Shortly before Harry's eleventh birthday, he receives a letter addressed specifically to him. His outraged uncle, however, reads and burns it before Harry has a chance to look at the contents. The sender does not give up, and the Dursleys receive successively larger numbers of the same correspondence. Soon, his uncle becomes so paranoid that the Dursleys, with Harry in tow, hide in a hut on a small island to escape. That night (which happens to be before Harry's birthday), he is visited by an enormous man named Hagrid who bursts through the locked door of the hut. With Hagrid holding the Dursleys at bay, Harry finally reads his letter, in which he learns he has been invited to study magic at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The next day Harry and Hagrid leave the hut and head to Diagon Alley in London (the secret magical location hidden behind the famous wizarding pub The Leaky Cauldron). Harry enters the wizarding world for the first time, learns to his surprise that he is famous, and meets the new Hogwarts Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Quirrell. He takes the train to Hogwarts from Platform Nine and three-quarters, befriending Ron Weasley, and meeting Neville Longbottom and Hermione Granger, a Muggle-born witch.
Admission to Hogwarts
Upon arrival, the Sorting Hat places Harry, Ron, Hermione and Neville in Gryffindor House. Draco Malfoy, an arrogant and elitist student whom Harry had met at Diagon Alley, gets placed in Slytherin. At the end of his first week at Hogwarts, Harry and Ron discover that the wizarding bank Gringotts was robbed, and a vault that Harry and Hagrid visited had been the subject of the burglary. Later, Harry discovers he has a talent for riding broomsticks, and after a broom-mounted game of keep away with Malfoy, is recruited to join Gryffindor's Quidditch team as a Seeker. He is the youngest Quidditch player at the school in a century, much to Malfoy's displeasure.
Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Neville are out in Hogwarts' halls late at night waiting for Harry's duel challenger Malfoy to arrive. When the caretaker Filch startles them, they flee and accidentally stumble across the door to a corridor, finding themselves near a monstrous three-headed dog, christened Fluffy by Hagrid, that guards a trapdoor. On Halloween, Quirrell informs everyone that a troll has entered the castle and is in the dungeon; as the rest of the students hurry to their dorms, Ron and Harry remember hearing that Hermione is in the girls' bathroom crying because Ron insulted her, and realize that she does not know about the troll. The two of them go to the girls bathroom and see that the troll has broken into it. They fight the troll and save Hermione and the three become best friends.