Unveiling Harry Potter's Mysterious Life Before Hogwarts

In the opening scene of the first Harry Potter movie, Albus Dumbledore, accompanied by Minerva McGonagall and Rubeus Hagrid, leaves an infant Harry on the doorstep of his Muggle aunt and uncle's home. While Minerva is hesitant about the decision and Hagrid is reluctant to part with the baby, Dumbledore is confident in his plan. He leaves a letter addressed to Mr. and Mrs. V. Dursley along with baby Harry and wishes him good luck. Fast forward ten years later, and Harry, malnourished and underfed, is awoken by his cousin's eleventh birthday celebration. Aunt Petunia orders him to cook breakfast while Dudley throws a tantrum over receiving one less present than the previous year. Harry's head shake reveals his disdain for his spoiled cousin. His life with the Dursleys is far from ideal, but it's these harsh experiences that ultimately shape him into the wizard he becomes at Hogwarts.

The Boy Who Lived

Chapter two of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, "The Vanishing Glass," takes place a decade after Harry was left on the doorstep of the Dursleys' residence. Dudley has grown into a strapping young boy, while Harry remains small and skinny for his age. Despite the family photographs on the mantel, Harry is conspicuously absent from them, as if he were not even part of the household. Harry's living quarters consist of a dark, spider-infested cupboard under the stairs, and Aunt Petunia has lied to him about the origin of his thin scar, claiming it resulted from a car crash when his parents died. The Dursleys forbid Harry from asking questions, and he is forced to maintain his silence.

Chapter 2 features several peculiar incidents that were not included in the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Harry's hair, for example, grows unusually quickly, prompting the Dursleys to grow tired of taking him to the barber. One day, Aunt Petunia takes matters into her own hands and cuts Harry's hair with a pair of kitchen scissors, leaving him with a fringe to cover his forehead scar. To their surprise, Harry's hair grows back overnight, as if he had never cut it at all. Although he is spared humiliation, he is grounded for a week. In another instance, Aunt Petunia attempts to force Dudley's brown sweater over Harry's head, but it shrinks with each attempt. Frustrated, Aunt Petunia concludes that the sweater must have shrunk in the wash and gives up.

On Dudley's birthday, the Dursleys usually left Harry in the care of Mrs. Figg while they went out for fun activities. However, Mrs. Figg's house had a strong smell of cabbage which Harry detested. But on Dudley's eleventh birthday, Mrs. Figg got injured, forcing the Dursleys to take Harry to the zoo with them. Even though Dudley was against it, Aunt Petunia refused to leave Harry alone in the house. Before leaving for the zoo, Uncle Vernon threatened Harry with punishment if he misbehaved. Reluctantly, Harry joined Dudley and his friend Piers Polkiss in Vernon's car. As stated in Chapter 2 of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry tried in vain to convince his aunt and uncle that he wasn't responsible for the strange occurrences around him.

During his time at school, Harry often found himself being harassed by Dudley and his gang of bullies. On one occasion, they chased him all the way to the roof of the school kitchens where he was eventually caught. Despite Harry's insistence that he had only been hiding behind the cans outside the kitchen, the headmistress reprimanded him after the incident.

While on their way to the zoo, Harry mentioned to the Dursleys that he had once dreamt of a flying motorbike. However, his comment was met with ridicule from Vernon who shouted, "Motorbikes don't fly!"

Dudley's birthday was infamous for the vanishing glass incident, which was featured in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. During the incident, Dudley fell into a snake tank while the snake escaped. Vernon blamed Harry for the mishap and punished him by sending him to the cupboard without any meals.

Harry grew up believing that his parents had died in a car crash. He had a vague memory of a blinding green light and a sharp pain in his forehead, which he assumed was the crash. Petunia and Vernon never spoke about the Potters, and Harry knew better than to ask. However, Chapter 3 of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, "The Letters From No One," reveals how Hogwarts pursued Harry from the very beginning. The Dursleys did not want Harry to attend Hogwarts, so they refused to let him read any of the letters that arrived for him.

Despite their efforts, the letters kept coming. They were pushed under the door and even appeared out of the fireplace. Uncle Vernon tried to escape the onslaught by taking the family to a hotel, but the letters found them there too. Finally, on the eve of Harry's eleventh birthday, Vernon took the family to a secluded shack in the middle of a sea, thinking that the letters could not follow them. However, he was mistaken. At midnight, Hagrid, the Keeper of the Keys, arrived to collect Harry and inform him of his magical heritage. This marked the beginning of a new chapter in Harry's life, one that would be far from ordinary.