Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, by J.K. Rowling, is the sequel to Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. It is the second book in a series of seven Harry Potter books. The book was published in 1998. A film was theatrically released in November, 2002.
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2 The film 3 Rumours |
The book begins with the Dursleys' guests, the Masons, coming over for dinner, an event during which Harry is to spend his time in his room "making no noise and pretending he doesn't exist." However, Harry finds a House-Elf named Dobby on his bed.
Dobby warns him not to return to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, but cannot explain why due to the fact that the wizard family who owns him have forbidden it. When Harry insists on going, Dobby uses a Hover Charm to destroy Harry's aunt's pudding. Believing that Harry performed the charm, the Ministry of Magic sends him a warning that if he does any more magic outside school he will certainly be expelled from Hogwarts.
Uncle Vernon, after reading the Ministry's letter and realizing that Harry isn't allowed to do magic outside school (which Harry neglected to tell them), locks him in his room reasoning that if he uses magic to get himself out, he will be expelled anyway. Harry is rescued in the middle of the night by Ron Weasley, Fred Weasley and George Weasley with the help of a flying Ford Anglia that was enchanted by their father.
Harry is then taken to The Burrow, where he and the Weasleys travel to Diagon Alley with Floo powder. But Harry has difficulty with the smoke around him, and accidentally lands in Knockturn Alley instead. There he sees Lucius Malfoy sell items relating to Dark Magic to Mr. Borgan, a dark arts salesman.
He is found by Hagrid and then taken back to Diagon Alley. In Flourish and Blotts he and the Weasleys encounter the famous wizard/author Gilderoy Lockhart, who announces that he will be taking over as their new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher.
It is there that they meet Draco and Lucius Malfoy. Arthur Weasley and the elder Malfoy get into a fight, after which Malfoy throws one of the Weasley's second-hand books at Ginny Weasley, telling her that it is all that her father can give her.
The next day, when Harry and Ron try to go through the barrier to platform nine and three quarters, the gateway seals and refuses to allow them entry. Harry and Ron thus decide to fly Mr. Weasley's flying Ford Anglia to Hogwarts. But instead of landing smoothly on the grounds as they had planned, they crash into the Whomping Willow and Professor Severus Snape attempts to have them expelled, but fails to convince the headmaster, Professor Albus Dumbledore. No points are docked from Gryffindor House for the boy's exploits, but they are both given detention.
The next day several problems occur. Ron receives a Howler and their first lesson with Gilderoy Lockhart occurs, and is a complete disaster. To Harry's great displeasure, three people start taking an interest in him, Colin Creevy, Gilderoy Lockhart and Ron's little sister Ginny who begins her first year at Hogwarts in this book.
Ron serves his detention with care-taker Argus Filch, but Harry is forced to help answer Professor Lockhart's fan mail. During this unpleasent detention, Harry hears a unexplained disembodied voice which Lockhart is unable to hear.
Harry promises he'll come to Nearly Headless Nick's Deathday Party on Halloween. He brings Ron and Hermione along as well, but the three of them quickly get sick of the ghostly party and return to the school. But before they get to the Halloween feast, Harry hears the voice (which Ron and Hermione also cannot hear) and follows it to the second floor, where he finds Mrs. Norris, Filch's cat, petrified and a message on the wall which reads:
'THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED, ENEMIES OF THE HEIR BEWARE.'
Filch and Snape try to get Harry in trouble for this, but Dumbledore says that it is powerful dark magic that no second year could perform, and that Harry is innocent until proven guilty. They decide that Professor Sprout's mandrakes will be used to create a juice capable of reviving Mrs. Noris.
