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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone |
CHAPTER ONE |
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 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 swoop ing 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. He eyed them angrily as he passed. He didn't |
know why, but they made him uneasy. This bunch were whispering |
excitedly, too, and he couldn't see a single collecting tin. It was on |
his way back past them, clutching a large doughnut in a bag, that he |
caught a few words of what they were saying. |
"The Potters, that's right, that's what I heard 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. Dursley; she always got so upset at any mention of her |
sister. He didn't blame her -- if he'd had a sister like that... but all |
the same, those people in cloaks... |
He found it a lot harder to concentrate on drills that afternoon and |
when he left the building at 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 |
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