Dursley family
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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 close living relatives. In order to ensure his safety, Harry was placed under their care as a baby by Albus Dumbledore. The Dursleys live at 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey, England.
The name "Dursley" (pronounced /ˈdɜɹːzlɪ/) derives from the small town in Gloucestershire, near to the birthplace of J. K. Rowling.
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[edit] Vernon Dursley
| Harry Potter character | |
 Richard Griffiths as Uncle Vernon in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone |
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| Vernon Dursley | |
|---|---|
| Gender | Male |
| Hair colour | Black (grey in films) |
| School | Smeltings |
| Parentage | Muggle |
| Actor | Richard Griffiths |
| First appearance | Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone |
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 despises 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. Unlike Petunia, who seems to have a slight feeling of familial loyalty to Harry, Vernon doesn't seem to like his nephew in the least, and in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was even willing to throw him out of the house, knowing doing so would put him in grave danger. He reads the Daily Mail newspaper.
[edit] Petunia Dursley
| Harry Potter character | |
 Fiona Shaw as Aunt Petunia in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. |
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| Petunia Evans Dursley | |
|---|---|
| Gender | Female |
| Hair colour | Blonde (black in films) |
| Eye colour | Grey "large, pale" |
| Parentage | Muggle |
| Actor | Fiona Shaw |
| First appearance | Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone |
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. According to Petunia, 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.
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. However, one day Petunia discovered her infant 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 grudgingly agreed to raise Harry, 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 been killed in a car crash.
When Vernon attempts to throw Harry out of their house at the beginning of Order of the Phoenix, Petunia 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. This prompts Petunia to override Vernon's decision and allow Harry to stay. 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. At the very least, Petunia has proved she knows what dementors and Azkaban are, claiming to have overheard a conversation on the subject between Lily and "that awful boy." This was presumably Harry's father. Harry himself makes this assumption when she mentions said boy. She also has at least a vague understanding of the danger posed by Lord Voldemort.
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).
There is also some 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 final time before he officially comes of age (17). Harry assumes the previously mentioned "awful boy" to be his father James Potter, but seeing as James 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 until their seventh, it may not have been him. 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", but she has explicitly shot down the theory of Petunia secretly being a witch or squib, or that she will develop magical powers.
[edit] Dudley Dursley
| Harry Potter character | |
 Harry Melling as Dudley Dursley in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. |
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| Dudley Dursley | |
|---|---|
| Gender | Male |
| Hair colour | Blond (black in films) |
| Eye colour | Blue |
| School | Smeltings |
| Parentage | Muggle |
| Actor | Harry Melling |
| First appearance | Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone |
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 (specifically, parallel 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 (in the first book, Harry described him as "a pig in a wig" and said that he "had reached the height and weight of a young killer whale" at the beginning of the fourth). 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. (The use of the term "public school" in the UK is generally interchangeable with the North American use of the term "private school".)
By the fifth book Dudley has become physically strong (Harry describes him as being vast as ever, showing that his bulk and obesity is now permanent.) 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.
In the fifth book, after he and Dudley are attacked by the dementors, Harry wonders what sort of bad memory the dementors make Dudley relive. Dudley seemed to be very terrified even long after the dementors had gone away, though Harry has no idea what memory this might be, given that Dudley is a pampered, spoiled brat. It is thought that Dudley's "worst memory" will be revealed in the seventh book.
[edit] Marjorie Dursley
| Harry Potter character | |
 Pam Ferris as Aunt Marge in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. |
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| Aunt Marge | |
|---|---|
| Gender | Female |
| Parentage | Muggle |
| Actor | Pam Ferris |
| First appearance | Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban |
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 in the country, where she breeds bulldogs. Due to this, she rarely visits Privet Drive, to Harry's great delight. However, each of her visits stands out in Harry's mind for her cruelty to him. For unknown reasons, Aunt Marge thinks Harry is a horrible boy, and delights in insulting both him and his dead parents.
Her most recent known visit was in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, when an enraged Harry accidentally inflated her, causing her to thus resemble a floating 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.
[edit] Family tree of Harry Potter
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Mr and Mrs Dursley |
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Mr and Mrs Evans |
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| Marjorie Dursley |
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Vernon Dursley |
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Petunia Evans |
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Lily Evans |
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James Potter | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Dudley Dursley |
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Harry Potter |
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James and his school friend Sirius Black may actually be first cousins once-removed - not surprising, given the size of the Black family. A Charlus Potter was married to Dorea Black, daughter of Cygnus Black and Violetta Bulstrode (maybe related to Millicent Bulstrode, Slytherin) and granddaughter of Phineas Nigellus Black. Some fans speculate that Dorea and Charlus may have been James's parents. In this case, James would have been a (much younger) first cousin of Walburga Black and her brothers. This would make Harry and Sirius second cousins. However, this contradicts Rowling's statements that James' parents were "old in wizarding terms" when they died, since she has also said that wizards have "a much longer life expectancy than Muggles". (Griselda Marchbanks is known to be over 160; Dorea died at only 57.) On the other hand, J.K. Rowling freely admits to being a poor mathematician, so it is at least conceivable that she meant for Dorea to have been older than she appeared on the tree