Hermione tries to read up on the Chamber, but all the copies of Hogwarts: A History have been borrowed from the library, so they talk Professor Binns (the History of Magic teacher) into telling them about it. He says that one of the founders of Hogwarts (Salazar Slytherin), got into an argument with the others about whether Muggle-borns should be admitted and left the school. According to legend, he built a secret chamber with a monster inside that could only be opened by his true heir. Once opened the monster, which could only be controlled by Slytherin's heir, would purge the school of all Muggle-borns. Binns assures the class that the Chamber does not exist and that the school has been searched many times and no such chamber has been found.
Harry, Ron and Hermione decide that the heir is probably Draco Malfoy. To try to prove it, they decide to use the Polyjuice Potion which could turn them someone else for an hour, and thus interrogate Malfoy, without him knowing it's them. Hermione said that the potion would take a month to brew. They even stole one of the ingredients for the potion from Snape's private stores.
During the Quidditch match, Harry competes aganist Draco Malfoy, Slytherin's new Seeker. During the match, one of the Bludgers takes after Harry. Since Bludgers don't do this, it is immediately known that this rogue Bludger has been tampered with. Harry still manages to catch the Snitch and Gryfindor wins. However the Bludger brakes his arm, and Lockhart (when trying to fix it) gets rid of all the bones in his arm instead. Maddam Pomfry uses Skelo-Gro to grow his bones back, and Harry is forced to stay in the hospital wing overnight.
In the night, Dobby shows up and reveals that he made the Bludger chase after Harry, and he closed the gateway to platform Nine and Three Quarters. He also reveals (for which he punishes himself for) that the Chamber of Secrets has been opened before. After Dobby disappears (quite literally) Dumbledore, McGonical and Pomfry enter with Colin Creevy who had been petrified.
Ron and Hermione began brewing the polyjuice potion in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, as nobody goes in there. Harry and most of school sign up for a Dueling Club which is (to Harry's great displeasure) taught by his two least facorite teachers (at least until he met Umbridge), Gilderoy Lockhart and Severus Snape.
During the first meeting, Draco Malfoy conjures up a snake, and Harry began speaking to it (as he did to the Boa Constrictor in the first book) and to his great surprise, people start staring at him. Ron and Hermione explain that Harry is Parslemouth (meaning he can talk to snakes) and that to everyone but him, it sounded as though he were egging the snake on and that Salazar Slytherin was a Parslemouth, so that now the whole school was going to think him the heir of Slytherin.
When Harry accidentally encountered Justin, who was petrified, and Nearly Headless Nick, who had been turned to a cloud of black smoke, he was caught there. McGonical took Harry to Dumbledore's office, where he saw Fawkes burst into flames. Dumbledore explained to him, the properties of the phoenix and said that he didn't believe Harry attacked anyone.
Most of the school went home for the holidays, but the Weasleys, Harry, Ron, Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyal remained. Fortunately, it was during the holidays that the polyjuice potion was finished. Harry and Ron were to disguise themselves as Crabbe and Goyal. Hermione had already gotten her hair off her opponent's robes during the dueling club.
Harry and Ron transformed, but apparently something was wrong with Hermione, because she didn't want to come. Harry and Ron found Malfoy, and discovered, to their dismay, that he hadn't opened the Chamber of Secrets. They did find out the last time the Chamber was 50 years, and someone had died. When Harry and Ron returned to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, they discovered what had happened to Hermione, the hair she had taken off Millicent Bullstode's robes was a cat hair, and the potion was only supposed to work with humans.
Harry and Ron found a diary in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom that was fifty years old and had the name "T. M. Riddle" on it. Ron recignized the name as he had polished a shield with that name on it in the Trophy Room. When Hermione was free from the hospital, she pointed out that since Riddle won an award fifty years ago, and that Chamber was last opened fifty years ago, he might have won his award for catching the heir of Slytherin.
Lockhart was convinced at this time that he made the attacks stop, and decides what the school needs is "moral booster" which turns out to be a Valentine Day celebration. Lockhart got some dwarfs and gave them wings and harps. His "Friendly Card-Carrying Cupids" were to deliver cards. The teacher were annoyed when they kept bursting into classes to deliver valentines. Someone decided to send Harry a "singing valentine." Harry, while trying to get away, accidentally spilled ink all over his books.
