The thing I find most shocking of all was that at least according to book canon, Arthur and Molly never made a single attempt to invite Harry over during the summer of Prisoner of Azkaban??? Like this was after Ron directly told Molly that he was being starved with bars on his window! Molly knew this! There’s a reason this child lived with them for a whole month!
And then all of a sudden the next summer rolls around and the Weasleys were all like, “Lol nope we’re going on a vacation have fun with that convicted murderer who’s looking for you, here’s a photo of us having a good time without you.”
And of course Harry, my darling cinnamon roll of a child, is just sitting there half-starved with Dudley’s hand-me-downs hanging of of him, smiling like, “Oh wow, they had a lot of fun, I bet!”
And it’s like even when they came back, they still didn’t do a single thing to help Harry. Hang on, isn’t this also the summer of the telephone incident? Why would Ron even bother casually calling up Harry like he had to rescue him from his barred up bedroom! He should know that he can’t just call up Vernon and be like, “Hey, how’s it going, is Harry there?” No, Ron! He’s in his barred bedroom! ‘Sorry about that,’ he casually says in his note. His note! Why was his note, ‘Hey, look at how much fun we had’ and not ‘Hey, are you still alive?’
Why didn’t Arthur and Molly make an attempt to get him? Why didn’t Fred, George, and Ron show up to Privet Drive again?
Why were the Weasleys an amazing surrogate family to Harry except for this one time when they severely dropped the ball and nearly got the poor child expelled because he had to use magic to stand up to his abusive relatives?
Did Jo just think we would get tired of two similar summers? Because we wouldn’t have! If it meant that Harry was in a loving, household, I’d be fine if she had just copied and pasted the entire The Burrow chapter. Or hell, if you need something original, send Harry to Egypt with them. Don’t just have the entire Weasley family randomly forget about this boy! It’s so out-of-character!
They would never…
*sing song voice* fucking thANK YOU
Except I bet you anything it was fucking Dumbledore. How much do you want to bet that Molly and Arthur were LIVID, ready to haze Privet Drive to the ground, and he’d cut them off with bullshit about how sorry he was about it, but “no matter how much you love the boy Molly, he’s not blood, and Lily’s sacrifice and blood magic is the only thing that can TRULY protect him.”
And then probably rigged it that they’d win the money as a distraction.
Ugh, I mean, yea, I know there are legitimate Reasons they couldn’t do that, and as @dorkosaurus-prime points out, the Weasley’s do have their life outside of Harry and his ordeals. It’s not fair to expect that of them, but the narrative just felt so jarring between books now with hindsight, which is less a “the Weasley’s are questionable” and more a “with hindsight JK Rowling has the narrative cohesion of a chocolate tea kettle”.
I feel like this is especially poignant because literal months ago the boy fought a basilisk to the death, saved their daughter, and proceeded to become a hero again after being a pariah for almost a whole year. (Never even minding the ptsd following that and having dealt with a professor who actively tried to sell his soul for some gold. Trustworthy adults who? Harry doesn’t know her.)
Cheloneuniverse 