Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
J.K. Rowling
NOTE 1: J.K. Rowling is a virulently hateful person, and she has made that inescapably clear over the last several years. This review series is solely about my thoughts on the Harry Potter books and will not go into her unapologetic transphobia, though I will make a note of it if and when it pops up in the books. Nevertheless, it would’ve been strange to embark upon a Harry Potter review without mentioning the author herself.
NOTE 2: I’m assuming you’re going to be able to follow the names and vocabulary. Google it if you can’t. There’s way too much background detail for me to explain in one review, or even seven.
You’re off the edge of the map, mate. Here there be spoilers for pretty much the entire series. Other reviews in this series can be found here. Increasingly feral Kindle notes are saved here.
Carolyn – yer a nutcase.
Okay, but hear me out: a sweeping unpaid project in which I reread the series I read years ago but never reviewed, with obviously the intention of reviewing them. This is a project I already sort of unofficially kicked off with the Redwall series, which kept me busy in 2023, and Harry Potter now seems like a logical next step. I tried to reread the series from start to finish back in 2019 but just barely made it through Goblet of Fire before the Harry Potter fatigue hit me hard, but I have now spent several years complaining that the series doesn’t hold up and I’m itching to write down all of the intrusive thoughts because Merlin’s balls they won’t shut up. I read the whole series growing up and basically memorized the books even the ones I don’t like and I am ready to go on a Harry Potter rampage. Long story short, I have a good feeling about this current reread.
How it started: July 31, 1980 saw the birth of one Harry James Potter, son of Lily and James Potter, a witch and a wizard who were murdered by the Dark wizard Voldemort when they were twenty-one, though in the movie they for some reason look about forty. Voldemort is pretty much the smallest wizard who ever lived, and he has spent almost his entire life – excepting the first decade, before he found out he was a wizard – trying to make himself immortal. It seems like a waste of a life to me, given that all of his time has gone into a pervasive obsession with death, but, well, you do you, dude. Anyway, Voldiecakes turned up outside the Potters’ house on October 31, 1981 because he’d heard that their son would grow up to become his worst nemesis, and you know how it goes with dictators and nemeses. (I’m sorry, but this idiot is quite possibly one of the most short-sighted wizards in the world, and I find it impossible to take him seriously even though he is literally Wizard Hitler. I feel like this is bad, but I also feel like I want to call him Voldiecakes and laugh at his lack of a nose.) Following his successful murder of the Potter parents and his hideous failure to murder the one-year-old Potter child, Voldemort lost all his power and fled in disgrace, just barely clinging to life. Left with nothing more to show for the encounter than a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead, Harry was collected from the ruins of his parents’ house on the orders of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore (the other most short-sighted wizard in the world) and dropped off on the doorstep of Petunia Dursley, his mother’s sister and apparently only living relation.
How it’s going: Harry grows up as a more or less ordinary child under the furiously begrudging “care” of his Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon, mercilessly bullied by his disgustingly spoiled cousin Dudley and basically treated as unpaid child labor. The Dursley parents are fully aware that Harry’s parents were wizards and they are scared shitless that their horrible stuffed-shirt neighbors will find out, so they take it upon themselves to abuse the magic right out of their nephew, though it must be noted that this does not work. On July 31, 1991, on the very stroke of midnight on his eleventh birthday, Harry and the terrified Dursleys are therefore visited by Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of the Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. After informing Harry that he is a wizard, Hagrid presents him with his first-ever birthday cake, as well as a letter inviting him to Hogwarts. Harry accepts, as would anyone with even an ounce of sense, and a month later he boards the Hogwarts Express and finally meets other magical children for the first time in his life.
Upon arrival, Harry and the other first-year students are sorted into the four different Hogwarts houses – Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Slytherin, and Hufflepuff – each with its own dominant personality trait. (Gryffindor kids are brave, Ravenclaw kids are smart, Slytherin kids are evil, and Hufflepuff kids are the leftovers. Look, I know there are nuances and there is a range of personalities in each house, but that pretty much covers the basics. The Sorting Hat said it, so it must be true.) Despite some initial indecision on the part of the Sorting Hat, which briefly considers shuffling him off with the evil kids, Harry is sorted into Gryffindor. His new housemates include Ronald “Ron” Bilius Weasley, the youngest son of an old wizarding family, and Hermione Jean Granger, the smartest kid in the class, who – like Harry – was raised by non-wizards (“Muggles”) and had no idea she was a witch until she received a Hogwarts letter. After a rocky start, the three bond over an invading troll, and they quickly become inseparable.
