Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone recap

Harry Potter, an orphan mistreated by his aunt and uncle, learns on his eleventh birthday that he is a wizard, famous for surviving the attack in which the dark wizard Voldemort killed his parents. He goes to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, is sorted into Gryffindor, and makes his first real friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. He becomes a star Quidditch player and stumbles onto a mystery: something hidden in the castle behind a giant three-headed dog. The trio work out that it is the Philosopher's Stone, which grants immortality, and that someone means to steal it for Voldemort. Believing the Potions master Snape is the thief, they go after the Stone themselves. Harry finds instead the timid teacher Quirrell, who has been sheltering the bodiless Voldemort beneath his turban. Harry survives the confrontation, the Stone is destroyed to keep it safe, and he learns that his mother's sacrifice still protects him.

Harry Potter is a neglected orphan raised by his aunt and uncle, the Dursleys, who treat him cruelly and keep him ignorant of his past. As his eleventh birthday nears, strange things begin to happen: letters addressed to him arrive by the hundred, and his uncle, desperate to stop them, drags the family to a remote island to escape. On a stormy night the giant Hagrid tracks them down and tells Harry the truth. He is a wizard; his parents were killed by a dark wizard, not in a car crash as he had been told; and he alone survived, becoming famous in a world he never knew existed. Hagrid has come to take him to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Hagrid takes Harry to Diagon Alley, the hidden wizarding market, for his school supplies and a wand, and Harry learns that his parents left him a small fortune. He meets a proud, boastful boy in a robe shop and a jittery teacher named Quirrell. Boarding the Hogwarts Express from a concealed platform, he befriends Ron Weasley and, more warily, the studious Hermione Granger. At the castle the new students are sorted into houses by an enchanted hat, and Harry joins Gryffindor rather than the darker-reputed Slytherin. He begins lessons, discovers he is a natural on a broomstick, and is unsettled by the cold hostility of the Potions master, Snape, whose class seems to single him out.

Harry is made the youngest House Quidditch player in a century, flying as Gryffindor's Seeker. On Halloween he and Ron save Hermione from a mountain troll loose in the castle, and the three become firm friends. Harry starts to suspect that Snape is trying to reach something hidden behind a giant three-headed dog on a forbidden corridor, and that Snape tried to curse his broom during a match. At Christmas an anonymous gift brings him his late father's Invisibility Cloak, and exploring under it he finds the Mirror of Erised, which shows whoever looks into it their deepest desire. For Harry it shows the family he never knew, and Dumbledore gently warns him not to dwell on it.

The trio work out that the guarded object is the Philosopher's Stone, which produces endless gold and an elixir of life, and that it belongs to the ancient alchemist Nicolas Flamel. After they help Hagrid raise an illegally hatched dragon and smuggle it away, Harry, Hermione, and Draco are caught out of bed and sent as punishment into the Forbidden Forest, where Harry glimpses a hooded figure drinking a dead unicorn's blood and feels his scar burn. Convinced that Snape means to steal the Stone for Voldemort, and fearing the theft is about to happen, Harry, Ron, and Hermione decide to go after it themselves. That night they slip past the three-headed dog by playing music to lull it and descend through the trapdoor, overcoming the enchanted obstacles guarding the way down.

Ron and Hermione are stopped by the traps, and Harry faces the final chamber alone. There he finds not Snape but Quirrell, who has been the enemy all along, sharing his body with the weakened Voldemort hidden beneath his turban. Voldemort wants the Stone to restore himself to power. Harry keeps it from them, and when Quirrell tries to seize him, Harry's touch burns like fire; he collapses and wakes days later in the hospital wing, saved. Dumbledore explains that the protection lives in Harry through his mother's sacrifice, that the Stone has now been destroyed so no one can misuse it, and that Voldemort survives, weak and disembodied, and will try again. Gryffindor wins the House Cup, and Harry returns to the Dursleys for the summer no longer friendless, sure at last of where he belongs.

Harry survives his first meeting with what remains of Voldemort. The thief guarding the Stone was not Snape, whom Harry had suspected, but Professor Quirrell, who had let the weakened, bodiless Voldemort possess him and hide beneath his turban. Deep beneath the school Harry keeps the Philosopher's Stone from them; his bare touch scorches Quirrell, because the love of his mother, who died shielding him, still protects him. Quirrell dies and Voldemort's spirit flees the castle. Harry wakes in the hospital wing to find Dumbledore, who confirms that the Stone has been deliberately destroyed by its maker, Nicolas Flamel, and that Voldemort is weakened but not gone and will try to return to power. Last-minute points awarded by Dumbledore for the trio's courage win Gryffindor the House Cup. Harry, Ron, and Hermione end the year firm friends, and Harry, for the first time in his life, has somewhere he belongs and dreads going back to the Dursleys for the summer. Voldemort remains at large, powerless for now but not defeated.