Harry Styles and the Sorcerer's Stone

Chapter 1: The Boy Who Lived

Mr. And Mrs. Bieber, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were particularly normal, thank you very much. They were the the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense.

Mr. Bieber was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large mustache. Mrs. Bieber was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbors. The Biebers had a small son called Ross and in their opinion there was no finer boy anywhere.

The Biebers had everything they wanted, but 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 Styles. Mrs. Styles was Mrs. Bieber's sister, but they hadn't met for several years; in fact, Mrs. Bieber pretended she didn't have a sister, because her sister and good-for-nothing husband were as unBieberish would say if the Styles arrived in the street. The Biebers knew that the Styles had a small son, too, but they had never even seen him. This boy was another good reason for keeping the Styles away; they didn't want Ross mixing with a child like that.

When Mr. and Mrs. Bieber woke up on the dull, gray Tuesday our story starts, there was nothing about the cloudy sky outside to suggest that strange and mysterious things would soon be happening all over the country. Mr. Bieber hummed as he picked out his most boring tie for work, and Mrs. Bieber gossiped away happily as she wrestled a screaming Ross into his high chair.

None of the them noticed a large, tawny owl flutter past the window.

At half past eight, Mr. Bieber picked up his briefcase, pecked Mrs. Bieber on the cheek, and tried to kiss Ross good-bye but missed, because Ross was now having a tantrum and throwing his cereal at walls.

It was on the corner of the street that he noticed the first sign of something peculiar — a cat reading a map. For a second, Mr. Bieber didn't realize what he had seen — then he jerked his head around to look again. There was a tabby cat standing on the corner of Privet Drive, but there wasn't a map in sight. What could he have been thinking of? It must have been a trick of the light. Mr. Bieber blinked and stared at the cat. It stared back. As Mr. Bieber drove around the corner and up the road, he watched the cat in his mirror. It was now reading the sign that said Privet Drive — no, looking at the sign, cats couldn't read maps or signs. Mr. Bieber gave himself a little shake and put the cat out of his mind. As he drove toward town he thought of nothing except a large order of drills he was hoping to get that day.

But on the edge of town, drills were driven out of his mind by something else. As he sat in the usual morning traffic jam, he couldn't help noticing that there seemed to be a lot strangely dressed people about. People in cloaks. Mr. Bieber couldn't bear people who dressed in funny clothes — the getups you saw on young people! He supposed this was some stupid new fashion. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and his eyes fell on a huddle of these weirdos standing quite close by. They were whispering excitedly together. Mr. Bieber was enraged to see that a couple of them weren't young at all; why, that man had to be older than he was, and wearing an emerald-green cloak! The nerve of him! But then it struck Mr. Bieber that this was probably some silly stunt — these people were obviously collecting for something... yes, that would be it. The traffic moved on and a few minutes later, Mr. Bieber arrived in the Grunnings parking lot, his mind back on drills.

Mr. Bieber always sat at the back to the window in his office on the ninth floor. If he didn't, he might have found it harder to concentrate on drills that morning. He didn't see the owls swooping past in the broad daylight, though people down in the street did; they pointed and gazed open-mouthed as owl after owl sped overhead. Most of them had never seen an owl even at nighttime. Mr. Bieber, however, had a perfectly normal, owl-free morning. He yelled at five different people. He made several important telephone calls and shouted a bit more. He was in a very good mood until lunchtime, when he thought he'd stretch his legs and walk across the road to buy himself a bun from the bakery.