CHAPTER TWO
couldn’t remember his parents at all. His aunt and uncle never
spoke about them, and of course he was forbidden to ask questions.
There were no photographs of them in the house.
When he had been younger, Harry had dreamed and dreamed of
some unknown relation coming to take him away, but it had never
happened; the Dursleys were his only family. Yet sometimes he
thought (or maybe hoped) that strangers in the street seemed to
know him. Very strange strangers they were, too. A tiny man in a
violet top hat had bowed to him once while out shopping with
Aunt Petunia and Dudley. After asking Harry furiously if he knew
the man, Aunt Petunia had rushed them out of the shop without
buying anything. A wild-looking old woman dressed all in green
had waved merrily at him once on a bus. A bald man in a very long
purple coat had actually shaken his hand in the street the other day
and then walked away without a word. The weirdest thing about all
these people was the way they seemed to vanish the second Harry
tried to get a closer look.
At school, Harry had no one. Everybody knew that Dudley’s
gang hated that odd Harry Potter in his baggy old clothes and bro-
ken glasses, and nobody liked to disagree with Dudley’s gang.
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