BatmanvsRed Hood

not voted M r. 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 fi rm 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.
e Dursleys had a small
son called Dudley and in their opinion there was no fi ner boy
anywhere. the Dursleys had everything they wanted, but they also had a
secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover it.

ey 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. e Dursleys shuddered
to think what the neighbors would say if the Potters arrived in the
street. e Dursleys knew that the Potters had a small son, too, but
they had never even seen him. is 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 fl utter 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 fi rst 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. ere 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 traffi c 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 fi ngers on the steering wheel and his eyes fell on a
huddle of these weirdos standing quite close by. ey 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! e 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. e traffi c moved on and a few minutes
later, Mr. Dursley arrived in the Grunnings parking lot, his mind
back on drills.