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 made drills. He was a big, beefy
man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large mustache. Mrs. Dursley was thin and
blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so
much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbors. The Dursleys had a small
son called Dudley and in their opinion there was no finer boy anywhere.
The Dursleys had everything they wanted, but they also had a secret, and their greatest fear was
that somebody would discover it. They didn't think 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 her sister and her good-for-nothing
husband were as unDursleyish as it was possible to be. The Dursleys shuddered to think what the
neighbors would say if the Potters arrived in the street. The Dursleys knew that the Potters
had a small son, too, but they had never even seen him. This boy was another good reason for
keeping the Potters away; they didn't want Dudley mixing with a child like that.When Mr. and
Mrs. Dursley woke up on the dull, gray Tuesday our story starts, there was nothing about the
cloudy sky outside to suggest that strange and mysterious things would soon be happening all
over the country. Mr. Dursley hummed as he picked out his most boring tie for work, and Mrs.
Dursley gossiped away happily as she wrestled a screaming Dudley 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 the walls.
“Little tyke,” chortled Mr. Dursley as he left the house. He got into his car and backed out
of number four's drive.
It was on the corner of the street that he noticed the first sign of something peculiar - a cat
reading a map. For a second, Mr. Dursley didn't realize what he had seen — then he jerked his
head around to look again. There was a tabby cat standing on the corner of Privet Drive, but
there wasn't a map in sight. What could he have been thinking of? It must have been a trick of
the light. Mr. Dursley blinked and stared at the cat. It stared back. As Mr. Dursley drove around
the corner and up the road, he watched the cat in his mirror. It was now reading the sign that
said Privet Drive — no, looking at the sign; cats couldn't read maps or signs. Mr. Dursley gave
himself a little shake and put the cat out of his mind. As he drove toward town he thought of
nothing 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 something else. As he sat in the
usual morning traffic jam, he couldn't help noticing that there seemed to be a lot of strangely
dressed people about. People in cloaks. Mr. Dursley couldn't bear people who dressed in funny
clothes — the getups you saw on young people! He supposed this was some stupid new fashion. He
drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and his eyes fell on a huddle of these weirdos standing
quite close by. They were whispering excitedly together. Mr. Dursley was enraged to see that a
couple of them weren't young at all; why, that man had to be older than he was, and wearing an
emerald-green cloak! The nerve of him! But then it struck Mr. Dursley that this was probably some
silly stunt — these people were obviously collecting for something… yes, that would be it. 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 the ninth
floor. If he hadn't, he might have found it harder to concentrate on drills that morning. He
didn't see the owls swooping past in broad daylight, though people down in the street did; they
pointed and gazed open-mouthed as owl after owl sped overhead. Most of them had never seen an owl
even at nighttime. Mr. Dursley, however, had a perfectly normal, owl-free morning. He yelled at
five different people. He made several important telephone calls and shouted a bit more. He was
in a very good mood until lunchtime, when he thought he'd stretch his legs and walk across the
road to buy himself a bun from the bakery.
He'd forgotten all about the people in cloaks until he passed a group of them next to the baker's.
“— yes, their son, Harry—”
Mr. Dursley stopped dead. Fear flooded him. He looked back at the whisperers as if he wanted to
say something to them, but thought better of it.
He dashed back across the road, hurried up to his office, snapped at his secretary not to disturb
him, seized his telephone, and had almost finished dialing his home number when he changed his
mind. He put the receiver back down and stroked his mustache, thinking… no, he was being stupid.
Potter wasn't such an unusual name. He was sure there were lots of people called Potter who had a
son called Harry. Come to think of it, he wasn't even sure his nephew was called Harry. He'd
never even seen the boy. It might have been Harvey. Or Harold. There was no point in worrying Mrs.
t five o'clock, he was still so worried that he walked straight into someone just outside the
door.
“Sorry,” he grunted, as the tiny old man stumbled and almost fell. It was a few seconds before
Mr. Dursley realized that the man was wearing a violet cloak. He didn't seem at all upset at being
almost knocked to the ground. On the contrary, his face split into a wide smile and he said in a
squeaky voice that made passersby stare, “Don't be sorry, my dear sir, for nothing could upset
me today! Rejoice, for You-Know-Who has gone at last! Even Muggles like yourself should be celebrati
ng,
this happy, happy day!”And the old man hugged Mr. Dursley around the middle and walked off.