Of course, no academic career would be complete without a mortal enemy: Harry also antagonizes Slytherin first-year Draco Malfoy, and vice versa, and their mutual loathing is fueled by Harry’s surprise acceptance to the Gryffindor Quidditch team even though first-years are technically not supposed to be on any Quidditch team, but the rules always tend to get a little bendy when Harry is around. (Re: Quidditch, I’m not enumerating its rules. Suffice it to say that I’ve seen it described as “murderball.” There’s about a bazillion professional teams, and the wizarding world follows it with the same level of fanaticism as Muggle soccer fans.) As for the actual classes, they’re mostly great and the teachers are mostly professional, though Harry is immediately targeted by bitter Potions teacher Severus Snape, who mercilessly bullies him for no obvious reason. Snape also seems to be out to get Professor Quirinus Quirrell, the anxiety-ridden Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, though again, nobody knows why.
Matters become more complex when Harry and his friends learn that there is a giant three-headed dog guarding a trap door in one of Hogwarts’s quieter corridors, then again when Hagrid accidentally lets slip that the dog is guarding something important to Hogwarts Headmaster Dumbledore and his friend Nicolas Flamel, and then yet again when Harry inherits an invisibility cloak for Christmas and stumbles across the wondrous Mirror of Erised in an abandoned classroom. He initially concludes that the mirror is capable of showing one’s entire extended family – a reasonable conclusion based on limited data – but later runs into Dumbledore himself, who gently explains that the mirror will in fact show the viewer’s most desperate desire. (Also, WHO MAKES SOMETHING LIKE THAT??? Are they okay? Has anybody checked on them lately or given them a hug?) Eventually Harry and Hermione put the pieces together and realize that Hogwarts is currently acting as a safe deposit box for the Sorcerer’s Stone created by legendary 665-year-old alchemist Nicolas Flamel, which can provide both wealth and immortality. It was originally stored in the underground vaults of Gringotts, the wizards’ bank; however, Dumbledore suspected something sinister was afoot, and he had the Stone brought to Hogwarts for safekeeping mere hours before some Dark wizard – now, who could that have been? – tried to snatch it.
Meanwhile, Hagrid wins an unhatched dragon in a game of cards at the local pub and attempts to raise it alone in his cabin on school grounds, even though the cabin is made entirely of wood and domesticated dragons are definitely illegal. Between Snape, the Stone, the dragon (dubbed “Norbert” by a loving Hagrid, later renamed “Norberta” after she turns out to be female), and Quidditch practice, it’s amazing Harry has any time for his schoolwork at all, though he somehow muddles through, probably mostly because of Hermione. The problem of the dragon manages to disappear with some help from Ron’s older brother Charlie, who graduated some time ago and is now studying dragons in Romania, but its resolution leads neatly into the next crisis when Harry and Hermione are caught, sans invisibility cloak, coming back from the severely out-of-bounds astronomy tower at midnight. The subsequent punishment results in their ostracization from almost the entire school, but it also leads them into the aptly named Forbidden Forest that abuts school grounds, where Harry observes a prowling figure who could reasonably be assumed to be Snape. With the memory of his parents’ murders firmly in his mind, the security of the Stone becomes Harry’s biggest anxiety as he convinces himself that Snape is plotting to steal it on Voldemort’s behalf.
Snape finally seems to make his move after the school goes through a grueling course of final exams, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione set out to stop him even though, I feel bound to point out, they are but eleven. Theoretically the Stone is guarded by powerful enchantments set by the Hogwarts teachers, but in practice the kids break them with absurd ease, though Ron is knocked out cold during a nasty game of giant chess. While Hermione stays behind to take care of Ron and send a messsage to Dumbledore for help, Harry proceeds to the final room, where he finds not Snape but Quirrell, along with the Mirror of Erised. He also finds the still-living Voldemort, whose face has been magically grafted onto the back of Quirrell’s head, and I think the fact that he survives through another six books is incredibly impressive when absolutely nobody could blame him for crawling into a hole to die of disgust. Either way, Harry manages to get the Stone before either Quirrell or Voldemort can, Voldemort gives his villain monologue while working in a taunt about Harry’s dead parents, there’s a fight, Dumbledore arrives in the nick of time, Quirrell dies, Voldemort flees, Harry ends up in the hospital as he does at the end of every term, etc, etc.
