sooo now that i've been reading harry potter as an adult for the first time (and after having gone through a lot of emotional abuse and crazy people lol), i'm suddenly struck by how i can understand what the hell harry's aunt and uncle were thinking and why they were acting that way with him.

1. they got a letter with a baby saying "your relatives were murdered, harry was almost murdered, their house was completely destroyed, the murderer will probably try to kill harry again so keep him safe". not only would harry be killed but so would the dursleys.

2. when they went out to the grocery store etc random weird strangers would greet harry by name and so on. to the dursleys, these guys might as well be in cahoots with the murderer. meaning, taking harry outside = dangerous. showing harry to the neighbours = dangerous. thus, keep him locked up all the time and don't let anyone know he lives with them.

3. petunia's sister was treated really specially because she was a witch; petunia was overlooked. so, now petunia spoils dudly a ton because "she never got attention herself". on top of that, dudly is a "normal boy, not a wizard" so "thank god you won't drag us into crazy, dangerous shit: just live normally" thinking.

4. refusing all kind of "fantasy, strange" stuff was just their way of trying to stop harry from realizing his magic powers and becoming a wizard. since they don't know exactly how it works they thought maybe they could stop/suppress it. again, this wasn't "just to be mean", it was to protect the whole family including harry himself.

5. when the hogwarts letter came, to the dursleys it signalled that someone (maybe related to the murderer) had been spying on their house for a long time. and that that person was crazy for sending so many letters and in so many ways etc. initiating him into the wizarding world = into the world where you get murdered. if the dursleys actually didn't "like" harry, they would have just let the crazy people take him and be done with it; instead they actually took him with them and tried to stop hagrid and everyone else from taking him into that world. in the same vein, in order to "protect" him mentally they said his parents died in a car crash (= random accident) and not y'know were brutally murdered (even without magic = closer to the truth).

harry didn't have a library card, computer, etc. with that kind of stuff you can be tracked by the outside world (ex. library card = your name and address are registered).

the book mentions that ex. it'd been years since he ate chocolate cake, not that he had "never" eaten it. so in general i think this stuff slowly got stricter and stranger as the dursley's paranoia about people finding him slowly grew. also stuff like, he got dudly's hand-me-downs: so that the dursleys weren't seen buying ex. new clothing that *wouldn't have fit dudley* or birthday items when it *wasn't dudley's birthday* (again, paranoia) so people wouldn't think they had another kid living with them.

well anyway that was my thought as i read this time. i doubt J.K. Rowling put all that much thought into it but eh