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
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.