Fortunately, things do get better from here: the school forgives Harry for his earlier astronomy tower transgression, and Dumbledore tells Harry (in his hospital bed) that not only has the Stone been destroyed with the consent of Flamel and his wife, but Harry was the only person who could possibly have pulled it out of the Mirror. It’s almost like the whole battle for the Stone was completely pointless, and Harry could have thwarted Voldiefarts perfectly well by just staying the fuck in bed. As for the mysterious invisibility cloak, Dumbledore reveals that he was the one who sent it, having borrowed it from James Potter before his death for reasons that are currently unstated but will later make Harry very unhappy. Regardless, it’s a temporarily happy ending all around, except for the deceased Quirrell of course, and Dumbledore even rigs the end-of-year House Cup by giving Gryffindor just enough points to beat Slytherin. When all is said and done, Harry and his friends and classmates return home on the Hogwarts Express; Ron and Hermione promise to keep in touch, and Harry reluctantly goes back to the Dursleys, though with the intention of making Dudley’s life a living hell. Which, to be clear, I support.
I won’t go so far as to say that I’d forgotten how awful some of these characters are, because I didn’t, but certainly time and distance blunted the memories a bit. All of which is to say that Snape sucks and so does Dumbledore, though Dumbledore’s suckiness doesn’t become quite so apparent until a bit later in the series. I am questioning his (presumed) decision to allow Harry to pursue Quirrell and Voldemort on his own because, again, HARRY IS ELEVEN, but right now my strongest thought is that Dumbledore is an HR disaster. It’s one thing to hire inclusively. It’s another thing entirely to hire people who, while they may fulfill some sort of wizarding diversity quota, are not remotely qualified for their jobs. Case in point: caretaker Argus Filch should have been fired a long time ago, because anyone who openly fantasizes about abusing children should not be allowed anywhere near said children. Of course, we are talking about J.K. “Abuse Builds Character” Rowling, so Filch’s soliloquys about literally beating students with whips are treated as comic relief rather than an actual problem. All the same, are there no other Squibs who need jobs? Does the job have to be performed by a Squib? Why not hire a wizard who would be able to use magic instead of mopping up piles of mud by hand? Why are Filch’s hate-filled rants tolerated – and, to a certain extent, unofficially sanctioned – when he so clearly gets off on hurting children? Never once in seven books, to the best of my recollection, is Filch ever told to stop threatening students with disembowelment. So what exactly is the philosophy here? Gender-affirming care is unacceptable, but medieval torture is fine as long as it’s intended as a joke?
Then there’s Snape, who, while he has a role that will be expanded upon later in the series, should also not be allowed around children unless and until he resolves his own childhood trauma because lordy mama this dude has issues. Yes, there are reasons Dumbledore keeps him around (unrelated to teaching), but I still feel like he should have been placed in some other job that doesn’t allow him to bully children for a living. I find it particularly galling that Dumbledore is said to know everything that goes on in the school, but for some reason never troubles himself to curb any of the teachers who report to him. Thus, Dumbledore is complicit in the trauma Snape inflicts upon several generations of students, and he doesn’t even seem to care. He’s more concerned with reminding Harry to refer to Snape as “Professor Snape” than he is with protecting the students he claims to value so highly. It is ridiculous to excuse Snape’s behavior, or to suggest that it might be even slightly understandable, when we are talking about a years-long campaign of purposeful cruelty against CHILDREN who had absolutely jackshit to do with his personal trauma. And what kills me is that if Snape really wanted a perfect revenge, if he were really as diabolically clever as he is made out to be, he would have bent his talents to getting Harry on his side. The best revenge is not abusing your enemy’s children: it is swaying those children over to your way of thinking and turning them against their parents. Maybe that says more about me than it does about anyone else, but I stand by my thesis.
The thing is, Harry arrived as a terrified eleven-year-old who was eager to prove himself and so ready to love anybody who showed him any sort of kindness. This is made heartbreakingly clear in his relationship with Hagrid, who is his first-ever friend, and to whom he shows a ferocious devotion for the rest of the series. If Snape had made any effort with this orphaned, vulnerable child, things could have gone very differently. Maybe he could have gotten Harry to love him as the father he’d never had; maybe he would even have genuinely come to care for Harry over time. Maybe when he got to wizard heaven he and James and Sirius could have had a big catfight over which one of them was Harry’s favorite father, and maybe they could have spent all their time watching over Harry from the afterlife and jinxing anybody who made trouble for him. In this conceit, I imagine Lily yelling at them every time they land a jinx but then grabbing her own wand every time she sees Umbridge. I wish we were in a world in which that could actually have happened, for Snape’s sake as much as for Harry’s. Whatever else you may think of Snape in the end, he leads an extraordinarily lonely life, and in some ways that isn’t his fault. But in some ways it is. Long story short, I wish wizard therapy were a thing, because he needs it.
