Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened.

There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.

Harry Potter was a highly unusual boy in many ways.