Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1)

by J.K. Rowling

“Lucky!” shrieked Hermione. “Look at you both!”

She had to struggle because the moment she had landed, the plant had started to twist snakelike tendrils around her ankles. As for Harry and Ron, their legs had already been bound tightly in long creepers without their noticing.

Now she watched in horror as the two boys fought to pull the plant off them, but the more they strained against it, the tighter an...

“I know what this is — it’s Dev...

“Shut up, I’m trying to remember how to kill it!” said Hermione.

“Devil’s Snare, Devil’s Snare . . . what did Professor Sprout say? — it likes the dark and the damp —”

“Yes — of course — but there’s no wood!” Hermione cried,

“HAVE YOU GONE MAD?” Ron bellowed. “ARE YOU A...

“Oh, right!” said Hermione, and she whipped out her wand, waved it, muttered something, and sent a jet of the same bluebell flame...

as it cringed away from the light...

“Lucky you pay attention in Herbology, Hermione,”

“Yeah,” said Ron, “and lucky Harry doesn’t lose his head in a crisis —‘there’s no wood,’ honestly.”

All they could hear apart from their footsteps was the gentle drip of water trickling down the walls.

With an unpleasant jolt of the heart, he remembered the dragons said to be guarding vaults in the wizards’ bank. If they met a dragon, a fully-grown dragon — Norbert had been bad enough . . .

Harry listened. A soft rustling and clinking seemed to be co...

It was Quirrell.

“Me,” he said calmly. “I wondered whether I’d be meeting you here, Potter.” “But I thought — Snape —”

“Yes, Severus does seem the type, doesn’t he? So useful to have him swooping around like an overgrown bat.

“But Snape tried to kill me!” “No, no, no. I tried to kill you. Your friend Miss Granger accidentally knocked me over as she rushed to set fire to Snape at that Quidditch match.

I’d have managed it before then if Snape hadn’t been muttering a countercurse, trying to save you.”

“Of course,” said Quirrell coolly. “Why do you think he wanted to referee your next match?

All the other teachers thought Snape was trying to stop Gryffindor from winning, he did make himself unpopular . . .

Quirrell snapped his fingers. Ropes sprang out of thin air and wrapped themselves tightly around Harry.

“You’re too nosy to live, Potter. Scurrying around the school on Halloween like that, for all I knew you’d seen me coming to look at what was guarding the Stone.”

Unfortunately, while everyone else was running around looking for it, Snape, who already suspected me, went straight to the third floor to head me off —

fail to beat you to death, that three-headed dog didn’t even manage to bite Snape’s leg off properly.

what was standing behind Quirrell. It was the Mirror of Erised.

“This mirror is the key to finding the Stone,” Quirrell murmured, tapping his way around the frame. “Trust Dumbledore to come up with something like this . . . but he’s in London . . . I’ll be far away by the time he gets back. . . .”

keep Quirrell talking and stop him from concentrati...

“He was on to me by that time, trying to find out how far I’d got. He suspected me all along.

when I had Lord Voldemort on my side. . . .”

“I see the Stone . . . I’m presenting it to my master . . . but where is it?”

He had to keep Quirrell from giving his whole attention to the mirror.

“Oh, he does,” said Quirrell casually, “heavens, yes. He was at Hogwarts with your father, didn’t you know? They loathed each other. But he never wanted you dead.”

“Sometimes,” he said, “I find it hard to follow my master’s instructions — he is a great wizard and I am weak —”

“He is with me wherever I go,” said Quirrell quietly. “I met him when I traveled around the world. A foolish young man I was then, full of ridiculous ideas about good and evil.

There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it. . . . Since then, I have served him faithfully, although I have let him down many times.

“He does not forgive mistakes easily. When I failed to steal the Stone from Gringotts...

decided he would have to keep a closer watc...

don’t understand . . . is the Stone inside the mirror? Should I break it?”

What I want more than anything else in the world at the moment, he thought, is to find the Stone before Quirrell does. So if I look in the mirror, I should see myself finding it — which means I’ll see where it’s hidden! But how can I look without Quirrell realizing what I’m up to?

“What does this mirror do? How does it work? Help me, Master!” And to Harry’s horror, a voice answered, and the voice seemed to come from Quirrell himself.

He clapped his hands once, and the ropes binding Harry fell off. Harry got slowly to his feet.

“Look in the mirror and tell me what you see.”

must lie, he thought desperately. I must look and lie about wha...

But a moment later, the reflection smiled at him. It put its hand into its pocket and pulled out a blood-red stone. It winked and put the Stone back in its pocket

as it did so, Harry felt something heavy drop into his real pocket. Somehow — incredibly — he’d gotten the Stone.

see myself shaking hands with Dumbledore,” he invented. “I — I’ve won the House Cup for Gryffindor.”

lies . . . He lies . . .” “Potter, come back here!” Quirrell shouted. “Tell me the truth! What did you just see?”

“Let me speak to him . . . face-to-face. . . .” “Master, you are not strong enough!” “I have strength enough . . . for this. . . .”