Dursley family

The Dursleys or the Dursley family are fictional characters in the Harry Potter stories created by J. K. Rowling. They are Harry Potter's last living relatives. In order to ensure his safety, Harry was placed under their care as a baby by Albus Dumbledore.

The name "Dursley" (pronounced "DURZ-lee") derives from the small town in Gloucestershire, near to the birthplace of J. K. Rowling.

Vernon Dursley

Template:HP Character Foreign Harry's uncle-by-marriage: he is married to Petunia, Lily Potter's sister and they have a son named Dudley. Vernon is described as a big, beefy man, with hardly any neck, and a large mustache. He is very much the head of his household, laying down most of the rules for Harry and doing most of the threatening while his wife turns a deaf ear, as well as spoiling his son. He is also the director of a drill-making company called "Grunnings" and seems to be successful in his career. He is a Muggle, and detests all magical things, especially his nephew (by marriage, not blood) Harry. He and his wife, Petunia, have grudgingly raised Harry from an early age, denying him any information about the magical world, including his parents. He reads the Daily Mail newspaper.

Petunia Dursley

Template:HP Character Foreign Harry's maternal aunt: Petunia Dursley, née Evans, is described as being a blonde woman, with bony hands, a horsey face and a very long neck, which she uses to spy on her neighbours. She obsessively follows news about divorced movie stars while sniffing, "as if we're interested in their sordid affairs" (OotP). Her whole family was made up of Muggles, except for her sister Lily who was a Muggle-born witch. Mr. and Mrs. Evans were proud of having a witch in the family, but Petunia saw her sister as a freak. In the first volume, she refers to Lily as her "dratted sister," but the film this is changed to "perfect sister," implying she was jealous of Lily. In the eyes of some readers, due to years of bigotry towards the strange and the unknown, she seems to genuinely have believed Lily to be a freak.

At some point she met Vernon Dursley and married him. On 22 June 1980 they had a son named Dudley. Petunia Dursley hadn't seen her sister for years and usually pretended she didn't have one - The Evans sisters weren't talking as Lily Potter knew how her sister felt about her. However one day Petunia discovered her nephew Harry Potter on her doorstep as she put out the milk bottles.

There was a note left with baby Harry by Albus Dumbledore, which explained that his parents Lily and James had been killed by Lord Voldemort, how Lily Potter had sacrificed herself to save her son's life and how living with his only other relatives would protect him from Lord Voldemort. Petunia and Vernon agreed to raise Harry (afraid of any magical reprisals), but they kept him as downtrodden as possible in order to squash the magic out of him; they never told him how his parents died, instead claiming they had died in a car crash.

When Petunia and her husband, Vernon, attempted to throw Harry out of their house at the beginning of Order of the Phoenix, she receives a Howler from Dumbledore – "Remember my last, Petunia", which JKR has confirmed is referring to the note he left with one-year-old Harry on their doorstep. Rowling has also said that Dumbledore had corresponded with Petunia before that. Aunt Petunia has, therefore, more knowledge about the wizarding world than she will admit. Furthermore, Petunia has proved she knows what dementors and Azkaban are, claiming to have overheard a conversation between Lily and an "awful boy" that might have been James Potter. Petunia never uses his name, nor her sister Lily's. In an article, J.K. Rowling confirmed that the readers will discover that "there is a little bit more to Aunt Petunia than meets the eye". This is perhaps hinted in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince when Albus Dumbledore accuses the Dursleys of inflicting "appalling damage" upon their son, Dudley Dursley, and Petunia is later described as looking "oddly flushed".

Although there has been given no reason to view Petunia's name as significant, a character in a Julian Barnes novel ('Flaubert's Parrot') mentions that the petunia has significance between lovers: it signifies an intercepted letter. Petunia Dursley, of course, aids her husband in intercepting and destroying Harry's Hogwarts Letters (and if a lovers code is scarcely appropriate to the context, the name Petunia hardly seems appropriate to the character). It may also refer to the mysterious letters sent to her by Dumbledore (though these are highly unlikely to have been love letters). It is notable, however, that both Petunia and her sister are named after flowers.

There is also come speculation as to what importance Aunt Petunia's knowledge of the magical world will play in book 7 when Harry returns to the Dursley's house for the last time before he turns of age (17). At the beginning of book 5 Aunt Petunia reveals her knowledge of Dementors as she heard it from some "awful boy" telling who we can only guess to be her sister Lily. Harry assumes this boy to be James Potter his father but seeing as he and Lily were hostile to one another up until the end of their fifth year (no matter how much he may have liked her) and didn't start dating her until their seventh, it may not be him. While the author has not stated Petunia's secret, she has shot down the theory of Petunia secretly being a witch or squib, or that she will develop magical powers in future books.

Dudley Dursley

Dudley Dursley was born on 22 June 1980. He is the only child of Vernon and Petunia Dursley, a nephew to Marjorie Dursley and Lily Evans (respectively his father's and mother's sisters), nephew-by-marriage to James Potter and Harry's only cousin.

Described as a large blonde boy, Dudley has been thoroughly spoiled since birth, getting mountains of birthday and Christmas presents and then throwing a tantrum because he wanted more, being given two bedrooms in the house, never using one, and then screaming when it is given to Harry and generally given his way in almost everything. He shows the symptoms of a brat from his first year itself, when a disgusted Professor McGonagall tells Dumbledore how she saw the toddler Dudley kicking his mother and screaming for sweets.

A rude, belligerent and selfish boy, Dudley is quite an unlikable character, although he knows how to be polite when he wants to make an impression (notably when his father's business associate came for dinner one evening). It can be inferred that he and Harry went to a private prep school in Surrey together, where Dudley and his gang of bullies ruled the school, and where the rest of the students shunned Harry as they knew Dudley hated him. With each passing year Dudley was overindulged in every way by his parents, which eventually made him morbidly obese and a careless student (he had reached the height and weight of a young killer whale at the beginning of the fourth book). Throughout their childhood together, Dudley would take any opportunity he could to humiliate and torment his cousin, Harry. Unlike his cousin, however, Dudley has no powers outside of his brutishness.

The same year Harry started at Hogwarts, Dudley was enrolled at his father's old boarding school, Smeltings. Smeltings is described as a snobbish public school with absurd traditions.

By the fifth book Dudley has become physically strong (Harry describes him as being vast as ever, which could mean he became less fat, with his bulk replaced by muscle, to quote: "Dudley was as vast as ever, but a year's hard dieting and the discovery of a new talent had wrought quite a change in his appearance") he has taken an interest in boxing and seems skilled in it. A great bully, he leads a gang of thugs (Piers Polkiss, Dennis, Gordon & Malcolm) with whom he regularly beats up younger children such as Mark Evans on the flimsiest of excuses ("He was asking for it ... he cheeked me"). Dudley also starts smoking and drinking by the time he's fifteen, and continues to be spoiled by his parents. Dudley and his friends ride expensive racing bikes around town during the holidays, while Harry cannot think why Dudley would want a racing bike, as he generally hates any form of exercise. One evening during the summer holidays, when both boys are fifteen, an argument in the evening on the way home draws two dementors (sent by Umbridge) to the scene. Dudley collapses in terror, and Harry uses magic to drive the dementors away from his insensible cousin. He half carries the shaken Dudley home, while Dudley is convinced that Harry used magic to draw the dementors to them and scare Dudley.

Dudley has had incredibly bad luck during the books, perhaps as he is completely spoiled, and therefore a rather ineffective person; aside from this, he gets a horrible delight in bullying smaller kids, and shows a complete lack of sensitivity; he is also a glutton. In the first book, Dudley was playfully attacked by a large snake in a zoo (admittedly, after knocking Harry down and rapping loudly on the glass case; Harry inadvertently vanished the glass to frighten Dudley and the snake was irritated); he declares that the snake nearly took a chunk out of his leg. In the same year, he is painfully given a pig's tail by Hagrid, which has to be removed. In the second book, he increases in size yet again, and is grossly fat and very uncoordinated.

In the third book, nothing bad happens to Dudley, but in the movie he is hit multiply with small beads, knocking him down. In the fourth book, he becomes wider than he is tall, and the school outfitters tell the Dursleys that they don't stock school uniforms that can accommodate Dudley's size; to add insult to injury, the Smeltings school nurse advises the Dursleys to put Dudley on a strict diet, and even sends a list of recommended foods, such as fruits and vegetables in small quantities. During the summer when this diet is enforced, the Weasleys come to pick up Harry for the Quidditch World Cup. Dudley is afraid of them (his last encounter with a wizard gave him a pig's tail) and attempts to protect his buttocks from magical abuse by shuffling along the wall and keeping his hands over his behind. Fred and George Weasley "accidentally" drop a magical toffee which enlarges Dudley's tongue to five feet before a hysterical Petunia Dursley (who initially tries to pull it out, causing Dudley immense pain) reluctantly allows Mr. Weasley to shrink it.

In the fifth book he is attacked by dementors, and in the sixth the Dursleys are visited by Dumbledore, who pities Dudley and blames Vernon and Petunia for how the boy has turned out--his parents have utterly failed to adequately prepare him to enter the real world.

Marjorie Dursley

Template:HP Character Foreign Marjorie "Marge" Dursley is Vernon Dursley's sister and is described as being just like him, a large woman with hardly any neck and even a moustache. Though she isn't a blood relative of Harry, he has been forced to call her "Aunt Marge". Marge lives out in the country, where she breeds bulldogs. Due to this she hardly ever visits Privet Drive, to Harry's great delight. However, each of her visits stands out in Harry's mind for her cruelty to him. Aunt Marge thinks Harry is a horrible boy, whose dad was a drunk and mother a fool.

Her most recent known visit was in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, when Harry made her float, making her resemble a balloon.

Aunt Marge usually brings her dog Ripper with her to Privet Drive – he pines when he is away from her, or so she's claimed – and treats him better than she treats most humans. While Aunt Marge is gone, Colonel Fubster takes care of her other dogs.

External links

• http://www.hp-lexicon.org/muggle/dursley.html
• http://www.hp-lexicon.org/muggle/dudley.html
• http://www.hp-lexicon.org/muggle/marge.html