Harry Potter is seemingly an ordinary eleven-year-old boy, living with his ultra-conventional, insensitive, negligent relatives, the Dursleys. But his eleventh birthday, Harry learns from an enormous, mysterious stranger called Hagrid that he is actually a wizard, famous in the wizarding world for surviving an attempted murderous attack by the evil dark Lord Voldemort, when Harry was just a year-old infant. Voldemort killed Harry's parents, but was surprisingly unable to kill the baby, being nearly destroyed in the process and only leaving a lightning bolt scar on Harry's forehead. Harry is invited to begin attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

In defiance of his aunt and uncle's wishes, Harry chooses to go to the school, where he begins to learn magic and make new friends, as well as enemies, among the Hogwarts students and staff. Harry learns that since Voldemort has been in a state of near-death since the attack on Harry ten years earlier, but a plot is brewing for the dark lord to regain his power and strength through the acquisition of a Philosopher's Stone, which grants immortality to its owner. Harry and his friends, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, discover the plot and seek to prevent the theft of the stone, which is hidden in a protected chamber at Hogwarts.