The people swarmed over the charred remains of what had once been a nice little house in a quiet neighborhood. All evidence that it had ever been lived in had been lost in the fire, all except a pair of round glasses. The glass hadn't even been broken on these, and one man picked them up, remarking to his wife, "These'll go well at a shop. I figure that we can make a bit off of them." He shoved them into his pocket.
Later on, he sold them at a small eyeglass shop in London. Three years later, the burnt house had long since been rebuilt, and the little eyeglass shop was going out of sale. "Eye tests: two for the price of one!" the sign outside read in blaring red letters. Even still, they didn't get any customers until one day, when a heavyset man came in with a thin woman and two boys, one of whom was immense and blond, and the other who was exactly the opposite: short, thin, and with jet black hair.
"Saw your sign!" the man roared, "I want my son checked on the double." The shopkeeper nodded quickly and prepared a room for the testing. The blond boy whined constantly.
"Daddy, I don't want to have my eyes checked! Don't make me have my eyes checked, Daddy!" When this didn't work, he appealed to his mother, who looked troubled but said nothing.
"Nonsense, my boy, it's all for your own good!" The boy sat down on the ground and proceeded to throw a temper tantrum. His father heaved him to his feet, with some difficulty, and together the mother and father carted him into the testing room.
Meanwhile, the other boy, who had been very quiet, had proceeded to look at the different pairs of glasses. There weren't very many, and nearly all of them were the cheap kind. One pair, however, caught his eye. They were round and black, and when he tried them on, he could see perfectly. He looked at his image in the mirror. His eyes, magnified by the glasses, stared back. He looked rather odd looking, such a small face in big glasses, but he grew attatched to them nonetheless.
The rest of the family, plus the shopkeeper, came back out of the back room, the son wailing away.
"Come on, boy, we haven't got all day," the man snarled. "And take those glasses off." The shopkeeper saw an opening.
"But sir, surely you must have seen our sign!" he said. "Two for the price of one!" I'll test your other son immediately." He had taken him into the little room directly, before the man or his wife could say anything.
The small boy looked through a strange contraption. His view of the letters changed as mechanisms clicked. He was fascinated. Finally, the shopkeeper said that he was done, then he said some strange numbers that the boy couldn't remember.
He obediently followed his family out into the main office, where the shopkeeper put on a pair of strange looking glasses and looked at a long list.
"You're in luck!" the shopkeeper said, "There's one pair that matches his perscription." The man tried to say something, but the woman beat him to it.
"No, that's really alright. We aren't prepared to pay anything just yet."
"I'll throw it in for free, then," the shopkeeper said, "No use keeping anything around." He chuckled as he walked over to the display of glasses, and he pulled out- the boy's heart leapt- the very pair of glasses that he had wanted.
The boy stuck his hands out solemnly to take the glasses, the shopkeeper handed them to him, and they were his, finally. The adults around him were saying something about them not fitting, but the boy wanted to leap for joy. They fit perfectly, he thought, pushing them up his nose.
It was like this that they left the store, and it was like this that it came to pass that Harry Potter got his father's glasses.