﻿CHAPTER ONE 

OWL POST 

Harry Potter was a highly unusual boy in many ways. For one thing, he 
hated the summer holidays more than any other time of year. For another, 
he really wanted to do his homework but was forced to do it in secret, 
in the dead of night. And he also happened to be a wizard. 

It was nearly midnight, and he was lying on his stomach in bed, the 
blankets drawn right over his head like a tent, a flashlight in one hand 
and a large leather-bound book (A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot) 
propped open against the pillow. Harry moved the tip of his 
eagle-feather quill down the page, frowning as he looked for something 
that would help him write his essay, "Witch Burning in the Fourteenth 
Century Was Completely Pointless discuss." 

The quill paused at the top of a likely-looking paragraph. Harry Pushed 
his round glasses up the bridge of his nose, moved his flashlight closer 
to the book, and read: 

Non-magic people (more commonly known as Muggles) were particularly 
afraid of magic in medieval times, but not very good at recognizing it. 
On the rare occasion that they did catch a real witch or wizard, burning 
had no effect whatsoever. The witch or wizard would perform a basic 
Flame Freezing Charm and then pretend to shriek with pain while enjoying 
a gentle, tickling sensation. Indeed, Wendelin the Weird enjoyed being 
burned so much that she allowed herself to be caught no less than 
fortyseven times in various disguises. 

Harry put his quill between his teeth and reached underneath his pillow 
for his ink bottle and a roll of parchment. Slowly and very carefully he 
unscrewed the ink bottle, dipped his quill into it, and began to write, 
pausing every now and then to listen, because if any of the Dursleys 
heard the scratching of his quill on their way to the bathroom, he'd 
probably find himself locked in the cupboard under the stairs for the 
rest of the summer. 

The Dursley family of number four, Privet Drive, was the reason that 
Harry never enjoyed his summer holidays. Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, and 
their son, Dudley, were Harry's only living relatives. They were 
Muggles, and they had a very medieval attitude toward magic. Harry's 
dead parents, who had been a witch and wizard themselves, were never 
mentioned under the Dursleys' roof For years, Aunt Petunia and Uncle 
Vernon had hoped that if they kept Harry as downtrodden as possible, 
they would be able to squash the magic out of him. To their fury, they 
had been unsuccessful. These days they lived in terror of anyone finding 
out that Harry had spent most of the last two years at Hogwarts School 
of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The most they could do, however, was to lock 
away Harry's spellbooks, wand, cauldron, and broomstick at the start of 
the summer break, and forbid him to talk to the neighbors. 

This separation from his spellbooks had been a real problem for Harry, 
because his teachers at Hogwarts had given him a lot of holiday work. 
One of the essays, a particularly nasty one about shrinking potions, was 
for Harry's least favorite teacher, Professor Snape, who would be 
delighted to have an excuse to give Harry detention for a month. Harry 
had therefore seized his chance in the first week of the holidays. While 
Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, and Dudley had gone out into the front 
garden to admire Uncle Vernon's new company car (in very loud voices, so 
that the rest of the street would notice it too), Harry had crept 
downstairs, picked the lock on the cupboard under the stairs, grabbed 
some of his books, and hidden them in his bedroom. As long as he didn't 
leave spots of ink on the sheets, the Dursleys need never know that he 
was studying magic by night. 

Harry was particularly keen to avoid trouble with his aunt and uncle at 
the moment, as they were already in an especially bad mood with him, all 
because he'd received a telephone call from a fellow wizard one week 
into the school vacation. 

Ron Weasley, who was one of Harry's best friends at Hogwarts, came from 
a whole family of wizards. This meant that he knew a lot of things Harry 
didn't, but had never used a telephone before. Most unluckily, it had 
been Uncle Vernon who had answered the call. 

"Vernon Dursley speaking." 

Harry, who happened to be in the room at the time, froze as he heard 
Ron's voice answer. 

"HELLO? HELLO? CAN YOU HEAR ME? I -- WANT -- TO -- TALK -- TO -HARRY 
-- POTTER!" 

Ron was yelling so loudly that Uncle Vernon jumped and held the receiver 
a foot away from his ear, staring at it with an expression of mingled 
fury and alarm. 

"WHO IS THIS?" he roared in the direction of the mouthpiece. "WHO ARE 
YOU?" 

"RON -- WEASLEY!" Ron bellowed back, as though he and Uncle Vernon were 
speaking from opposite ends of a football field. "I'M -- A -- FRIEND -OF 
-- HARRY'S -- FROM -- SCHOOL --" 

Uncle Vernon's small eyes swiveled around to Harry, who was rooted to 
the spot. 

