KM Viray
Pottermore released the seventh instalment of its interactive guide to the Harry Potter series.
Pottermore is a website focusing on the unknown parts of the Harry Potter series and re-telling the story in an interactive way. Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling developed the site through the help of Sony to give Harry Potter fans, known as Potterheads, an inside look and offer behind-the-scenes information on one of the most popular book series of all time.
In this seventh instalment, Rowling writes about the lives of the Dursleys and gives a more in-depth look into their lives. The Dursleys had an important supporting role in the Harry Potter series, having brought up Harry since he was a baby, until their parting in the last book of the series.
Rowling writes that she didn’t give much thought to picking out the Dursleys’ names. She said, “Vernon and Petunia were so-called from their creation, and never went through a number of trial names, as so many other characters did. ‘Vernon’ is simply a name I never much cared for. ‘Petunia’ is the name that I always gave unpleasant female characters in games of make believe I played with my sister, Di, when we were very young.”
The love story of Vernon and Petunia centered on Petunia falling for Vernon’s perfectly ordinary way of life. In the series, the Dursleys despised anything out of the ordinary (take note of the irony of how they longed to be perfectly ordinary people but had a witch and wizards as relatives). Petunia fell in love with Vernon. “He had a perfectly correct car, and wanted to do completely ordinary things, and by the time he had taken her on a series of dull dates, during which he talked mainly about himself and his predictable ideas on the world, Petunia was dreaming of the moment when he would place a ring on her finger,” Rowling writes.
Petunia was overcome with relief when she revealed her secret to Vernon (about having a witch for a sister), who apparently accepted it surprisingly well. However, things took a turn for the worse when Vernon and Petunia met with Petunia’s witch sister Lily and her husband James, a wizard. Petunia refused for Lily to be a bridesmaid in her wedding and James was described as an “amateur magician” and was insulted by Vernon saying wizards depended on unemployment benefits.
When Lily and James died, Harry was brought to the Dursleys, being the only family he had left. “She [Petunia] did it grudgingly, and spent the rest of Harry’s childhood punishing him for her own choice.” Petunia never loved Harry as much as she did her sister. Rowling writes,
“I wanted to suggest, in the final book, that something decent (a long-forgotten but dimly burning love of her sister; the realisation that she might never see Lily’s eyes again) almost struggled out of Aunt Petunia when she said goodbye to Harry for the last time, but that she is not able to admit to it, or show those long-buried feelings. Although some readers wanted more from Aunt Petunia during this farewell, I still think that I have her behave in a way that is most consistent with her thoughts and feelings throughout the previous seven books.”
Rowling also revealed the reason behind Vernon’s mistreatment of Harry for 17 years: he looked too much like his father (the same reason Severus Snape loathed Harry).
More stories are revelead on Pottermore. If you’re a real hardcore HP fan, you’ll definitely want to learn more of what’s behind the world of one of the world’s most love characters.
