petunia dursley is lowkey such a phenomenally well-developed character. not in the sense that she has a character arc, really, but in that the reader’s understanding of her transforms entirely by the end of the series. on page one, she’s a stock archetype and gossipy punchline, but by the end of DH, we understand her to be a woman whose childhood wish curdled into the worst type of jealousy and insecurity, an anger that went on to define her worldview and determine the course of her life. all of this drawn with a few short conversations with lily and tiny peeks-behind-the-veil like her rote memorization/recitation of Dementors “guard[ing] the wizard prison, Azkaban” even decades after hearing those words.
petunia is horrible to harry, and the narrative doesn’t afford her more empathy than she deserves. this is all very clearly a villain’s origin story. but given that our whole generation grew up pining to go to hogwarts, i’m surprised i don’t see more recognition or exploration of the dark places that her hogwarts wish eventually turned. it’s just another form of “it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live”: petunia, denied her dream, thought the only way she could be happy was to fixate on its opposite. either way, it’s all about the life she never got to live.
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batmansymbol: petunia dursley is lowkey such a phenomenally well-developed character. not in the...
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