Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - J. K. Rowling [0]
forAnne, who loved them too;
andfor Di, who heard this one first.
Text copyright © 1997 by J.K. Rowling
Illustrations by Mary GrandPré copyright © 1998 Warner Bros.
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, a division of Scholastic Inc.,
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rowling, J.K.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone / by J.K. Rowling
p. cm.
Summary: Rescued from the outrageous neglect of his aunt and uncle, a young boy with a great destiny proves his worth while attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
ISBN 0-590-35340-3
[1. Fantasy — Fiction. 2. Witches — Fiction. 3. Wizards — Fiction.
4. Schools — Fiction. 5. England — Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.R79835Har 1998
[Fic] — dc21 97-39059
64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 05
Printed in U.S.A. 10
First American edition, October 1998
CONTENTS
ONE - The Boy Who Lived
TWO - The Vanishing Glass
THREE - The Letters From No One
FOUR - The Keeper of the Keys
FIVE - Diagon Alley
SIX - The Journey from Platform Nine and Three-quarters
SEVEN - The Sorting Hat
EIGHT - The Potions Master
NINE - The Midnight Duel
TEN - Halloween
ELEVEN - Quidditch
TWELVE - The Mirror of Erised
THIRTEEN - Nicholas Flamel
FOURTEEN - Norbert the Norwegian Ridgeback
FIFTEEN - The Forbidden Forest
SIXTEEN - Through the Trapdoor
SEVENTEEN - The Man with Two Faces
The Boy Who Lived
Mr. 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