"THERE IS NO HARRY POTTER HERE!" he roared, now holding the receiver 
at 
arm's length, as though frightened it might explode. "I DON'T KNOW WHAT 
SCHOOL YOURE TALKING ABOUT! NEVER CONTACT ME AGAIN! 
DON'T YOU COME NEAR 
MY FAMILY!" 

And he threw the receiver back onto the telephone as if dropping a 
poisonous spider. 

The fight that had followed had been one of the worst ever. 

"HOW DARE YOU GIVE THIS NUMBER TO PEOPLE LIKE -- PEOPLE LIKE 
YOU!" Uncle 
Vernon had roared, spraying Harry with spit. 

Ron obviously realized that he'd gotten Harry into trouble, because he 
hadn't called again. Harry's other best friend from Hogwarts, Hermione 
Granger, hadn't been in touch either. Harry suspected that Ron had 
warned Hermione not to call, which was a pity, because Hermione, the 
cleverest witch in Harry's year, had Muggle parents, knew perfectly well 
how to use a telephone, and would probably have had enough sense not to 
say that she went to Hogwarts. 

So Harry had had no word from any of his wizarding friends for five long 
weeks, and this summer was turning out to be almost as bad as the last 
one. There was just one very small improvement -- after swearing that he 
wouldn't use her to send letters to any of his friends, Harry had been 
allowed to let his owl, Hedwig, out at night. Uncle Vernon had given in 
because of the racket Hedwig made if she was locked in her cage all the 
time. 

Harry finished writing about Wendelin the Weird and paused to listen 
again. The silence in the dark house was broken only by the distant, 
grunting snores of his enormous cousin, Dudley. It must be very late, 
Harry thought. His eyes were itching with tiredness. Perhaps he'd finish 
this essay tomorrow night.... 

He replaced the top of the ink bottle; pulled an old pillowcase from 
under his bed; put the flashlight, A History of Magic, his essay, quill, 
and ink inside it; got out of bed; and hid the lot under a loose 
floorboard under his bed. Then he stood up, stretched, and checked the 
time on the luminous alarm clock on his bedside table. 

It was one o'clock in the morning. Harry's stomach gave a funny jolt. He 
had been thirteen years old, without realizing it, for a whole hour. 

Yet another unusual thing about Harry was how little he looked forward 
to his birthdays. He had never received a birthday card in his life. The 
Dursleys had completely ignored his last two birthdays, and he had no 
reason to suppose they would remember this one. 

Harry walked across the dark room, past Hedwig's large, empty cage, to 
the open window. He leaned on the sill, the cool night air pleasant on 
his face after a long time under the blankets. Hedwig had been absent 
for two nights now. Harry wasn't worried about her: she'd been gone this 
long before. But he hoped she'd be back soon -- she was the only living 
creature in this house who didn't flinch at the sight of him. 

Harry, though still rather small and skinny for his age, had grown a few 
inches over the last year. His jet-black hair, however, was just as it 
always had been -- stubbornly untidy, whatever he did to it. The eyes 
behind his glasses were bright green, and on his forehead, clearly 
visible through his hair, was a thin scar, shaped like a bolt of 
lightning. 

Of all the unusual things about Harry, this scar was the most 
extraordinary of all. It was not, as the Dursleys had pretended for ten 
years, a souvenir of the car crash that had killed Harry's parents, 
because Lily and James Potter had not died in a car crash. They had been 
murdered, murdered by the most feared Dark wizard for a hundred years, 
Lord Voldemort. Harry had escaped from the same attack with nothing more 
than a scar on his forehead, where Voldemort's curse, instead of killing 
him, had rebounded upon its originator. Barely alive, Voldemort had 
fled.... 

But Harry had come face-to-face with him at Hogwarts. Remembering their 
last meeting as he stood at the dark window, Harry had to admit he was 
lucky even to have reached his thirteenth birthday. 

He scanned the starry sky for a sign of Hedwig, perhaps soaring 

back to him with a dead mouse dangling from her beak, expecting praise. 
Gazing absently over the rooftops, it was a few seconds before Harry 
realized what he was seeing. 

Silhouetted against the golden moon, and growing larger every moment, 
was a large, strangely lopsided creature, and it was flapping in Harry's 
direction. He stood quite still, watching it sink lower and lower. For a 
split second he hesitated, his hand on the window latch, wondering 
whether to slam it shut. But then the bizarre creature soared over one 
of the street lamps of Privet Drive, and Harry, realizing what it was, 
leapt aside. 

Through the window soared three owls, two of them holding up the third, 
which appeared to be unconscious. They l