That’s silly. Not just that people would recognize him, but that, if it was important for the character to be fat, Hollywood can do that easily.
I still would like a short version. I’m not likely to read the books anytime soon, and I want to see which of my guesses (if any) is right on why this is impossible.
If he does magic outside of school, he’ll get in trouble when he returns. Magic can’t be used to make muggle stuff like food. Magic expends energy. Magic food will not sustain. Harry needs his wand and doesn’t have it. Disobeying his guardians will get him in magical trouble. There’s just not enough stuff to convert to food. Harry will turn evil if he uses magic selfishly.
I don’t think it needs a spoiler, but one of your guesses is correct - magic can’t create food, muggle or otherwise. Hermione explains once that it’s governed by Figgum’s Law or something.
Well, two guesses, actually–he will (and does) get in trouble for using magic away from school.
There was also a handwave (Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration) about not being able to make food at all, but I didn’t particularly like that; even in magic, I don’t care for arbitrary handwaves. I’d have been happier with an explanation that magic can’t actually create anything (I think every conjuration in the books could be explained by transfiguring existing things or transporting something from elsewhere), and that transfiguration spells tend to come undone when the transfigured object is broken down. Thus, you could turn a handful of pinecones into a steak if you knew how, but when you cut off a bite (or worse, when you started digesting it), it would turn back into bits of pinecone.
They’d probably be happy to have him go to an ordinary boarding school, but Uncle Vernon hated anything that wasn’t “normal” and was afraid of magic. Aunt Petunia felt much the same, and had also been jealous and resentful of her sister (Harry’s mother) for years because she got to go to Hogwarts and their parents were proud of how special she was. Neither one was going to be happy with the notion of Harry going off to school to learn magic.
As you mentioned yourself upthread, the Dursleys actually do have reason to be afraid of Harry learning magic. He does cause trouble with his magical powers even before he’s been trained, and even if they had a good relationship with Harry then the thought of an adolescent boy with supernatural powers is rather scary.
ETA: As for the OP’s question Harry was definitely abused, but in a way that I could believe would go unnoticed by teachers and administrators. He wasn’t showing up at school with obvious physical injuries, and apparently wasn’t telling people about the way he was treated at home.
But that’s pretty awful writing. They go to a lot of trouble just out of irrational fear and petty jealousy. If they didn’t care about the boy, they would let him go anywhere he wanted, since keeping somebody prisoner takes some effort, and you don’t go through such pains just because.
However, if you consider their actions as attempts at keeping Harry from a dangerous place, that makes sense.
I think the other person was talking about when Harry was younger, using magic without realising it. Why didn’t he magic up food even when he was starving and probably wishing hard for food? Because you can’t create food. Your explanation seems like a fuller (and better) explanation of Gamp’s Law.
None of the magical things Harry did were intentional, and there were hardly any at all - Harry’s reaction to the glass breaking indicated that this was the first time anything as big had happened. Petunia’s sister did die because of magic, and the sisters weren’t always enemies, so there’s a justifiable reason to dislike it. Still, odds are they abused Harry simply because they enjoyed it.
You are entitled to your opinion about the quality of the writing, although I thought you said you hadn’t read the books. Regardless of how well or badly they might be written, people in real life do often go to a lot of trouble out of irrational fear and petty jealousy. And since the Harry Potter stories take place in a world where it is possible to torture and kill people via magic, fear of magic actually seems quite rational.
Even to a terrorist training camp run by a cult of perverts and psychos? Because that seemed to be Uncle Vernon’s general opinion of Hogwarts and wizards. Even had he not been concerned about Harry disgracing the family, he had his own safety and that of his wife and son to consider.
If only that were true. There have been a number of real cases of children who were treated as prisoners by their parents or guardians for no apparent reason. Here’s a recent article about a little girl who was kept locked in a bathroom for years and only allowed out for school. A few years back there was a high profile case involving a brother and sister who were locked in a bathroom, starved, and beaten for years. In both cases the adults responsible for the abuse had other children in their care who they did not abuse, so they weren’t motivated by some general hatred of children.
I love the Harry Potter books for the most part, but the one part I didn’t care for was the over-the-top cartoonish nature of the Dursleys in the first couple of books. (In my opinion, this improves significantly from book 3 onward.) Their behavior toward Harry did cross the line into abusive, in my opinion, and without any particular good reason. It was almost enough for me not to even bother finishing book 1. (Although in the end, I’m glad I did.)
That said, it certainly (and sadly) isn’t unrealistic for people to abuse kids for no good reason, particularly kids that aren’t their own biological children. And, that part didn’t leave me cold on the books as a whole. It was just one spot of writing that I didn’t really enjoy, amidst a lot of stuff that I very much did enjoy. But, different strokes for different folks, etc.
The Dursleys trying to keep Harry away from Hogwarts is perfectly rational. They lock him up and neglect him because they fear him. They fear him because he’s different and magical. Sending him to Hogwarts will just make him even more different and magical, which is the last thing they want.
They did the minimum necessary to take care of him. The absolute minimum. The cupboard was a punishment, not a general state of affairs. I really don’t think it was abuse.
The cupboard was the only place he had to sleep. Sending him to the cupboard early was a punishment, analogous to sending a normally-raised child to his room.
Which many grown-ups wouldn’t have believed anyway, not without bruises. I have seen recent British guidelines on “what constitutes abuse” and the situation described in HP definitely would, but getting it investigated might not be so easy.
‘Harry was used to spiders, because the cupboard under the stairs was full of them, and that was where he slept.’
Then, a few lines later:
‘Perhaps it had something to do with living in a dark cupboard, but Harry had always been small and skinny for his age.’
On the next page it says that, as punishment for his hair being messy, he was put in the cupboard for a week - day and night obviously, because making him sleep there wouldn’t be a big deal when he already sleeps there.
The next page says that after he accidentally transported himself to the roof to get away from Dudley and the other bullies, he was locked in the cupboard.
He’s not locked into the cupboard after the zoo incident, though, because he knows he can sneak out later for food, which he’d been denied. He is left in there day and night for more than a week, however, since it was ‘his longest-ever punishment.’
When the letter arrives, addressed to the cupboard under the stairs, Vernon exclaims ‘how could they possibly know where he sleeps? You don’t think they’re watching the house?’ And they then move Harry to a bedroom because they know sticking him a cupboard won’t reflect well on them.
How did you manage to miss all those references and still be so certain of yourself that you argued everyone else was wrong?
How is not abuse to have a kid go for eleven years without any love or affection? Do you think he got any hugs from his aunt? Did anyone comfort him when he fell down as a baby? Did Aunt Petunia kiss his hurts or just slap a bandaid on him to make him stop bleeding on the floor?
There are more kinds of abuse than just physical. Emotional abuse can be more insidious and leave longer marks, and I think Harry should have been a lot more f-ed up as an adult. I paraphrase from a famous quote: When you have a bad childhood, it never heals. All you can do is slap some paint on that sucker and hope it floats.