Mr. and Mrs. Dursley live at number 4, Privet Drive.
They are a perfectly normal family. They do not like anything that is different or strange, and they hate mysterious things most of all.
They prefer a life that is calm, ordinary and without any surprises.
Mr. Dursley is the director of a large company. He is a very fat man, with a very short neck.
He has a large mustache. Mrs. Dursley, his wife, is thin and has blond hair.
Her neck is extremely long. She uses her long neck to look over the fence in her garden.
She likes to watch her neighbors. She is a gossip.
The Dursleys have a young son. His name is Dudley.
The Dursleys think Dudley is the perfect son.
The Dursleys have everything they want. But they also have a secret!
Mrs. Dursley has a sister. Her name is Mrs. Potter.
But Mrs. Dersley pretends she does not have a sister. She pretends she does not have a sister because her sister does not live a normal, ordinary life.
Mrs. Potter and her husband are very strange and very different.
They are very un-Dursley. Like the Dursleys, the Potters have a young son, too,
but the Dursleys do not want their son, Dudley, to be around the Potters’ son.
The Dursleys wake up one Tuesday morning. It seems like a perfectly normal Tuesday morning.
But the day is about to change. It is about to become very strange and mysterious.
The Dursleys HATE strange and mysterious things.
While driving to work, Mr. Dursley sees the first strange thing of the day.
Near his house, he sees a cat reading a map!
Or, at least, he thinks he sees a cat reading a map. His eyes must be playing games with him.
Later, while he is waiting in traffic, he notices many people wearing strange clothes -
they are wearing colorful cloaks and capes!
Who wears colorful cloaks like that at this time of the year, he thinks to himself!
It must be a stupid new fashion that the young people are following.
But he notices that some of the strange people are not young at all.
They are very old. But the traffic moves forward, and Mr. Dursley forgets about all the strange people he sees.
His day at work is very normal. He yells at many people.
He makes some important calls, and then he decides to go across the street and have lunch.
When he is about to enter his favorite bakery to order a sandwich,
he notices another group of people dressed in strange clothes.
They are talking together in a group. They seem very excited about something.