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Rubeus Hagrid is the Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts. He is also Harry’s first friend in the non-Muggle world. Hagrid’s large stature and occasionally gruff manner of speaking makes him appear threatening, but he is actually a deeply compassionate individual. For example, he is reduced to tears in the opening chapter when he has to leave baby Harry at the Dursleys’ front door, and he is a friend to all creatures—both the tame and the dangerous. Hagrid is Harry, and subsequently the reader’s, first introduction to the wizarding world. The Dursleys prevented Harry from opening any of his Hogwarts acceptance letters so the headmaster Dumbledore sends Hagrid to collect Harry in person. When he arrives, Hagrid berates the Dursleys for lying to and abusing Harry for ten years, tells Harry he is a wizard, and takes him to London to get his school supplies in Diagon Alley. Hagrid’s warm and welcoming treatment of Harry is significant; he is the first of many people from the wizarding world who cares about and accepts Harry more than his actual blood relatives.
Hagrid is further significant because he has a crucial impact on the novel’s plot. To begin with, he is the first person to tell Harry about Voldemort, Harry’s adversary and the main villain in The Sorcerer’s Stone and the rest of the series as a whole. Through Hagrid, Harry learns that Voldemort rose to power about twenty years prior and tried to take over the wizarding world. He also learns that Voldemort killed his parents and tried to kill him too, but that Harry, at only a year old, miraculously survived and caused Voldemort to vanish. Hagrid’s reveal is essential for Harry’s journey because, until then, he did not know that he is famous in the wizarding world for defeating Voldemort. Hagrid’s ominous speech is the first of countless times throughout the Harry Potter series that Harry and Voldemort will be linked together. Hagrid also raises the stakes at the end of the novel because he (accidentally) tells Quirrell how to get past Fluffy, the three-headed dog that guards the trap door to the Sorcerer’s Stone. Harry and his friends then bravely follow the same path so they can try to stop Voldemort from acquiring the Elixir of Life.
