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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 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 Dursley s 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

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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
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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
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