Young Harry Potter has to lead a hard life: His parents have died in a car
crash when he was still a baby, and he is being brought up by his Uncle
Vernon and Aunt Petunia. For some reason unbeknownst to the
bespectacled
ten-year-old, the Dursleys let him live in the small chamber under the stairs,
and treat him more like vermin than like a family member. His fat cousin
Dudley, the Dursley's real son, keeps bothering Harry all the time. On his
eleventh birthday, Harry Potter finally receives a mysterious letter from a
certain Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, telling him that he is
chosen as one of the future students of that supposedly renowned school.
Hagrid, the gigantic man who brought the letter, finally introduces Harry into
the real circumstances of his life: His parents were a wizard and a witch,
they were killed by the evil wizard Voldemort protecting him. Harry still has a
lightning-shaped scar on his forehead from that event. Since he survived the
attack as a baby, and also somehow deprived Voldemort from his powers,
he has been famous in the wizarding world ever since. The Dursleys, strong
disbelievers in that magical crap, never told Harry anything about his true
self. So, Harry is strongly surprised, yet absolutely happy to start his
training.
At Hogwarts, Harry meets his teachers, and becomes friends with Ron
Weasley and Hermione Granger. The three of them accidentally find out that
the potions master, Severus Snape, seems to plot on stealing something that
is guarded by a three-headed dog. Since nobody would believe some first
years to have found out such important things that even would incriminate a
Hogwarts teacher, they take it on themselves to find out what Snape is up to.
Their quest for the truth leads across many obstacles, from keeping up the
everyday school life, a bewitched Quidditch match (Quidditch is a popular
wizard sport), Fluffy, the three-headed monster dog and quite some tasks
one has to overcome to get to the guarded object.