In the cold opening of the first Harry Potter movie, Albus Dumbledore, accompanied by Minerva McGonagall and Rubeus Hagrid drop off an infant Harry on his Muggle aunt and uncle's doorstep. While Minerva is somewhat unsure about Dumbledore's decision, and Hagrid doesn't want to part with the baby at all, Dumbledore knows what he's doing. He leaves a letter addressed in Mr. And Mrs. V. Dursley's name with baby Harry and wishes him good luck. Cut to ten years later, and an undernourished Harry is woken up by the loud knocking of an apron-clad woman, named Aunt Petunia. It's Harry's cousin, Dudley's eleventh birthday, and the Dursleys have planned a trip to the zoo.
"Why don't you just cook the breakfast, and try not to burn anything," commands Aunt Petunia at the beginning of the first Harry Potter movie. Dudley flies into a rage for receiving thirty-six presents, one less than his previous birthday, and Harry's head shake conveys disgust at his bratty cousin. Little Harry is neither happy, nor well-fed at the Dursleys, and he performs various domestic duties around the house. He wears Dudley's hand-me-downs and his glasses are held together by Scotch tape. J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone provides a deeper insight into Harry's miserable living situation before joining Hogwarts as a first-year student. Harsh and unfair as they may be, these experiences nurtured the wizard in him.
The Boy Who Lived
Chapter two of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone "The Vanishing Glass" takes place almost ten years from the day the Dursleys of Number Four, Privet Drive found baby Harry on their doorstep. Dudley had grown into a fine young boy, while Harry was smaller and skinnier for his age. The Dursleys displayed family photographs on their mantel, but Harry was nowhere in them. It's as if he wasn't a member of their household at all. Harry's living space - the dark cupboard under the stairs was full of spiders. As for the explanation about his thin scar, Aunt Petunia had lied to him, saying he got in the car crash when his parents died. The Dursleys forbade Harry from asking questions, and the boy had to uphold his condition as sacrosanct.
Chapter 2 includes strange incidents that didn't make it in the book-to-screen adaptation of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Harry's hair, for instance, grew fast and as expected, the Dursleys were tired of him coming back from the barber's. Aunt Petunia once cut his hair with a pair of kitchen scissors, leaving him with nothing but bangs to hide his forehead scar. Surprisingly, Harry's hair had grown overnight, and it looked as if he hadn't shorn it at all. Though he was saved from humiliation, he was grounded for a week. In another instance, Aunt Petunia also forced Dudley's brown jumper down Harry's neck. But the problem was, it shrunk with every try. Tired, Aunt Petunia concluded the sweater must have shrunk in the wash and stopped trying.
The Dursleys left Harry in Mrs. Figg's care every year on Dudley's birthday while they went on outings to adventure parks, movies, and hamburger restaurants. Mrs. Figg's house smelled of cabbage and Harry hated spending time there. On Dudley's eleventh birthday, however, Mrs. Figg suffered an injury, leaving the Dursleys with no choice but to take Harry to the zoo. While Dudley didn't want Harry to come, Aunt Petunia wouldn't let him stay alone in the house either. Before they drove to the zoo, Uncle Vernon threatened to ground Harry in his cupboard if he misbehaved or some such. And with that, Harry sat in Vernon's car with the bullies, Dudley, and his best friend, Piers Polkiss. Chapter 2 of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone says that Harry tried in vain to explain to his uncle and aunt that he wasn't behind the strange things that happened around him.
Harry Potter's Eleventh Birthday
Dudley and his gang of bullies gave Harry a hard time at school. Once, during one such chase, he had been found sitting on the roof of the school kitchens. The Dursleys had received a letter from the headmistress and while Harry maintained all he had done was jump behind the cans outside the kitchen, he was reprimanded. On their way over to the zoo, Harry mentioned he'd once dreamt of a flying motorbike, and unsurprisingly, Vernon yelled at him, saying, "Motorbikes don't fly!" Dudley's birthday is infamously remembered for the vanishing glass incident (featured in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone) wherein Dudley fell into a snake tank while it escaped. Vernon blamed Harry for the mishap and sent him to the cupboard without any meals.
Up until his eleventh birthday, Harry was told his parents had died in a car crash. Although he couldn't remember it, he had a vision of a blinding flash of green light and experienced intense pain on his forehead whenever he thought intensely about it. Harry believed this green flash of light was the crash. Petunia and Vernon never spoke about the Potters and Harry knew not to ask any questions. Chapter 3 of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone "The Letters From No One" delves into how Hogwarts pursued Harry, right from the first letter to the thirty/forty letters that came out of the Dursley's fireplace. Harry wasn't allowed to read his first letter, (or the subsequent ones) because the Dursleys didn't want him attending Hogwarts. He was moved into Dudley's second bedroom and asked to take his stuff upstairs.
While Uncle Vernon nailed up the mailbox, the letters were pushed under the door. When everything else failed, Vernon ordered Petunia and the rest to pack up and he drove off. The Dursleys and Harry spent the night at a hotel on the outskirts, and the next morning at breakfast, a hundred Hogwarts letters arrived for Harry. Vernon intercepted this bunch and drove off with no one knowing where they were headed. Finally, a day before Harry's eleventh birthday, Vernon showed the family a shack in the middle of a sea. While he thought the letters couldn't reach Harry anymore, little did he know the Keeper of the Keys, Hagrid (played by Robbie Coltrane in Harry Potter) would arrive to collect Harry at midnight of his eleventh birthday and tell him about his magical heritage. With this, began a fresh chapter in Harry Potter's life and it was never the same again.