One of the absolute best things about Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone (or Sorcerer’s Stone, depending on where you live) is the iconic first line. Mr. And Mrs. Dursely of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. In the simplest terms, it’s a statement of location setting to let readers know where the action is about to take place, but it’s actually so much more than that. It injects personality and immediately gives you a sense of the type of people The Durselys must be.
It’s no wonder the line has been singled out over the years, even recently finishing in the top five in a list of the greatest opening lines in literature history, right next to the likes of Nineteen Eighty-Four, Peter Pan and A Tale Of Two Cities. But apparently, that now iconic start wasn’t the first line Rowling wrote for The Philosopher’s Stone. The scribe recently did an interview with The Sunday Times to promote her most recent book The Running Grave, and during the conversation, she was asked about the first line she ever wrote for Harry Potter. Here’s what she said…
The first line I ever wrote of it didn’t end up in the book. It was “The Potter family lived in Darke’s Hollow,” which was the original name for Godric’s Hollow.
Now, this is actually very interesting for two different reasons. Let’s start with the most obvious, which is, with all due respect to this line, it’s a significant downgrade from the opener we eventually got. Like the iconic “thank you very much” line, it conveys a location to bring the reader into the world, but it has no personality and gives you no sense of the characters you’re about to encounter. It’s perfectly fine but it’s also bland and wouldn’t be found anywhere near a greatest of all-time list. So, I think we can all agree it was a strong revising choice.
Secondly, this is also very interesting because of the location. Godric’s Hollow, or Darke’s Hollow, as it was called then, was the location of Voldemort’s attack on Harry Potter. It’s where Harry’s parents die and is the catalyst for The Wizarding World being completed upended, but in the finished novels and The Harry Potter movies, that’s all presented as tragic backstory our hero and the readers find out later.
The fact that it’s the first thing Rowling wrote seems to imply (unless she was writing her first novel out of order, which seems unlikely) that she originally planned to start The Philosopher’s Stone in a completely different place by focusing on the first major story beat chronologically, and presumably introducing us to Harry and his parents before we're introduced to the Dursleys. There’s nothing wrong with that, but by revealing these details later, as we get in the final version, it really helps the reader empathize with Harry, as he’s out of place and initially missing major context for his backstory.
In my opinion, Rowling improves as a writer throughout the seven Harry Potter novels, the first of which did not have super high expectations when it was first published. Her storytelling is consistently great and richly complicated, but she gains confidence and goes for some more linguistic flourishes in the later books. Even in The Philosopher’s Stone, however, there are moments where her natural talent really shines through. The first line is perhaps the best and most obvious moment of that, and I’m so glad she revised to get there.
