| Harry Potter 1 |
| 1 | THE BOY WHO LIVED Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious,because they just didn't hold with such nonsense. Mr. Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which madedrills. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he didhave a very large mustache. |
| 2 | Mrs. Dursley was thin and blonde and hadnearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as shespent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on theneighbors. The Dursleys had a small son called Dudley and in theiropinion there was no finer boy anywhere. The Dursleys had everything they wanted, but they also had a secret, andtheir greatest fear was that somebody would discover it. |
| 3 | They didn'tthink they could bear it if anyone found out about the Potters. Mrs.Potter was Mrs. Dursley's sister, but they hadn't met for several years;in fact, Mrs. Dursley pretended she didn't have a sister, because hersister and her good-for-nothing husband were as unDursleyish as it waspossible to be. The Dursleys shuddered to think what the neighbors wouldsay if the Potters arrived in the street. |
| 4 | The Dursleys knew that thePotters had a small son, too, but they had never even seen him. This boywas another good reason for keeping the Potters away; they didn't wantDudley mixing with a child like that. When Mr. and Mrs. Dursley woke up on the dull, gray Tuesday our storystarts, there was nothing about the cloudy sky outside to suggest thatstrange and mysterious things would soon be happening all over thecountry. |
| 5 | Mr. Dursley hummed as he picked out his most boring tie forwork, and Mrs. Dursley gossiped away happily as she wrestled a screamingDudley into his high chair. None of them noticed a large, tawny owl flutter past the window. At half past eight, Mr. Dursley picked up his briefcase, pecked Mrs.Dursley on the cheek, and tried to kiss Dudley good-bye but missed,because Dudley was now having a tantrum and throwing his cereal at thewalls. |
| 6 | "Little tyke," chortled Mr. Dursley as he left the house. He gotinto his car and backed out of number four's drive. It was on the corner of the street that he noticed the first sign ofsomething peculiar -- a cat reading a map. For a second, Mr. Dursleydidn't realize what he had seen -- then he jerked his head around tolook again. There was a tabby cat standing on the corner of PrivetDrive, but there wasn't a map in sight. |
| 7 | What could he have been thinkingof? It must have been a trick of the light. Mr. Dursley blinked andstared at the cat. It stared back. As Mr. Dursley drove around thecorner and up the road, he watched the cat in his mirror. It was nowreading the sign that said Privet Drive -- no, looking at the sign; catscouldn't read maps or signs. Mr. Dursley gave himself a little shake andput the cat out of his mind. |
| 8 | As he drove toward town he thought ofnothing except a large order of drills he was hoping to get that day. But on the edge of town, drills were driven out of his mind by somethingelse. As he sat in the usual morning traffic jam, he couldn't helpnoticing that there seemed to be a lot of strangely dressed peopleabout. People in cloaks. Mr. Dursley couldn't bear people who dressed infunny clothes -- the getups you saw on young people! He supposed thiswas some stupid new fashion. |
| 9 | He drummed his fingers on the steeringwheel and his eyes fell on a huddle of these weirdos standing quiteclose by. They were whispering excitedly together. Mr. Dursley wasenraged to see that a couple of them weren't young at all; why, that manhad to be older than he was, and wearing an emerald-green cloak! Thenerve of him! But then it struck Mr. Dursley that this was probably somesilly stunt -- these people were obviously collecting for something...yes, that would be it. |
| 10 | The traffic moved on and a few minutes later, Mr.Dursley arrived in the Grunnings parking lot, his mind back on drills. Mr. Dursley always sat with his back to the window in his office on theninth floor. If he hadn't, he might have found it harder to concentrateon drills that morning. He didn't see the owls swoop ing past in broaddaylight, though people down in the street did; they pointed and gazedopen- mouthed as owl after owl sped overhead. |
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