Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, the British author J. K. Rowling's first fantasy novel, appeared in 1997. It was Rowling's debut novel, and it follows Harry Potter, who learns on his eleventh birthday that he has a magical heritage, and who receives an invitation to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry; it is the first of seven books about him.

Harry lives with his aunt and uncle, Vernon and Petunia Dursley, in Little Whinging, a fictional English town, along with their son Dudley, who bullies him, and he has been told his parents died in a car crash. On his eleventh birthday a half-giant named Rubeus Hagrid arrives to tell him the truth: his parents were murdered by a dark wizard named Voldemort, who tried to kill Harry as an infant and failed. Harry then learns that he is famous in a world he did not know existed, for something he does not remember doing, which makes the attention he receives at the school complicated.

At Hogwarts he makes a friend and an enemy on the train, and finds that the school is keeping something valuable hidden behind a locked door that at least one teacher wants opened. The year includes a mirror that shows what a person wants most, a game of wizard chess that has to be won and a package that a great many people want for reasons of their own. Harry, Ron and Hermione spend the book working out what is being hidden and who is trying to reach it, which brings them up against the staff rather than only the other students.

The series continues with six further novels, and the first book introduces Hogwarts, the four houses and the central trio. It is a children's fantasy told from Harry's point of view, and it was adapted into a film series beginning in 2001, with the first film directed by Chris Columbus and starring Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson.