Family Quotes in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

How we cite our quotes: (chapter.paragraph)

Quote #7

"I want to hear you're training hard, Potter, or I may change my mind about punishing you."

Then she suddenly smiled.

"Your father would have been proud," she said. "He was an excellent Quidditch player himself." (9.88-90)

At Hogwarts, Harry's constantly finding connections to his parents, or getting to hear people's memories of them, while back at the Dursleys' he wasn't even allowed to mention them. It's got to be gratifying for Harry to hear that he shares this special, newly discovered talent with the father he never got a chance to know.

Quote #8

Should Harry wake him? Something held him back – his father's cloak – he felt that this time – the first time – he wanted to use it alone. (12.103)

Harry loves being able to share experiences with his new friends, but this is different. This is the first time he's had a tangible object that connects him to one of his parents, and it's understandable that he would want to savor the experience of using it all by himself.

Quote #9

Harry was looking at his family, for the first time in his life.

The Potters smiled and waved at Harry and he stared hungrily back at them, his hands pressed flat against the glass as though he was hoping to fall right through it and reach them. He had a powerful kind of ache inside him, half joy, half terrible sadness. (12.127-128)

This passage really emphasizes how much Harry misses the parents he lost and how badly he wants to know something, anything, of them. This is the first time he's ever seen their faces; no wonder he wants to "fall right through [the glass] and reach them." Even though "half" of his feelings are "terrible sadness," it's worth enduring that for the "joy" he feels in looking at them at long last.