Harry Potterlore paints Vernon Dursley as a family man who loved to dote on his wife, Petunia, and their son, Dudley. The Dursleys enjoyed a normal life in Four, Privet Drive, but at the same time, feared someone would uncover a closely guarded secret. Petunia Dursley (née Evans) was the older sister of Harry’s mother, Lily. Like her husband, she too was ordinary, in that, she possessed no magical abilities whereas Lily was a witch in the family. The Muggles, Mr. and Mrs. Evans felt proud the day Lily got her Hogwarts acceptance letter. While Petunia disparagingly called her sister “a freak” (as heard in the firstHarry Pottermovie) truth is, she’d pleaded with Dumbledore to be accepted into the school. The Evans sisters' relationship soured after the alteration at Platform Nine and Three-Quarters that took place the day Lily boarded the Hogwarts Express for the first time.
Petunia and Lily’s sibling estrangement was unlike any other. The older one saw the younger’s magical abilities, and because she herself was a non-magic person, she became her bully. Eventually, Petunia married a Muggle named Vernon Dursley and Lily married the wizard, James Potter. Petunia and Vernon’s wedding took place towards the end of 1977. Petunia settled into her new married life, and Lily and James fought inthe First Wizarding Waras members of the Order of the Phoenix. As displeasing as it sounds, Petunia’s disdain for magic stemmed from the psychology of jealousy and insecurity. The question remains of why Vernon (portrayed by Richard Griffiths inHarry Potter) disliked magic.
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Vernon Led An Ordinary Life
Chapter 1 ofHarry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, “The Boy Who Lived,” says the Dursleys lived in an idyllic setting. The man of the house, Vernon was the director of a firm called Grunnings that manufactured grills. This chapter also states that their kinship with the Potters was the big secret that they strived to keep. Vernon took great pride in his work, and his wife and child wanted for nothing. The Dursley family refused to engage in “anything strange or mysterious” and they simply couldn’t stand the thought of anyone finding out about their relationship with James and Lily Potter. There was a reason why Vernon and his wife hadn’t met the Potters in several years, and it was because of the differences in life choices.
The first chapter ofHarry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stonestates that Petunia pretended she didn’t have a sister as Lily and James were “UnDursleyish.” Quite obviously, Vernon’s English upper-middle-class values (or simply put the Muggle way of life) conflicted with those of the old pure-blood family, the Potters. Vernon drove to work and returned home to his wife and small son, and that was pretty much his life until the day he woke up to find his infant nephew on the front step. The Dursleys got landed with Harry and were forced totake him in due to unforeseen circumstances.
Chapter 2 ofHarry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone"The Vanishing Glass" begins nearly ten years since Vernon was jolted out of sleep by his wife’s scream. While he and Petunia continued to live the same life with Harry in the house, the secret that they kept from him, haunted them, still. Harry knew nothing about magic or the nature of his parents' deaths. His aunt and uncle forbade him from asking questions. He realized he had some explaining to do when he unintentionally caused a Burmese Python’s glass pane to vanish inHarry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Befuddled, the boy tried to attribute Dudley getting trapped inside the snake enclosure to magic, but Vernon told him off. “There’s no such thing as magic!” said Vernon before locking him in his cupboard.
Vernon’s Fear Of Magic
In chapter 3 ofHarry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone"The Letters From No One" Harry was all set to attend Stonewall High, as per Vernon’s plan. However, this changed after the boy received countless acceptance letters from Hogwarts. Harry got mail even after Vernon moved him to the smallest bedroom of his house. In the end, Vernon drove the family away and rented a shack perched on top of a rock way out to the sea. The man did everything in his power to intercept Harry’s mail and to keep him away from his late mother and father’s world.
In chapter 4 of the firstHarry Potterbook, “The Keeper of the Keys,“Rubeus Hagrid arrivedto pick up Harry from this wretched shack. Vernon tried to forbid Hagrid to tell Harry anything, and refused to pay his Hogwarts tuition, yelling, “I am not paying for some crackpot old fool to teach him magic tricks!” Magic had no place in Vernon’s life. According to him, what went down in the Wizarding World was “rubbish.” Lily and James Potter’s fates had terrible repercussions not only on Harry’s life but on their extended family as well. In “The Keeper of the Keys,” Vernon said the “weirdos” Lily and James came to a sticky end for mixing up with the Wizarding types. Ignorant indeed Vernon was, his disdain for magic can also be attributed to his inability to understand it. It’s precisely why he said he was set upon stamping the wizard/ magic out of Harry.
