CHAPTER ONE
ing past in broad daylight, though people down in the street did;
they pointed and gazed open-mouthed as owl after owl sped over-
head. 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 tele-
phone 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 Pot-
ter 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
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