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HP 1 - Harry Potter and the

Sorcerer's Stone

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Harry Potter

&

The Sorcerer’s Stone

by J.K. Rowling

HP 1 - Harry Potter and the

Sorcerer's Stone

CHAPTER ONE

THE BOY WHO LIVED

M r. and Mrs. Dursley, 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. Dursley 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. Dursley 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 Dursleys had a

small son called Dudley and in their opinion there was no finer boy anywhere.

The Dursleys 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 Potters. Mrs. Potter was Mrs.

Dursley’s sister, but they hadn’t met for several years; in fact, Mrs. Dursley

pretended she didn’t have a sister, because her sister and her good-for-nothing

husband were as unDursleyish as it was possible to be. The Dursleys shuddered

to think what the neighbors would say if the Potters arrived in the street. The

Dursleys knew that the Potters had a small son, too, but they had never even

seen him. This boy was another good reason for keeping the Potters away; they

didn’t want Dudley mixing with a child like that.

When Mr. and Mrs. Dursley 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. Dursley

hummed as he picked out his most boring tie for work, and Mrs. Dursley

gossiped away happily as she wrestled a screaming Dudley into his high chair.

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

At half past eight, Mr. Dursley picked up his briefcase, pecked Mrs.

Dursley on the cheek, and tried to kiss Dudley good-bye but missed, because

Dudley was now having a tantrum and throwing his cereal at the walls.

“Little tyke,” chortled Mr. Dursley 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. Dursley 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. Dursley blinked and stared at the cat. It stared back. As Mr. Dursley

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. Dursley 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.

Dursley 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.

Dursley 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. Dursley 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. Dursley arrived in the

Grunnings parking lot, his mind back on drills.

Mr. Dursley always sat with his back to the window in his office on the

ninth floor. If he hadn’t, he might have found it harder to concentrate on drills

that morning. He didn’t see the owls swooping past in 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.

Dursley, 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.

He’d for gotten all about the people in cloaks until he passed a group of

them next to the baker’s. He eyed them angrily as he passed. He didn’t know

why, but they made him uneasy. This bunch were whispering excitedly, too, and

he couldn’t see a single collecting tin. It was on his way back past them,

clutching a large doughnut in a bag, that he caught a few words of what they

were saying.

“The Potters, that’s right, that’s what I heard —”

“ — yes, their son, Harry —”

Mr. Dursley stopped dead. Fear flooded him. He looked back at the

whisperers as if he wanted to say something to them, but thought better of it.

He dashed back across the road, hurried up to his office, snapped at his

secretary not to disturb him, seized his telephone, and had almost finished

dialing his home number when he changed his mind. He put the receiver back

down and stroked his mustache, thinking…no, he was being stupid. Potter