History Literature / HarryPotterAndThePhilosophersStone

** Nicolas Flamel, believe it or not.

-->''While he drove, Uncle Vernon complained to Aunt Petunia. He liked to complain about things: people at work, Harry, the council, Harry, the bank, and Harry were just a few of his favourite subjects.''

-->'''Vernon:''' Get the mail, Dudley.\\
'''Dudley:''' Make Harry get it.\\
'''Vernon:''' Get the mail, Harry.\\
'''Harry:''' Make Dudley get it.\\
'''Vernon:''' Poke him with your Smeltings stick, Dudley.

-->'''Harry:''' It shows us what we want … whatever we want.\\
'''Dumbledore:''' Yes … and no. It shows us nothing more or less, than the deepest and most desperate desire of our hearts.

* MoralMyopia: Neville stands up to the PowerTrio:
--> '''Neville:''' You can't go out, you'll be caught again. Gryffindor will be in even more trouble … I won't let you do it. I'll — I'll fight you!\\
'''Ron:''' Neville, get away from that hole and don't be an idiot—\\
'''Neville:''' Don't you call me an idiot! I don't think you should be breaking any more rules! And you were the ones who told me to stand up to people!''\\
'''Ron:''' ''Yes,'' but not to ''us''.

* NoExceptYes: After Dumbledore's ides of "a few words before the feast can begin" (nitwit, blubber, oddment, and tweak), Harry asks Percy if Dumbledore is crazy.
-->"Mad? He's the greatest wizard in generations! But yes, he is a little mad."

-->'''Hermione:''' I hope you're pleased with yourselves. We could all have been killed -- or worse, expelled.

** Or ''talk'', for that matter. Harry's effectively having (extremely accurate) auditory hallucinations as it is, a minor visual hallucination isn't much of a stretch.

->''"[[TheReveal Yer a wizard, Harry.]]"''

[[spoiler:Voldemort]] tries to break Harry's spirit by telling him that his parents both begged for mercy before they died. When Harry disagrees, [[spoiler:he]] quickly recants and admits that James and Lily died bravely protecting their son.

* ComicallyMissingThePoint: Hermione says "I'm going to bed before either of you can come up with another plan to get us killed or worse, expelled!"
--> '''Ron (in the film):''' [[LampshadeHanging She needs to sort out her priorities]].
::This said, being expelled from school probably ''is'' a FateWorseThanDeath to Hermione. And if Harry and Ron thought about it, it would be for them too.

* AboveGoodAndEvil: Voldemort. "There is no Good or Evil, only Power and those too weak to seek it."

--> '''Ron:''' [[LampshadeHanging She needs to sort out her priorities]].

* GenerationXerox: The departure for Hogwarts. In this book, Ginny is shown crying about how she has to wait to go to Hogwarts and wants to go now as she sees her brothers off at the train station. In ''Deathly Hallows'', she and [[spoiler:Harry's daughter, Lily, are shown doing the exact same thing when she sees her brothers off to Hogwarts]].

* [[spoiler:DidNotDieThatWay]]: Harry lived in the knowledge that his parents have died in a car crash for 10 years, when it is revealed to him by Hagrid that [[spoiler:they have in fact been killed by the BigBad]].

* [[PoliceAreUseless Muggle Security-Guards Are Useless]]: Not only is the guard at the train station justifiably ignorant of Platform 9 3/4, but he dismisses an ''eleven-year-old'' who's bewildered and alone as a "time waster". Isn't reuniting lost children with their escorts a part of his job?

* NeedleInAStackOFNeedles: The flying key.

'''''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone''''' is the first book in the ''Literature/HarryPotter'' series, published in Britain on June 30, 1997. The first print run was only 500 copies - 300 distributed to libraries. It was a humble, quiet beginning to what would become the best selling book series of all time.

TheFilmOfTheBook was released in 2001, starting [[Film/HarryPotter a movie franchise]]. Since FirstInstallmentWins, the plot of this book will be much more familiar to non-fans than any of the others.

Followed by Harry's second year at Hogwarts, in ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheChamberOfSecrets''

** Hagrid is pretty cheerful when he arrives to collect Harry, even being amused by Vernon threatening him with a gun. Then he learns that Harry knows ''nothing'' about the wizarding world...

* BlatantLies: [[spoiler:Dumbledore's claim that he sees a pair of socks when he looks in the Mirror of Erised. As we learn in the final book, he's actually seeing his family alive and happy again.]]

