Bloomsbury HP 1 harry potter and the philosopher''s stone

Harry Potter and the
Philosopher’s Stone








Titles available in the Harry Potter series

(in reading order):
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Titles available in the Harry Potter series

(in Latin):
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

(in Welsh, Ancient Greek and Irish):
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone



Harry Potter and the
Philosopher’s Stone
J. K. Rowling


















All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying
or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher

First published in Great Britain in 1997
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 36 Soho Square, London, W1D 3QY

This edition first published in 2004

Copyright © 1997 J. K. Rowling

Harry Potter, names, characters and related indicia are
copyright and trademark Warner Bros., 2000™

The moral right of the author has been asserted
A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 0 7475 7360 9

The paper this book is printed on is certified by the © 1996 Forest Stewardship
Council A.C. (FSC). It is ancient-forest friendly. The printer holds
FSC chain of custody SGS-COC-2061.

©


FSC
Mixed Sources
Product group from well-managed
forests and other controlled sources

Cert no. SGS-COC-2061
www.fsc.org
©1996 Forest Stewardship Council

Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
Typeset by Dorchester Typesetting

5 7 9 10 8 6 4

www.bloomsbury.com/harrypotter







for Jessica, who loves stories,

for Anne, who loved them too,

and for Di, who heard this one first.














— CHAPTER ONE —

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 moustache. 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 neighbours. 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 neighbours 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, grey Tuesday
our story starts, there was nothing about the cloudy sky outside to
suggest that strange and mysterious things would soon be hap-
pening all over the country. Mr Dursley hummed as he picked out
his most boring tie for work and Mrs Dursley gossiped away
8 H
ARRY
P
OTTER



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 goodbye 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 realise 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 towards 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 get-ups 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 whis-
pering 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 car park, 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
T
HE
B
OY
W
HO
L
IVED
9


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 night-
time. Mr Dursley, however, had a perfectly normal, owl-free morn-
ing. 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 lunch-time, when he thought he’d stretch his legs
and walk across the road to buy himself a bun from the baker’s
opposite.
He’d forgotten 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 lot
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 dialling his home number when he
changed his mind. He put the receiver back down and stroked his
moustache, thinking no, he was being stupid. Potter wasn’t
such an unusual name. He was sure there were lots of people
called Potter who had a son called Harry. Come to think of it, he
wasn’t even sure his nephew was called Harry. He’d never even
seen the boy. It might have been Harvey. Or Harold. There was no
point in worrying Mrs Dursley, she always got so upset at any
mention of her sister. He didn’t blame her – if he’d had a sister like
that but all the same, those people in cloaks
He found it a lot harder to concentrate on drills that afternoon,
and when he left the building at five o’clock, he was still so
worried that he walked straight into someone just outside the door.
‘Sorry,’ he grunted, as the tiny old man stumbled and almost
fell. It was a few seconds before Mr Dursley realised that the man
was wearing a violet cloak. He didn’t seem at all upset at being
almost knocked to the ground. On the contrary, his face split into
10 H
ARRY
P
OTTER



a wide smile and he said in a squeaky voice that made passers-by
stare: ‘Don’t be sorry, my dear sir, for nothing could upset me
today! Rejoice, for You-Know-Who has gone at last! Even
Muggles like yourself should be celebrating, this happy happy
day!’
And the old man hugged Mr Dursley around the middle and
walked off.
Mr Dursley stood rooted to the spot. He had been hugged by a
complete stranger. He also thought he had been called a Muggle,
whatever that was. He was rattled. He hurried to his car and set
off home, hoping he was imagining things, which he had never
hoped before, because he didn’t approve of imagination.
As he pulled into the driveway of number four, the first thing he
saw – and it didn’t improve his mood – was the tabby cat he’d
spotted that morning. It was now sitting on his garden wall. He was
sure it was the same one; it had the same markings around its eyes.
‘Shoo!’ said Mr Dursley loudly.
The cat didn’t move. It just gave him a stern look. Was this nor-
mal cat behaviour, Mr Dursley wondered. Trying to pull himself
together, he let himself into the house. He was still determined
not to mention anything to his wife.
Mrs Dursley had had a nice, normal day. She told him over din-
ner all about Mrs Next Door’s problems with her daughter and
how Dudley had learnt a new word (‘Shan’t!’). Mr Dursley tried to
act normally. When Dudley had been put to bed, he went into the
living-room in time to catch the last report on the evening news:
And finally, bird-watchers everywhere have reported that the
nation’s owls have been behaving very unusually today. Although
owls normally hunt at night and are hardly ever seen in daylight,
there have been hundreds of sightings of these birds flying in
every direction since sunrise. Experts are unable to explain why
the owls have suddenly changed their sleeping pattern.’ The news
reader allowed himself a grin. ‘Most mysterious. And now, over to
Jim McGuffin with the weather. Going to be any more showers of
owls tonight, Jim?’
‘Well, Ted,’ said the weatherman, ‘I don’t know about that, but
it’s not only the owls that have been acting oddly today. Viewers as
far apart as Kent, Yorkshire and Dundee have been phoning in
to tell me that instead of the rain I promised yesterday, they’ve
had a downpour of shooting stars! Perhaps people have been

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