My other giant (ha) problem is Hagrid, who is a great guy with a heart of gold and an unfortunate penchant for monstrous creatures that tend to be shunned by sensible society. If you think a secret dragon isn’t too bad, just you wait till we get to the Blast-Ended Skrewts in Goblet of Fire. The fascination with the horrible creatures would actually be completely fine if he kept it to himself, but he doesn’t, because he loves these creatures and assumes by extension that everyone else will love them as well. While I love him for his genuine, unconditional kindness to Harry and Ron and Hermione, the Norberta arc makes me want to set fire to his pumpkin patch. Norberta is entirely his fault, as would have been any legal consequences resulting from his decision to raise an illegal dragon in his cabin without telling anybody, but he stands back and lets the kids clean up his mess, and then he watches them take the fall without a goddamn word.
With all due respect to Hagrid, I find this completely infuriating, not to mention short-sighted and selfish. The fallout from the dragon puts Harry and Hermione in mortal danger when they are sent into the Forbidden Forest for their detentions, and it also sets them up as targets for the entire school when their escapade results in the loss of a staggering amount of House Cup points. I have read this book so many times and I still don’t see why Hagrid couldn’t have taken the damn dragon up to the astronomy tower himself, or, better yet, why Charlie’s friends couldn’t have been persuaded to quietly land in front of Hagrid’s cabin instead of on the tallest, most out-of-bounds part of the school. And, here again, we have another fine example of Dumbledore knowing but choosing to do nothing: instead of intervening, he merely has the forgotten invisibility cloak returned to Harry’s dormitory, with the full knowledge that Harry (1) is planning to go after Voldemort and (2) doesn’t trust any of the adults enough to let them try to change his mind.
That’s a powerful lot of bad stuff and it seems inconsistent with the 4.5-star rating, so here’s what I actually did like about the book: I really really REALLY love the wizarding world. I love the academic setting and the magic, the immaculate vibes of Diagon Alley, all of it. I want to go to wizarding school. I want to go shopping in Flourish and Blotts. Merlin’s beard, I would kill for those gorgeous magical books. I want to buy a wand from Ollivander’s, stop for an ice cream at Florean Fortescue’s, visit the owls in Eeylops, spend the afternoon book-shopping, return to my room in the Leaky Cauldron at the end of the day with more books than I can carry. I love reading about Harry’s life at Hogwarts, right down to the meals he eats and the homework he and Ron grumble over, as much as I love his preparations for said life. I find the wizarding lifestyle ceaselessly entertaining, and I would not object to an entire book in which Harry does nothing more than go to school, without any interruptions from a certain needy Dark wizard.
That being said: I mostly love the kids, particularly Hermione, who admittedly is obnoxious in the beginning, albeit for reasons I understand better in retrospect. I’m going to be having significant problems with Ron starting in Goblet of Fire, but I have been enjoying this more innocent, prepubescent version of all of them. Harry himself is so sweet in these early years, so ready to make friends and (already) to try to save the world in whatever way he can. I love his friendships with Ron and Hermione and Hagrid, and for some reason it just tickles me pink that he gives his pet snowy owl – his first-ever birthday gift, given to him by Hagrid – a name he finds in one of his school books. That is just so beautifully wholesome, and needless to say Hedwig is one of my favorite characters, little though she appears throughout the series. The trouble is that Rowling’s children do not actually sound like children. They speak like child-sized adults, which I find grating. I would naturally expect Hermione to have an advanced vocabulary and probably a more adult speech pattern to go with it, but there is literally no excuse for Harry and Ron. Even if I can’t really put my finger on whatever it is that makes their conversations just sliiiiiiiiiightly off-putting, they are stiff at their best and completely unconvincing at their worst, and it seems like a real shame, given the general coziness of the book.
This remains, to be clear, a charming book. It is still possibly the best of the seven, though Chamber of Secrets is my special favorite (despite its introduction of the two most irritating non-Dark characters in the series); certainly it is the best-written. With the benefit of full series knowledge, I wish every book could have maintained the wonder of the wizarding world. Unfortunately, I happen to know that later installments will unwittingly reveal that this world is held together with generous amounts of duct tape, because in-depth world-building is no more Rowling’s greatest strength than the ability to craft believable children. Still, this first book is a (mostly) sweet and enjoyable ride, accompanied by a lovely, mischievously humorous prose, and I don’t regret rereading it. Despite everything I’ve just said against it, it is the perfect introduction to the wonderful world of Harry Potter, and, if I’m honest, I kinda wanna read it again.