* BrickJoke: Mrs. Weasley warns Fred and George not to blow up a toilet. They jokingly tell Ginny they'll send her a Hogwarts toilet seat. Fastforward to the end, Dumbledore says that the twins attempted to gift Harry a toilet seat while Harry was out for three days.

* {{Counterspell}}: Most directly seen when a teacher tries to curse Harry off his broom while another tries to counter it. The countercurse was not entirely effective, even though the latter teacher was more skilled than the former, suggesting that counterspells are imperfect as a defense. More common practice is to use shield charms, which block or deflect weak spells, or just use similar spell of equal power so that the two cancel out.
* CulturalTranslation: Changing the title from ''Philosopher's Stone'' to ''Sorcerer's Stone'' is not strictly an example of this, as the words "philosopher" and "sorcerer" don't mean anything different in the US than they do in the UK. The thinking was that the word "philosopher" would evoke "serious impenetrable text" rather than the intended "magical adventure".
** The truly cynical take on this would be that most kids in the target age range wouldn't be familiar enough with the word "Philosopher" to know it's supposed to be serious and stodgy. They would probably think for a time that [[OlderThanTheyThink J.K. Rowling invented the Philosopher's Stone, if not the word Philospher itself]]....

* TheDogWasTheMastermind: [[spoiler:"Who would suspect poor, p-p-p-pathetic Professor Quirrell?"]]

-->'''Harry:''' It shows us what we want... whatever we want.\\
'''Dumbledore:''' Yes... and no. It shows us nothing more or less, than the deepest and most desperate desire of our hearts.
* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness

** The attempt to kill Harry by knocking him off his broom mid-Quidditch match is hard to take seriously after reading the following books, in which Harry gets successfully knocked out mid-flight several times and securing his landing is always rather trivial. For those keeping count, that means [[JerkJock Cormac McLaggen]] came closer to killing Harry than [[spoiler:Quirrell]] did.

** Hagrid delivers Harry to the Dursleys on Sirius Black's flying motorcycle, which is also [[spoiler:how he transports him from the house for the last time.]]
** One of the first things Harry learns about the wizarding world is that it's dangerous to mess with goblins and flat-out mad to try and rob Gringotts, but [[spoiler: Voldemort]] manages to attempt this a few chapters later, offscreen. [[spoiler: Then Book 7 rolls around...]]

** Midway through the book, Harry has a horrible feeling that Snape can read minds. In Book 5, [[spoiler:Snape is revealed to be a skilled Legilimens, which happens to be the sort of mind-reading Harry mentioned all the way back in Book 1. However, when he explains this to Harry, he [[InsistentTerminology calls it "the ability to extract feelings and memories from another person's mind" and takes exception to Harry's characterization of this attribute as "mind-reading"]].]]
*** [[spoiler: While Snape is a Legilimens to an extent, he is much better at Occlemency, which is the defense against Legilimens.]]
** In terms of foreshadowing strictly inside the plot of Book 1 itself, when Hagrid explains the professors who arranged for the traps to protect the Mirror of Erised, and likewise the Philosopher's stone, [[spoiler:Quirrell]] is among those listed. Later, when they are proceeding through the traps to get to the Philosopher's Stone to prevent who they think is Snape from getting it, they enter [[spoiler:Quirrell's]] trap room and discover a knocked out Troll, which gives away an early clue that [[spoiler:Quirrell was the one who released a troll into the castle on Halloween, and that it is in fact Quirrell, not Snape, who was searching for the Stone.]]

** [[spoiler: Voldemort]] correctly surmising that [[spoiler: Harry lied to Quirell about having the Stone during the climax at the Mirror of Erised.]] It seems like he's just being Genre Savvy or that Harry didn't lie too well. [[spoiler: Voldemort's actually employing Lleglimency, though it won't be identified as such until Book 5.]]
** Right there on the Chocolate Frog Card: [[spoiler: ''Dumbledore is particularly famous for his defeat of the Dark Wizard Grindelwald in 1945'', which is when he scored the Elder Wand]]
* ForgotICouldFly: "HAVE YOU GONE MAD? ARE YOU A WITCH OR NOT?"
* FriendlessBackground: Harry, Ron and Hermione.
* GenerationXerox: The departure for Hogwarts. In this book, Ginny is shown crying about how she has to wait to go to Hogwarts and wants to go now as she sees her brothers off at the train station. In ''[[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyHallows Deathly Hallows]]'', her and [[spoiler:Harry's daughter, Lily, is shown doing the exact same thing when she sees her brothers off to Hogwarts]].

