You really have to wonder about Dumbledore’s judgment on many issues, this being one. "Let’s see, growing up a different, unloved and neglected orphan among Muggles turned Tom Riddle into the most powerful mass and vicious murdering dark wizard of all time… so the odds of that happening twice are ASTRONOMICAL! So let’s take a risk and try it with Harry. And after all, if some die hard Death Eater should decide to kill him as revenge for the death of the Dark Lord, the foster-parents who’d trade him to NAMBLA for a weekend for some Wendy’s coupons and a powerless old squib have his back.
The cupboard under the stairs would be way worse than a sofabed, and way smaller too, maximum 4’ tall but more likely 3’, 2’ wide and 5’ long, but the last couple of feet would be inches high.
Although if a sofabed is worse, then my daughter’s abused, because that’s what she has. 
Yeah, when you can take a tumble from a broomstick that’s in the stratosphere and just have an “arrested development!” spell that saves you, or when it’s just a matter of annoyance to fix a couple of idiots who splinch themselves into several pieces while trying to teleport, society probably gets a lot less overprotective of children.
Wait … “arresto momentum?” I forget…
I was more appalled by Dumbledore sending him back every freakin’ year for 3 months
Ok, yeah there was that stupid spell that he was invulnerable if he stayed with blood relatives 'cause him mommy loved him or something, but they explictly said that it only needed to be for like 2 weeks a year.
Why not send him back…with Hagrid in tow to protect him…and only have him stay the minimum two weeks?
Answer: Because Dumbledore’s a cretin.
And yeah, clearly abused. The difference between him and say James from Dahl’s book is that James get out and gets his revenge by like page 12. With Harry, he has to keep going back to it every book and he never gets his revenge.*
*The “The Dursleys lived lives of quiet desperation while Harry went on to live a great life” thing is a little too existential for this kind of book. The Dursley parents needed to get run over by a herd of rhinoserouses.
I speculated that the cupboard under the stairs was something else, like a non-space pocket crafted by the Potters as a temporary hiding space for the 3 of them if Voldemort came after them. That’s why I figured Harry was safe there as a child. I fully expected at some point someone would notice, “Wait, isn’t this cupboard appearing in the same place as a supporting beam?” “Not to worry, old wizard’s trick, quite handy, these sorts of rooms, don’t you know.”
'Course, turns out J.K. just wanted to write a modern fairy tale that was a grim as, well, Grimm’s. Harry’s story is so much like Luke Skywalker, I’m surprised it was Wormtail who lost a hand, and not Harry.
And–it’s not just that he slept there, it’s that he was locked in for several days.
Having to sleep in the cupboard is bad
Being locked in the cupboard is worse.
Being locked in for 3 days is worse than that.
Being locked in for 3 days with no food is even worse.
But worst of all is that there’s no bathroom there. And they’ve done it to him before.
So he’s not only wallowing in his own crap and piss (while being starved) for 3 days, he’s forced to sleep there afterwards.
To me, the biggest thing I had about suspending my disbelief wasn’t the wizards and the dragons and stuff, it’s that Harry didn’t grow up feral.
Actually the Dursleys seem a perfectly happy, if obnoxious, family unit when it’s just the three of them. Ironically the greatest misery of their life is the kid they’ve neglected even though it’s not revenge for the years of neglect- they’d have been just as endangered if they were the most loving foster parents since Ma and Pa Ingalls. They actually have reason to hate Harry by the end.
Was he locked in? I just remember him sleeping in there- and I’ve actually seen twin beds in under stair cupboards and in closets before, as long as you’re not claustrophobic and can fit on a twin bed it’s not so bad. Now if he’s locked in then that’s endangerment, imprisonment, and definitely abuse.
I disagree—First, they were never happy–Petunia’s bitterness about Lilly consumed her, Papa Dursley was quite literally hysterical about the thought of non-conforming and/or “keeping up with the Jones”. There was no real happiness there. And worst of all from their POV, in the end, even Dudley left Mr. & Mrs Dursley. I didn’t much like book 7, but there was a wonderful moment between Harry and Dudley in it and Dudley has grown past his parents and apologizes to Harry for his previous behavior…
And I’m pretty sure he was locked in–I specifically remember the 3 day period part. (Or was it the bedroom?
