Dursley family is a middle-class family that lives in Little Whinging, Surrey. Vernon and Petunia Dursley took bad care of Lily’s infant son, Harry, is left on their doorstep. Lily and her husband, James Potter, had been murdered by the dark wizard, Voldemort, but when Voldemort attempted to kill Harry, his power somehow broke. Harry becomes the only living person ever to survive the killing curse. Because Harry does not have any other living relatives, Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, decides to leave him with the Dursleys until he is old enough to attend Hogwarts.
From a young age, Harry is told that his parents were killed in a car crash but has no other information about them, not even a photograph. Harry’s cousin Dudley dominates the household, bullying Harry with his gang of friends and being spoiled rotten by Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia. While Dudley has two bedrooms– one for his bed and one for all of his broken toys – Harry is relegated to the small cupboard under the stairs. Although he strives to avoid attracting attention, Harry cannot deny that strange things often happen around him.
On Dudley’s eleventh birthday, Harry accompanies the family and Dudley’s best friend, Piers Polkiss, to the zoo. While Harry is in the reptile house, the glass front of the boa constrictor cage suddenly vanishes. Harry is unable to explain the incident, but Uncle Vernon blames him anyway and restricts him to the cupboard under the stairs until the summer holidays. One day, mysterious letters begin to arrive for Harry. Uncle Vernon refuses to let Harry read the letter but tells him that it was addressed to him by mistake. Over the next few days, more and more of the letters arrive in the house, but Uncle Vernon keeps Harry from intercepting any of them. In an extreme effort to escape from the letters, Uncle Vernon takes the family to a desolate shack on an island on the night before Harry’s eleventh birthday.
As the clock strikes midnight and Harry wishes himself a silent “Harry Birthday,” there is a loud bang on the door and Hagrid enters. Hagrid introduces himself as the Keeper of the Keys at Hogwarts and then explains that Harry is a wizard who has been admitted to Hogwarts in order to study magic. Harry discovers that the Dursleys have always been aware of his magical abilities but have attempted to stifle them and make him “normal.” Moreover, Harry learns the truth about his parents’ murder by Voldemort.
A month later, Harry leaves Little Whinging to catch the Hogwarts Express and befriends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. When the train arrives at Hogwarts, the students immediately file into the dining hall to be “sorted,” or assigned to one of the four houses of Hogwarts: Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw. Harry worries that he will be sorted into Voldemort’s old house, Slytherin, and he makes a special request to the Sorting Hat to be assigned to any other house. The Sorting Hat considers carefully but ultimately places Harry (as well as Ron and Hermione) in Gryffindor House.
On Halloween, the faculty is alerted of a wayward troll in the school and escort the students back to their houses. Harry and Ron sneak away to find Hermione, who is in the girl’s bathroom and missed the warning. After inadvertently locking the troll in the girl’s bathroom with Hermione, Ron and Harry knock the troll unconscious. Hermione takes the blame for the battle, and the three become fast friends. After the holidays end, Harry, Ron, and Hermione finally discover the identity of Nicolas Flamel: he is the only known maker of the Sorcerer’s Stone, which produces the elixir of life. Harry begins to suspect that Snape is planning to steal it. Harry, Ron, and Hermione also discover that Hagrid is raising an illegal dragon that was given to him by a mysterious stranger in a bar in exchange for information about the three-headed dog.
As punishment for disobeying school curfew, Harry and Hermione (as well as Malfoy and Neville, who were also out of bed at the time) are sent into the Forbidden Forest with Hagrid to locate a wounded unicorn. When the group splits into two, Harry and Malfoy come across the body of the unicorn just as a hooded figure crawls toward it and starts to drink its blood. Harry is frozen in place by an agonizing pain that is suddenly spreading from his scar. As the hooded figure moves toward him, a centaur gallops in front of Harry protectively and the figure disappears. The centaur suggests that the hooded figure was Voldemort and that he drank the unicorn’s blood in order to stay alive until he can steal the Sorcerer’s Stone.
Harry decides to steal the Sorcerer’s Stone before Voldemort can. Harry, Ron, and Hermione sneak off to the forbidden corridor and get past the three-headed dog by lulling it to sleep with music. Once through the trap door, they land on Devil’s Snare, the first of several challenges put in place by the Hogwart’s teachers. As the plant’s snake-like tendrils threatened to strangle Ron and Harry, Hermione uses magical fire to repel the plant and break them free. The next challenge is to pass through a room filled with hundreds of small flying keys. Harry flies on a broomstick to find the silver key that matches the lock on the door and finally snatches it out of the swarm. The door opens to reveal a giant wizard’s chessboard. An expert chess player, Ron takes the lead in this challenge and ultimately sacrifices himself in order to allow Harry and Hermione to reach the next challenge. When Harry and Hermione step into the next room, they are instantly surrounded by flames and faced with a complex riddle of poisonous potions. Hermione rationally solves the riddle and gives Harry the potion needed to travel to the next room and the final challenge while she returns to help Ron.
In the final chamber, Harry is surprised to find neither Snape nor Voldemort, but Professor Quirrell, the teacher of Defense against the Dark Arts. Quirrell reveals that he, not Snape, has been Voldemort’s servant all along. Now, in the final challenge, Quirrell needs only to retrieve the Sorcerer’s Stone from within the Mirror of Erised. He asks his master for help, and Harry hears a disembodied voice speak from within Quirrell, telling him to use Harry to get to it. Quirrell stands Harry in front of the mirror and orders him to tell him what he sees. Determined to keep the Stone from falling into Voldemort’s hands, Harry lies and tells Quirrell that he sees himself winning the Quidditch Cup for Gryffindor. He then actually sees himself holding the Sorcerer’s Stone and putting it in his pocket. Realizing that the Stone is now in his pocket, Harry tries to stall for time until he can escape. Quirrell removes his turban and reveals Voldemort’s face emerging from the back of his head. Voldemort speaks directly to Harry, taunting him about the death of his parents, and then orders Quirrell to kill him. When Quirrell tries to touch Harry, his skin blisters and, though Harry is in excruciating pain from his scar, he forces the contact with Quirrell. With Voldemort’s screams of anger echoing in his head, Harry finally passes out.
When Harry wakes up, he finds himself in the hospital wing with Dumbledore. Dumbledore found Harry just in time to keep Quirrell from killing him, though Voldemort escaped once again. Dumbledore explains that Quirrell was unable to touch Harry’s skin because of his mother’s love: when Lily Potter sacrificed herself for him, she left Harry with an ancient magical protection. He knew that only Harry would be able to retrieve the Stone from the Mirror of Erised because, unlike Quirrell and Voldemort, Harry wanted to find the Stone but did not want to use it. Although Voldemort was not destroyed, Harry’s actions have kept him from regaining power for now.
At the end of the year banquet, the members of Slytherin House are celebrating their victory of the House Cup for the seventh straight year. Unexpectedly, Dumbledore awards last-minute points to Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Neville, which gives Gryffindor the edge over Slytherin. Harry returns to spend the summer with the Dursleys content in the friendships that he has made at Hogwarts.
i) Three words:
Taunting- Malfoy taunted Hermione by saying she is a muggle-born and does not deserves to be in Hogwarts.
Snatches- Harry snatched the Snitch and won Gryffindor the Quidditch match, yay!
Vault- The vault is used by Mrs. McGonagall to keep her wine so they can stay preserved.
ii) Did the ending match your initial impression of the novel?
Most probably no. The novel have a quite complicated plot twist and I initially thought Voldemort will eventually get his hands to the Elixir of Life. I am impressed by the quick minded Harry to discover everything and unveil the truth behind weird happenings in Hogwarts.
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