* IdiotBall
** [=McGonagall=]'s summarily dismissing Harry's concerns about the Stone. Even if his concerns were far-fetched, the fact that ''eleven-year-olds'' knew about a top secret item should have alerted her to the presence of a major security leak, and the possibility that someone else could have learned about the item. At the very least, she should have demanded to find out everything they knew, and where they learned it.

* InvisibilityCloak

* IThoughtItMeant: In-Universe; after the Remembrall retrieval incident, Harry hears Professor [=McGonagall=] ask Professor Flitwick if she can "borrow Wood for a moment". Harry thinks he's about to get caned, only to discover that ''Oliver'' Wood is the Gryffindor Quidditch Captain.

* AMinorKidroduction: The book starts with Harry being left to the Dursleys as a DoorstopBaby. The second chapter skips forward ten years to the preteen Harry we'll follow for the rest of the novel.
* MirrorScare: Played with. The first time Harry looks in the Mirror of Erised and sees dozens of people behind him, he covers his mouth to stop himself screaming and spins round...to find nothing.

--> '''Neville:''' ''You can't go out, you'll be caught again. Gryffindor will be in even more trouble... I won't let you do it. I'll — I'll fight you!''
--> '''Ron:''' ''Neville, get away from that hole and don't be an idiot—''
--> '''Neville:''' ''Don't you call me an idiot! I don't think you should be breaking any more rules! And you were the ones who told me to stand up to people!''
--> '''Ron:''' ''Yes,'' but not to ''us''.

-->'''Harry:''' Percy, is Dumbledore... mad?\\
'''Percy:''' Mad? He's the greatest wizard in generations! But yes, he is a little mad.

* SerialEscalation: The Hogwarts letters that Vernon suppresses from Harry before he gives up and (unsuccessfully) takes the family on the run: On Wednesday, Hogwarts sends one letter to Harry in Privet Drive. On Thursday, they send three; on Friday, twelve, on Saturday, twenty-four; on Sunday, even though there is "[[TemptingFate no post on Sundays]]," they come spewing down the chimney; and finally, on Monday morning, the owner of the hotel where the Dursleys ([[MyFriendsAndZoidberg and Harry]]) stay to hide from the letters mentions that there are roughly a hundred of them at the front desk.

* {{Understatement}}: Quirrell: "Troll... in the dungeon... thought you ought to know."

* WouldYouLikeToHearHowTheyDied: [[spoiler:Voldemort claims Harry's parents died begging for mercy...]] and then, when Harry insists he's lying, casually admits he was making it up.

->''"[[TheReveal Harry... yer a wizard.]]"''

----

* BrickJoke: Mrs. Weasley warns Fred and George not to blow up a toilet. They jokingly told Ginny they'd send her a Hogwarts toilet seat. Fastforward to the end, Dumbledore says that the twins attempted to gift Harry a toilet seat while Harry was out for three days.

** Among other things, this is the only book that deviates from Harry's third-person-limited POV after we're in his head for the first time. During the troll scene, we're briefly in Ron's head as he decides to do ''Wingardium Leviosa'', and when Harry's broomstick is acting up during the Quidditch match, we stay on the ground with Ron, Hermione and Hagrid.

** Molly's seeming ignorance of the platform number before the Weasleys find it. Though this could also be her making sure they know it.
**

Retitled '''''Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone''''' in the United States because the [[ExecutiveMeddling American publisher]] worried that kids would think a book with "philosopher" in the title [[ViewersAreMorons would be boring]]. Of course, this was before ''Harry Potter'' was the [[CashCowFranchise reliable franchise]] it became.

* {{Foreshadowing}}

** Hagrid delivers Harry to the Dursleys on Sirius Black's flying motorcycle, which is also [[spoiler:how he transports him from the house for the last time.]]

* {{Foreshadowing}} Vernon and Petunia glare at Harry when he says "Platform 9 and three quarters" [[spoiler: but only Vernon calls idea of the weird platform "rubbish". We learn in Book 7 that Petunia has actually ''stood on the platform''. She was probably quiet because she was reminded of it for the first time in years.]]

** One of the first things Harry learns about the wizarding world is that it's dangerous to mess with goblins and flat-out mad to try and rob Gringotts, but Voldemort manages to attempt this a few chapters later, offscreen. [[spoiler: Then Book 7 rolls around...]]