#starkid avmp

I realized recently that something I had thought for the past decade was a plot hole in the A Very Potter Musical trilogy is not actually a plot hole.  At the end of AVPS, Harry asks Dumbledore why he had to grow up in the muggle world, and Dumbledore says he didn’t want Harry to grow up in a place where all of this wasn’t special.  But Harry doesn’t ask the follow-up question: given that he had to grow up in the muggle world, why did Dumbledore leave him with abusive muggles instead of a foster family who would actually love him?  The musicals never explain it, and until recently I thought it was a plot hole.  The books do explain it, but that explanation is tied with the books’ handling of elves for my least favorite plot point in the series, so I greatly preferred not having it answered in the musicals.

But recently I asked myself: how do we know the Dursleys are abusive?  Maybe they aren’t abusive at all, and Lockhart simply changed them to be abusive in the books to make it sell better.  At the beginning of AVPM, Harry says he doesn’t deserve the rules made by the Dursleys.  But Harry is 12, so him thinking his guardians are making bad rules doesn’t necessarily mean they were actually bad parents.  And he’d rather go back to Hogwarts than stay with the Dursleys, but in the song itself Harry focuses more on how awesome Hogwarts is and and how awesome being the Boy Who Lived is than how he wants to get away from bad family.

In AVPS, Harry tells Hermione that before coming to Hogwarts, he was not a popular kid in the muggle world: he was what’s known as a douchebag.  He assures her that even though she wasn’t popular in the muggle world either, she can be cool and have a place in Hogwarts (and write his ancient runes essay, of course).  That conversation suggests Harry prefers the magic world due to the social interactions with his peers, not due to having a bad muggle family.  And crucially, When Dumbledore gives his talk about our time away from Hogwarts being what makes it special, Harry doesn’t think to ask Dumbledore the follow-up question, perhaps because Harry himself realizes the Dursleys aren’t a bad family: they just treat him like a normal kid and not a superhero.

Now, I admit there are some possible issues with this interpretation.  In AVPS, Harry tells Ron he’s been living in a cupboard under the stairs.  That could be explained by assuming the Dursleys are poor, not mean, which would make it extra exciting for Harry when he discovers he is rich in the wizarding world.  However, I admit that probably isn’t what the Lang brothers were thinking.

Then there’s the entire song “To Have a Home.”  Again, it’s at least possible that Harry feels more at home at Hogwarts because he has a whole school of peers who think he’s cool and isn’t worried about having enough to eat, in a way he wouldn’t feel in the tiny house of the Dursleys (if they are poor) and having no friends.  This could be similar to how, in NMT Season 2, Episode 4, Hannah feels more at ease around her psychic teenage friends than she previously felt in Lex’s tiny appartment, despite the fact that she has a perfectly loving guardian.

I should also note that it’s been several years since I did a full rewatch of AVPS, so there might be other issues with this idea that I forgot about.