasonable. Oh right, because Marge calls his mom (who died trying to save him from the evil wizard) a bitch and his dad (someone who also died trying to save him) an alcoholic, which is just made up by the Dursely’s. Now if she didn’t say that then Harry wouldn’t have gotten rightfully angry, and the anger wouldn’t have triggered his accidental magic, which he should be in control of by now. So clearly the words affected him a lot. They wouldn’t have if Marge didn’t open her mouth to talk shit about a child's dead parents. And it didn’t say that Dudley was watching TV so I’m assuming he was listening to the conversation. That’s the consequence of her own action, not Harry’s fault or the wizards fault, or the good guys.

“It doesn’t get better for him, thereafter, that he eats a piece of candy, that keep in mind Fred and George intentionally left for this to happen and then just peaced out. He eats a piece of candy and his tongue swells up to 3ft long.”

First let me get this out of the way that Fred and Geroge are kind of bullies, their pranks sometimes do harm to people. Now why do Fred and George leave that piece of candy? Because they have heard of all the terrible shit he has done to Harry, and they’ve seen first hand how badly the Dursleys treat Harry (second year, bars on the window). And they of course, like any friends, want to get revenge for Harry. And they also get in trouble with Arthur and later Molly. They faced the consequences of their actions and so did Dudley.

Then the dementor thing happens. Which wasn’t anyone’s fault but Umbridge since she sent them and Dudley just happened to be with Harry. But it was important that he was because that’s the start of his so-called redemption arc. Dudley is a bully and no bully just wakes up one day and realizes that “oh shit what I did and how I treated them was wrong.” no they need a wake up call and for Dudley that wake up call was the dementor.

“We’re 5 for 5 every year,”

no we are not. We’re not even close, what about those eleven years before Hogwarts? Those absolute hellish years? He hated them so much that Harry considers Hogwarts, where he’s in constant danger and where he eventually dies, his home? What about those years? But that’s in the past so they don’t matter right?

Dudley hasn’t even been through a quarter of what Harry has (and half that trauma was due to Dudley and his family) and there nothing the Dursleys can say or do will ever make up for years of trauma and abuse. Their past actions finally caught up to them. And Harry is so traumatized from them that when Mcgonagall asks for Wood, he thinks that she’s going to beat him with a wooden stick. For saving Neville’s, who was being bullied by Malfoy, rememberal. If Harry can tell that bullying is wrong then so can Dudley. He should be able to tell that what his parents are doing to Harry is wrong. And if he wants his parents' approval so badly then he can at least be nice to Harry at school, but he doesn’t, instead he gets his friends to join in too. And makes his social life hell. I remember something about Harry having to dumb himself down so he doesn’t do better at school than Dudley and get him trouble. If he wasn’t a wizard, this could’ve possibly ruined his future. And he doesn’t stop after the first year of Harry being back. He later makes fun of his parents death and Cedric’s death as well (although he doesn’t know who Cedric is and Harry was taunting him before this). All the stuff that you mention is nothing but just a couple of bad days in his otherwise happy life.

And I’m not even going to talk about him going into hiding part because I have nothing to say.

Let's also remember that the target audience for the Harry Potter series is kids Harry’s age, so eleven year old, pre-teens and middle schoolers. People who do not think like high schoolers and adults do. It's detailed enough that kids love it. She (JKR) doesn’t expect them to comment on world building, the money system, or how bad at math JKR is or how much of a bad writer she is or why they didn’t use the truth serum on Sirius. If you did, then congrats to you, I didn’t. I saw magic and a school for wizards and thought it was cool. But if they can tell that what Dudley was doing to Harry was bad then so can he. Dudley should be able to tell that what his parents are doing is wrong. Kids are taught from a young age to not bully and if they see something then say something. And Harry grew up around that, and instead of becoming like his abusers, he became this kind and selfless boy who in the end sacrificed himself to save the world, that didn’t give him much. Sacrificed himself for people who constantly changed their opinions about him. If Harry can be different from Vernon and Petunia than so can Dudley.

Also I do not believe that Dudley got his redemption arc, all he says to Harry is “I don’t think you’re a waste of space,” which congrats to him for finally being able to be a decent human being, I guess. For recognizing that his own cousin isn’t dirt at the bottom of his shoe. It’s not enough for me to consider redeeming him, he’s literally doing the bare minimum. And for a redemption arc you have to go above and beyond. The Dursleys are shit human beings and probably the worst of the humans, I’m surprised Harry didn’t turn them into toads or something the first chance he got.

And Harry, first and foremost is a victim. Harry has done bad things, of course, he’s not perfect, but he’s a victim. He’s a boy that experienced severe trauma from a very young age. He was used and abused by the adults and authority figures around him. So blaming him for things that were out of his control (i.e. Sirius death (that’s a whole other conversation that I can get into if you want me too)) is not okay or fair.

So no, Dudley doesn’t not have the right to blame/hate Harry or wizards. The wizards didn’t do anything to them for the fun of it or anything like that. No, it is them being punished for being shitty people in the past and shitty people to Harry. (They got what they deserved and I’m glad they did, it seems that Vernon is still a shitty person though and idk what happens to Dursley after the battle of Hogwarts) If they had been decent then none of these would have happened. There’s tons of other stuff I could mention that the Dursleys do but I don’t have the time.

I need people to stop saying that Harry became a cop at the end, that’s literally not mentioned in the epilogue. None of their jobs are and the Curse child is not cannon.

I also need people to stop comparing Harry Potter and the Hunger Games and how they handle fascism and blah blah blah. Harry Potter is a children book, middle grade at best. It’s not supposed to challenge this ideas and do things that the Hunger Games does. They’re two completely complete different thing with different target audience, like come on it’s about a kid who’s a wizard and goes to a wizard schools, it’s for kids while the Hunger Games is YA, for teens and older. Stop comparing these two, they’re no where near each other. So I need y’all to stop holding it to a YA standard.

Btw this is coming from a TikTok I saw:

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTR7u8nLw/