Later, he noticed that Riddle's diary, unlike the rest of his books, weren't covered in scarlet ink. So that night, Harry dripped a blob of ink onto the page, and it sank into it. Harry then wrote "My name is Harry Potter." and Riddle answered back. When Harry asked for information about the Chamber of Secrets, Riddle took Harry inside his memory. Harry landed in the headmaster's office, and saw Riddle enter, and followed him. He encountered Dumbledore and went down into the dungeons and "caught" Hagrid. This is the point where Harry returned to the present.
Harry tells Ron and Hermione what he has learned. None of them can believe that Hagrid would open the Chamber of Secrets and debate what to do or whether they should ask Hagrid about it. The plot thickens when Riddle's diary is stolen from Harry dormitory, especially since only a Gryffindor could get in Harry's dormitory.
Just when Hermione has figured something out, she is petrified, along with a Ravenclaw prefect. Harry and Ron decide they must talk to Hagrid. However, they aren't the only ones, Cornelius Fudge, Minister of Magic, and Dumbledore show up and Fudge sends Hagrid to Azkaban as precaution. Then Lucious Malfoy shows up and declares that he and the other goveners of Hogwarts have decided to suspend Dumbledore, despite the obviouse logic that that would only worsen the situation. Both Hagrid and Dumbledore give last words. Hagrid says to "follow the spiders" and Dumbledore says that he will only truly have left the school when none there are loyal to him.
Harry and Ron decide to follow the spiders, as Hagrid's advice was easier to understand. This takes them into the Forbidden Forest. There, they encounter Mr. Weasley's car, which had apparently taken to running through the forest like a wild animal. They eventually encounter Aragog, a giant spider which had been the monster Hagrid had been "caught" setting on other students 50 years ago. Aragog explains that Hagrid was inocent. Aragog decided to make Harry and Ron the dinner for his children, but they escaped in Mr. Weasley's car.
After this, Harry and Ron feel that they have reached dead ends everywhere, until one possible last hope occurs to them. Aragog said the monster's last victim died in a bathroom and it occurred to Harry that Moaning Myrtle might have been the victim. Of cource, with the school under such security, it would be near impossible to sneak in the girls' bathroom near where the first attack occurred. However, good news came that the Mandrake juice was finally ready and soon the monster's victims would be awakened.
Later that same day, Harry and Ron escaped from Lockhart leading them their next class, got caught be Prof. McGonigall and said they were going to see Hermione in the Hospital Wing where visitors were now barred. Harry found a piece of paper in her hand. It revealed what Hermione had found out before she was attacked. She had discovered based on strong circumstantial evidence, that the monster in the Chamber of Secrets was a basilisk. As a basilisk is a giant snake it expained why Harry could hear it and no one else could. The Basilisk killed people by looking it in the eye, but no one died, because nobody had looked it directly in the eye.
Harry and Ron decided to go to the staff room and tell the teacher what they had learned. However, while they were there, there was another attack. Harry and Ron decided to hide in a wardrobe to hear the teacher converstation. They learned the Heir of Slytherin had left another message which said:
HER SKELETON WILL LIE IN THE CHAMBER FOREVER
They also said the student which had been taken into the Chamber was Ginny. When Lockhart showed up and soon found himself in hot water for bragging that he knew all along how to enter the Chamber and what the monster was. They decided to send all the students home the next day and send Lockhart to deal with the monster.
Harry and Ron decided that if Lockhart was going to deal with the monster they might at well tell him what they knew. They found that he was trying to run away. He admited that he was a fraud and he put memory charms on people who really did the things that he claimed to in his books. Harry and Ron disarmed his wand from him and forced him to go to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.
