skjam:

Reminded of this recently.

So, at the beginning of Philosopher’s Stone, the Dursley family mantle is described.  There are pictures of Vernon, Petunia, lots of pictures of Dudley, and no pictures of Harry.  And no pictures of Harry’s parents, even though Lily was Petunia’s sister.

But what’s interesting for me is that there’s no pictures of Petunia’s or Vernon’s parents, Dudley’s grandparents.  Even if they happened to be dead, why no pictures to remember them by?

Based on what little we glean from Petunia’s descriptions of their childhood and Snape’s memories in Deathly Hallows, I have a hypothesis.  Rightly or wrongly, Petunia considered herself the Unfavorite.  Lily was prettier, smarter and had magical talents that Petunia didn’t.  Plus it seems she had a bit of a crush on Snape, but he only paid attention to Lily.  It wouldn’t be surprising if the Evans parents had lavished praise on their older daughter and encouraged Petunia to live up to her example.  (Note that we never hear about any special skills or hobbies Petunia has.)

Now I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that Vernon and Marge Dursley had a third sibling, one who was likewise special or awesome in some unusual way.  And likewise, Vernon grew up in the shadow

Vernon and Petunia found each other, someone to pay attention to just them.  They made the decision to have just one child to avoid the whole sibling rivalry thing.  Their treatment of Dudley just screams of a childish vow, “My kid won’t ever be second-hand, my kid is going to know he’s loved, because I’m going to give him the best of everything!”

Then Harry got dumped on them, and bitter resentment boiled over into abuse.