I think that when the enchantment that protected Harry in their home was broken, it also revealed their location and Voldemort would know they were family and had been sheltering him.
If I remember, they were going into hiding, protected by Aurors.
Kind of like Witness Protection.
For a comparison, consider Owen Lars. Luke wasn’t even related to his wife, just his father’s second wife’s grandson. Like Vernon he was afraid of what would happen if Luke would become if he went off to school and did what he could to prevent it. Unlike Vernon he still treated Luke with, if not necessarily love, at least respect.
That was my impression too. In fact, one of the things that bothered me the most about the series is how normal and well-adjusted Harry was. A child like him wouldn’t know how to forge emotional relationships, and would have a hard time reciprocating any love he was given. And did you notice that Harry didn’t have any friends before Hogwarts? No one he wanted to say goodbye to, no one he would miss. This is not a kid who would be capable of making two lifelong friends on the train ride to a new school. This is a kid who ends up turning tricks for the custodial staff.
Ever think his horcrux status might have been protecting him? If it can prevent physical damage in objects, maybe it can prevent psychological damage in people. Or maybe since it was his mother’s love that saved him, that became much more permanently embedded in him, providing him emotional protection.
Yeah, that fits what I remember from DH. Once Voldemort took over the Ministry of Magic, he knew where Harry lived, but the enchantment that protected him would protect the Dursleys too–until Harry has his birthday, or leaves for the last time.
That sounds… convenient.
It occurred to me that if the Dursleys had raised him as one of their own, maybe Harry wouldn’t have been so eager to leave when Hagrid came for him. Maybe he would have been just as fearful as Dudley and would have said something like, “I’m not going with that freak! Uncle Vernon, do something!” Wonder what they (the magical community) would have done then?
Somebody actually wrote something in Salon or Slate back when the first movie was coming out, making Alessan’s point: that Harry would have been seriously emotionally damaged in such a situation. So it’s not just you. 
But it is one of the themes of the series: love is what matters. Lily’s love for her son is so strong in Harry’s universe that it can protect him from anything even abuse.
One of the things I really liked about the books is that Harry comes across as the age he’s supposed to be at that time. I was recently reading the Hunger Games. All I could think of was are you fucking kidding me? The main character is supposed to be a starving fifteen year old. Instead she’s the smartest character in the book. Far too much Mary Sue in Katniss IMO.
Harry is always scared and not always sure what to do. That struck me as realistic. Or at least as realistic as you can get in a series devoted to the adventures of an adolescent battling evil can be.
I didn’t think of there being a magical explanation. I thought it was more like Oliver Twist: Dickens created a character who came from an awful situation but who was still good and capable of love.
Of course that’s not necessarily realistic, I agree.
This is an interesting point. One does have to bear in mind that Harry cannot realistically bring friends home to visit and hang out under the stairs. And that the Dursleys would have probably punished him for staying out (going to someone else’s house). But given the early relationship he had with Dudley, I imagine there should have been some sort of counter-clique at school, kids who bond in opposition to his obnoxiousness. And those are the kind of bonds that tend to be pretty strong. Harry’s life before age 11 is a great grey plot gap, the only clue to which is Arabella Figg.
There was a mention in the first book about Dudley’s group of friends and how no one dared cross him. Everyone knew you didn’t socialize with Harry unless you wanted a beating.
ETA: End of the second chapter.
Extremely true. But then again…magic.
You beat me to it. J.K. has made no secret of her love for Dickens and his influence on her (not least in the names she creates).
In Oliver Twist, Oliver’s mother dies just after he is born, but not before she holds her son, looks into his face and kisses him. The implication through the rest of the novel is that her love has left some kind of psychic impression on him, enough to protect him from the wicked influences that come into his life.
In fact, when he ends up at the house of the man who will become his benefactor, there is a portrait of his mother in the bedroom they set him up in. (In the novel, Oliver’s mother is the lover of Mr. Brownlow’s old friend, not his daughter as in the David Lean movie and the musical.) Oliver shows a strong reaction to the portrait, showing that he has some kind of subconscious memory of the mother whose last act was one of love for him.
So Dumbledore put Harry exactly where he needed to be, though it is not clear that he knew – unless, somehow, he was able to consult with Sybil Trelawney on this detail.
I also noticed that whenever Harry is stressed out at Hogwarts, he tends to snarl at people… maybe because that’s what he learned from the Dursleys. He doesn’t know any other way to behave. Some of it is hormones, of course, and some of it is HWMNBN tweaking him from the other side, but sometimes his first reaction to being challenged by Ron or Hermione or Seamus is to shout. Harry, knock it off!
If I remember rightly (I haven’t got the books to hand): per the above-quoted, in Book 7 the wizarding “good guys” take / send the Dursleys into hiding in wizard-dom, accompanied by wizard “minders” / hoped-to-be protectors. Later in the book, a brief report over the wizarding “resistance radio” is mentioned, telling of three Muggles and x number of wizards in hiding, being discovered and all of them killed, by Voldemort’s forces.
The victims are not named; but the respective numbers exactly match those of the Dursleys and their minders. It could of course be a coincidence, with some other identically constituted group having perished; but again IIRC, there is no mention of any action involving the Dursleys, in the Epilogue. I suspect that with this one, the author decided to leave the reader guessing and not knowing.
Oh, I agree. But I love fanwanking like that. When I read anything I really enjoy, I build up a world in my head around it, and filling in the cracks just makes that world better.
In the Harry Potter Wikia, it’s mentioned that Dudley had children and a family tree is shown.
He does lotsa stuff like that. Of note, willing his Putter Outer (with its James Bond trasceiver feature) to Ron, apparently for the exact and remote purpose of reuniting him with his friends after leaving them in a huff. You don’t get to be Dumbledore unless you’ve got power, visionary wisdom, and discipline. Anything else is just a great wizard–a Terrible Wizard! But great.
Dursleys dislike of the boy is pretty genuine, even in the books, even after they must clearly recognize he could be an important ally in a world where wizardry is coming out of the closet (so to speak). Is it worth looking at the story through the lense of British classes? I’d have to assume Lily certainly ‘married up’ relative to Petunia, and that it must have galled aunt petunia to have to care for a kid who was entitled to a position she would never enjoy. The icing on the cake would be being shamed into doing it by someone of Dumbledore’s stature.
Thanks – I’m no highly learned Potter scholar. Am glad that the group concerned, made it through the war. Few, I feel, would miss Vernon much: but it’s possible to understand, and make some allowances for, Petunia; and experience seemingly caused some repentance, and improvement in character, on Dudley’s part. And it’s good to be able to infer that Daedalus Diggle and Hestia Jones (the wizardly minders) survived.