Mr. Dursley stood rooted to the spot. He had been hugged by a complete stranger. He also thought
he had been called a Muggle, whatever that was. He was rattled. He hurried to his car and set off
for home, hoping he was imagining things, which he had never hoped before, because he didn't approve
of imagination.
As he pulled into the driveway of number four, the first thing he saw — and it didn't improve his mo
od
— was the tabby cat he'd spotted that morning. It was now sitting on his garden wall. He was sure
it was the same one; it had the same markings around its eyes.
“Shoo!” said Mr. Dursley loudly.
The cat didn't move. It just gave him a stern look. Was this normal cat behavior? Mr. Dursley
wondered. Trying to pull himself together, he let himself into the house. He was still determined
not to mention anything to his wife.
Mrs. Dursley had had a nice, normal day. She told him over dinner all about Mrs. Next Door's
problems with her daughter and how Dudley had learned a new word ("Won't!"). Mr. Dursley tried
to act normally. When Dudley had been put to bed, he went into the living room in time to catch
the last report on the evening news:
“And finally, bird-watchers everywhere have reported that the nation's owls have been behaving
very unusually today. Although owls normally hunt at night and are hardly ever seen in daylight,
there have been hundreds of sightings of these birds flying in every direction since sunrise.
Experts are unable to explain why the owls have suddenly changed their sleeping pattern.” The
newscaster allowed himself a grin. “Most mysterious. And now, over to Jim McGuffin with the
weather. Going to be any more showers of owls tonight, Jim?”
“Well, Ted,” said the weatherman, “I don't know about that, but it's not only the owls that
have been acting oddly today. Viewers as far apart as Kent, Yorkshire, and Dundee have been
phoning in to tell me that instead of the rain I promised yesterday, they've had a downpour
“Harry. Nasty, common name, if you ask me.”
“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Dursley, his heart sinking horribly. “Yes, I quite agree.”
“How did you know it was me?” she asked.
“My dear Professor, I've never seen a cat sit so stiffly.”
“You'd be stiff if you'd been sitting on a brick wall all day,” said Professor McGonagall.
Hagrid gingerly on the arm as Dumbledore stepped over the low garden wall and walked to the front
door. He laid Harry gently on the doorstep, took a letter out of his cloak, tucked it inside
Harry's blankets, and then came back to the other two. For a full minute the three of them
stood and looked at the little bundle; Hagrid's shoulders shook, Professor McGonagall
blinked furiously, and the twinkling light that usually shone from Dumbledore's eyes seemed to
have gone out.
“Well,” said Dumbledore finally, “that's that. We've no business staying here. We may as well
go and join the celebrations.”
“Yeah,” said Hagrid in a very muffled voice, “I'll be takin’ Sirius his bike back. G'night,
Professor McGonagall — Professor Dumbledore, sir.”
Wiping his streaming eyes on his jacket sleeve, Hagrid swung himself onto the motorcycle and
kicked the engine into life; with a roar it rose into the air and off into the night.
“I shall see you soon, I expect, Professor McGonagall,” said Dumbledore, nodding to her.
Professor McGonagall blew her nose in reply.
Dumbledore turned and walked back down the street. On the corner he stopped and took out the
silver Put-Outer. He clicked it once, and twelve balls of light sped back to their street lamps
so that Privet Drive glowed suddenly orange and he could make out a tabby cat slinking around
the corner at the other end of the street. He could just see the bundle of blankets on the step
of number four.
“Good luck, Harry,” he murmured. He turned on his heel and with a swish of his cloak, he was gone.
A breeze ruffled the neat hedges of Privet Drive, which lay silent and tidy under the inky sky,
the very last place you would expect astonishing things to happen. Harry Potter rolled over
inside his blankets without waking up. One small hand closed on the letter beside him and he
slept on, not knowing he was special, not knowing he was famous, not knowing he would be woken
in a few hours’ time by Mrs. Dursley's scream as she opened the front door to put out the milk
bottles, nor that he would spend the next few weeks being prodded and pinched by his cousin
Dudley… He couldn't know that at this very moment, people meeting in secret all over the
country were holding up their glasses and saying in hushed voices: “To Harry Potter —
the boy who lived!”