Prologue
Mr and Mrs Dursley, of 4 Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were normal. Or at least as normal as someone who screams at the sight of weird coloured animals can be. In a few years their son would come home with a principal's note saying he was attacking a purple rat and Mr and Mrs Dursley would throw a party in celebration.
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. Everyone in the street said that there was actually no fatter boy behind their backs.
The Dursleys were always afraid that the street would find out about their estranged family the Potters. They were so afraid that when Mrs Dursley woke up one night at 9:30pm to a wailing and she found that the Potter's son was lying outside their door she slammed the door shut, locked it, and left him out there till morning. Eventually the milkman came and they were forced to take him in. The Dursleys both agreed that they would make sure that he would not shame them. By force if necessary.