Kim Do-Young and the Philosopher's Stone

- CHAPTER ONE -

The Boy Who Lived

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

Mr. Jung 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. Jung 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 Jungs had a small son called Hoseok and in their opinion there was no finer boy anywhere.

The Jungs 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 Kims. Mrs. Kim was Mrs. Jung's sister, but they hadn't met for several years; in fact, Mrs. Jung pretended she didn't have a sister, because her sister and her good-for-nothing husband were as unJungish as it was possible to be. The Jung shuddered to think what the neighbors would say if the Kims arrived in the street. The Jungs knew that the Kims had a small son, too, but they had never even seen him. This boy was another good reason for keeping the Kims away; they didn't want Hoseok mixing with a child like that.

When Mr. and Mrs. Jung 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. Jung hummed as he picked out his most boring tie for work, and Mrs. Jung gossiped away happily as she wrestled a screaming Hoseok into his high chair.

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

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

"Little tyke," chortled Mr. Jung as he left the house. He got into his car and backed out of number four's drive.

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. Jung 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. Jung blinked and stared at the cat. It stared back. As Mr. Jung 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. Jung 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 of strangely dressed people about. People in cloaks. Mr. Jung 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. Jung 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. Jung 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. Jung arrived in the Grunnings parking lot, his mind back on drills.