Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone By J. K. Rowling chapter one the Boy Who Lived

want
him in there… I 
need
that room… make him get out…” 
Harry sighed and stretched out on the bed. Yesterday he’d have given anything to be up here. 
Today he’d rather be back in his cupboard with that letter than up here without it. 
Next morning at breakfast, everyone was rather quiet. Dudley was in shock. He’d screamed, 
whacked his father with his Smelting stick, been sick on purpose, kicked his mother, and thrown 
his tortoise through the greenhouse roof, and he still didn’t have his room back. Harry was 
thinking about this time yesterday and bitterly wishing he’d opened the letter in the hall. Uncle 
Vernon and Aunt Petunia kept looking at each other darkly. 
When the mail arrived, Uncle Vernon, who seemed to be trying to be nice to Harry, made 
Dudley go and get it. They heard him banging things with his Smelting stick all the way down 
the hall. Then he shouted, “There’s another one! ‘Mr. H. Potter, The Smallest Bedroom, 4 Privet 
Drive —’” 
With a strangled cry, Uncle Vernon leapt from his seat and ran down the hall, Harry right behind 
him. Uncle Vernon had to wrestle Dudley to the ground to get the letter from him, which was 
made difficult by the fact that Harry had grabbed Uncle Vernon around the neck from behind. 
After a minute of confused fighting, in which everyone got hit a lot by the Smelting stick, Uncle 
Vernon straightened up, gasping for breath, with Harry’s letter clutched in his hand. 
“Go to your cupboard — I mean, your bedroom,” he wheezed at Harry. “Dudley — go — just 
go.” 
Harry walked round and round his new room. Someone knew he had moved out of his cupboard 

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and they seemed to know he hadn’t received his first letter. Surely that meant they’d try again? 
And this time he’d make sure they didn’t fail. He had a plan. 
The repaired alarm clock rang at six o’clock the next morning. Harry turned it off quickly and 
dressed silently. He mustn’t wake the Dursleys. He stole downstairs without turning on any of 
the lights. 
He was going to wait for the postman on the corner of Privet Drive and get the letters for number 
four first. His heart hammered as he crept across the dark hall toward the front door — 
“AAAAARRRGH!” 
Harry leapt into the air; he’d trodden on something big and squashy on the doormat — 
something 
alive
! 
Lights clicked on upstairs and to his horror Harry realized that the big, squashy something had 
been his uncle’s face. Uncle Vernon had been lying at the foot of the front door in a sleeping 
bag, clearly making sure that Harry didn’t do exactly what he’d been trying to do. He shouted at 
Harry for about half an hour and then told him to go and make a cup of tea. Harry shuffled 
miserably off into the kitchen and by the time he got back, the mail had arrived, right into Uncle 
Vernon’s lap. Harry could see three letters addressed in green ink. 
“I want —” he began, but Uncle Vernon was tearing the letters into pieces before his eyes. 
Uncle Vernon didn’t go to work that day. He stayed at home and nailed up the mail slot. 
“See,” he explained to Aunt Petunia through a mouthful of nails, “if they can’t 
deliver
them 
they’ll just give up.” 
“I’m not sure that’ll work, Vernon.” 
“Oh, these people’s minds work in strange ways, Petunia, they’re not like you and me,” said 
Uncle Vernon, trying to knock in a nail with the piece of fruitcake Aunt Petunia had just brought 
him. 
On Friday, no less than twelve letters arrived for Harry. As they couldn’t go through the mail slot 
they had been pushed under the door, slotted through the sides, and a few even forced through 
the small window in the downstairs bathroom. 
Uncle Vernon stayed at home again. After burning all the letters, he got out a hammer and nails 
and boarded up the cracks around the front and back doors so no one could go out. He hummed 
“Tiptoe Through the Tulips” as he worked, and jumped at small noises. 
On Saturday, things began to get out of hand. Twenty-four letters to Harry found their way into 
the house, rolled up and hidden inside each of the two dozen eggs that their very confused 
milkman had handed Aunt Petunia through the living room window. While Uncle Vernon made 

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furious telephone calls to the post office and the dairy trying to find someone to complain to, 
Aunt Petunia shredded the letters in her food processor. 
“Who on earth wants to talk to 
you
this badly?” Dudley asked Harry in amazement. 
On Sunday morning, Uncle Vernon sat down at the breakfast table looking tired and rather ill, 
but happy. 
“No post on Sundays,” he reminded them cheerfully as he spread marmalade on his newspapers, 
“no damn letters today —” 
Something came whizzing down the kitchen chimney as he spoke and caught him sharply on the 
back of the head. Next moment, thirty or forty letters came pelting out of the fireplace like 
bullets. The Dursleys ducked, but Harry leapt into the air trying to catch one — 
“Out! OUT!” 
Uncle Vernon seized Harry around the waist and threw him into the hall. When Aunt Petunia and 
Dudley had run out with their arms over their faces, Uncle Vernon slammed the door shut. They 
could hear the letters still streaming into the room, bouncing off the walls and floor. 
“That does it,” said Uncle Vernon, trying to speak calmly but pulling great tufts out of his 
mustache at the same time. “I want you all back here in five minutes ready to leave. We’re going 
away. Just pack some clothes. No arguments!” 
He looked so dangerous with half his mustache missing that no one dared argue. Ten minutes 
later they had wrenched their way through the boarded-up doors and were in the car, speeding 
toward the highway. Dudley was sniffling in the back seat; his father had hit him round the head 
for holding them up while he tried to pack his television, VCR, and computer in his sports bag. 
They drove. And they drove. Even Aunt Petunia didn’t dare ask where they were going. Every 
now and then Uncle Vernon would take a sharp turn and drive in the opposite direction for a 
while. 
“Shake ’em off… shake ’em off,” he would mutter whenever he did this. 
They didn’t stop to eat or drink all day. By nightfall Dudley was howling. He’d never had such a 
bad day in his life. He was hungry, he’d missed five television programs he’d wanted to see, and 
he’d never gone so long without blowing up an alien on his computer. 
Uncle Vernon stopped at last outside a gloomy-looking hotel on the outskirts of a big city. 
Dudley and Harry shared a room with twin beds and damp, musty sheets. Dudley snored but 
Harry stayed awake, sitting on the windowsill, staring down at the lights of passing cars and 
wondering…
They ate stale cornflakes and cold tinned tomatoes on toast for breakfast the next day. They had 

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just finished when the owner of the hotel came over to their table. 
“’Scuse me, but is one of you Mr. H. Potter? Only I got about an ’undred of these at the front 
desk.” 
She held up a letter so they could read the green ink address: