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- CHAPTER ONE -

The Boy Who Wasn't Going To Die Anyway



Mr and Mrs Potter of Godric's Hollow were proud to say that they were perfectly strange and weird, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything mundane or ordinary, because they just didn't hold with such sense.

Mr Potter had some sort of job that resulted in him having a lot of money. He was a scrawny man with jet-black hair. Mrs Potter was thin and ginger. The Potters had a small son called Harry and in their opinion there was no finer boy anywhere.

The Potters had everything they wanted, but they they also had a secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover it. They didn't think they could bear it if anyone found out about the Dursleys. Mrs Dursley was Mrs Potter's sister, but they hadn't met for several years. The Dursleys were as unPotterish as it was possible to be, and the Potter knew that they had a small son, too, but they had never even seen him.

When Mr and Mrs Potter woke up on the dull, grey Tuesday our story starts, a man had already arrived on a street corner.

Nothing like this man had ever been seen in Godric's Hollow. He was tall, thin and middle-aged, judging by his greying hair. He was wearing a grey suit and sensible black shoes. His grey eyes were dull and unremarkable behind his plain prescription glasses and his nose wasn't worth mentioning since there was nothing unusual about it at all. This man's name was Alfred Bumble.

Alfred Bumble didn't seem to realise that he had just arrived in a street where everything from his name to his shoes was unwelcome. He seemed to realise he was being watched, and saw that a rather severe-looking woman who was wearing square glasses had parked her car on the pavement next to him.

'Fancy seeing you here, Mrs McMonacle.'

'How did you know it was me?' she asked.

'My dear lady, I can see you through the window.'

The woman ignored him.

'Is it true that the Dursleys are dead?'

'Yes,' replied Bumble. 'They were as good as dead as soon as the car crashed. It could have killed Dudley. But - it didn't. It didn't kill that little boy. No one knows why, or how.'

'Air bags, I bet,' said Mrs McMonacle.

'Wait, I remember,' said Bumble. 'He wasn't in the car with them.'

'Bumble, I don't suppose you're going to tell me why you're here, of all places?'

'I've come to bring Dudley to his aunt and uncle. They're the only family he has left now.'

'You don't mean - you can't mean the people who live here?' cried Mrs McMonacle, jumping out of the car.

'It's the best place for him,' said Bumble firmly. 'His aunt and uncle will be able to explain everything to him when he's older. I've written them a letter.'

'But how is the boy getting here, Bumble?' She eyed his briefcase suddenly as though she thought he might be hiding Dudley inside it.

'Hackridge is brining him.'

A large motorbike pulled up pulled over beside them.

If the motorbike was big, the man sitting astride it certainly wasn't. He was almost half the size of a normal man, and so neat - short hair and clean shaven.

'Hackridge,' said Bumble. 'At last. And where did you get that motorbike?'

'Borrowed it from Stephen Black. I've got him, sir.'

Bumble took Dudley in his arms and turned towards the Potters' house. He stepped over the low garden wall and walked to the front doorstep, took a letter out of his briefcase, tucked it inside Dudley's blankets and then came back to the other two.

'Good luck, Dudley,' he murmured. He turned on his heel and made his way towards a parked car.

A breeze ruffled the living hedges of Godric's Hollow, the very last place you would expect ordinary things to happen. Dudley Dursley rolled over inside his blankets without waking up. One small hand closed on the letter beside him and he slept on, not knowing he was a novelty, not knowing that at this very moment, people reading the tabloids all over the country were mentioning in passing to their friends and colleagues: 'Poor Dudley Dursley - the boy who wasn't going to die anyway!'