You’re thinking of much bigger ‘cupboards under the stairs’ than you get in Britain - there’s no way you’d be able to fit a bed under there unless you lived in a mansion or something. Like I said, 3 or possibly as much as 4’ at the highest point, 5’ long but the sloping roof means that’s not all usable, and about 2’ wide.
That’s standard in the type of house the Dursleys were described as having and it’s the kind shown in the first movie, too.
For those who don’t know, I thought it was interesting that one reason Dudley wasn’t featured in the 7th film, even out the window like his dad, is the actor’s weight loss. The producers didn’t think anybody would recognize him.
In the first book, it was common, when the Dursleys wanted to discipline Harry (for being in the vicinity of “odd” goings-on, as often as not, AIUI) for him to be confined to his cupboard at all times that he was not expected to be seen in school. Such as the time he levitated himself to the roof of the school cafeteria (or whatever) in making his escape from Dudley’s gang. And his longest one, after setting the snake on Dudley at the zoo.
In Chamber of Secrets, after he was already ensconced in the Smallest Bedroom, he was physically locked in by Vernon, in a bid to prevent him from going to Hogwarts for a second year (when he learned that Harry was not permitted to use magic outside of school).
From Sorcerer’s Stone:
and
Clearly, he was locked in the cupboard sometimes, but not always (since he had the option of sneaking out to the kitchen). It’s possible that the Dursleys were too freaked out over the boa constrictor incident to remember to lock him in that time, or maybe they normally relied on fear of worse punishment to keep him in the cupboard without locking it. In the latter case, he was denied food as an additional punishment–more than just the classic “sent to bed without supper”; Vernon said “no meals”, plural.
Yeah, I’d say he was abused and neglected. It doesn’t rise to the horrific levels of abuse we read about all too often in the real world, but it was still abuse.
Both stories are textbook “Hero’s Journey” stories. In both, a boy grows up poor and distant from anything important until he’s whisked into the thick of things by a mentor (Obi Wan/Dumbledore) who gives him a magical relic that belonged to his father (lightsaber/Invisibility Cloak), trains him to fight the big giant evil that’s oddly related to him and that it has been prophesied that only he can defeat, until the Big Bad’s number two guy kills the mentor, forcing Harry/Luke to seek to defeat the evil, where the number two guy betrays the Big Bad at the end.
Wow. I knew they were similar, but I didn’t realize just how much until it’s laid out like that.
bravo!
Haven’t read the books, but in the movies, let’s be fair, he once threw their kid into a snake pit, and tried to kill a relative by inflating her like a balloon. Who knows what else lil’ Harry had caused before the first book that made them so distant and scared of him?
In fact, the biggest source of abuse I can remember from them is sending the lad to an unregulated school where daily lethal danger is not only common, but part of the curriculum.
As it happens, I’ve been listening to the audio book of Chamber of Secrets whilst commuting to and from work. Dursley does lock Harry up in the bedroom after finding out that Harry is forbidden to do magic away from Hogwarts (and after Dobby causes the dinner party mess). There is a cat flap in the door through which small meals get pushed. Harry isn’t starved but he is hungry all the time. The narration also relates that he’s allowed out twice a day to go to the bathroom.
But I don’t think that that makes any sense. If they hate the kid so much, why aren’t they happy he’s leaving for a good chunk of time?
Now, if they wanted him to stay to keep him safe, and even had to resort to starve him a bit until the school deadline passed, just so he would have less energy to escape, that would make some sense.
[spoiler]Strictly speaking, if “staying with blood relatives” is all you need to fulfill the invulnerability spell, then all you’d need after Harry was about 12 or 13 is a willing but partially infertile foster couple—and strictly speaking, that’s optional—some kitchen glassware, a copy of Playboy, and a few months lead time. There, problem solved. “Unconventional and slightly awkward” still beats “abusive”: a net gain!
Of course, if you thought the pundits had trouble with the “witchcraft” angle, think of what they’d do with “Harry Potter and his Two Mommies and ‘Little Sister.’”
[/spoiler]
…and this is why you don’t let mad scientists write children’s books.