Moaning Myrtle explains her death and says the last thing she saw was a pair of great big eyes by one of the sinks and also that the tap there has never worked. Harry finds a snake carved on the tap and then opens the Chamber of Secrets by speaking parsletongue to it.
Harry, Ron and Lockhart slide down a large pipe and find themselves in maze-like tunnels far under the school. Down there, they encounter a snake skin left by the Basilisk. In this instance, Lockhart steals Ron's wand which had been broken by the whomping willow and tells Harry and Ron that he was going to put a memory charm on them and take a bit the snake skin up to the school and say that he was too late to save Ginny and that Harry and Ron tragically lost their minds, at the sight of her mangled body.
However, the wand backfires and the tunnel collapses leaving Ron on one side and Harry on the other. Harry goes forward and Ron has no choice but to stay behind and clear a path through the rocks so they could get back through. Harry then encounters a wall with stone snakes on it, and opens it by speaking parsletongue and enters the Chamber itself.
In the Chamber, he finds Ginny lying on the ground. She wasn't the only person there, he also met Tom Riddle. Harry obviously wonders how it is possible for him to met Riddle as he was at Hogwarts fifty years ago and asks him so. Riddle says he is not a ghost, but a memory, which had been preserved in his diary for fifty years.
He than explained what had happened. Riddle had opened the Chamber of Secrets fifty years ago and framed Hagrid for doing it. However, he couldn't open the Chamber again while he was still at school, Dumbledore was keeping an "annoyingly close" watch on him, but he wasn't about to waste all the years he spent looking for it. So he left behind a diary preserving his "sixteen-year-old self" in it's pages.
Ginny had been writing in the diary all year. Riddle had written back sympathetically and Ginny grew to love the diary. In writing to him, Ginny poured some of her soul into him and he grew more powerful and forced Ginny to open the Chamber of Secrets, she wasn't responsible for her actions though. However, the diary power began to scare Ginny so she disposed of it in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. This is when Harry found it.
When Ginny saw Harry with the diary, she panicked and worried that perhaps Riddle had told all of her secrets to Harry. So she waited until Harry's dormitory was empty and stole it back. Riddle's goals had switched from killing Mudbloods to seeing Harry, no that he longer had the diary. He had Ginny write her own farewell on the wall and come down to wait. Knowing that Harry was a parslemouth, Riddle knew he could enter the Chamber.
The first Riddle asked Harry was if he had managed to defeat Lord Voldemort. Harry asked Riddle why it mattered to him as Voldemort was after his time. Riddle replied the Voldemort was his "past, present and future." He then wrote in the air with Harry's wand (which had taken from him):
TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE
Riddle than waved his wand and the letters rearranged themselves and spelled:
I AM LORD VOLDEMORT
Needless to say, this means that Riddle grew to become Lord Voldemort. Riddle then revealed that he was infact half-blood, and that his mother had named him Tom after his Muggle father. He asked Harry whether he really thought that he was going to his filthy Muggle father's name when the blood of Salazar Slytherin flowed in his vains from his mother's side. He said that he wouldn't and instead fashioned himself a new name when he became the greatest sorcerer in the world.
Harry told Riddle that Dumbledore was the greatest sorcerer in the world and the real Voldemort was a wreck and barely alive. Riddle retorted that Dumbeldore had been driven out the castle by the mere memory of him. Harry told Riddle that Dumbledore wasn't as gone as he might think, and by saying this, summoned Fawkes the phoenix to him.
Fawkes brought the Sorting Hat. Riddle thought this was very funny and decided to "match the power of Lord Voldemort, heir to Salazar Slytherin, against the famous Harry Potter and the best weapons Dumbledore can give him."
Riddle than summoned the Basilisk and told to kill Harry by speaking parsletongue. However, the "songbird," as Riddle called, wasn't as defenceless as one might initually think, and it punched out the basilisk's eyes, thus making it safe to look at.
Harry then tried on the Sorting Hat and thought "help me" desperately. Instead of an answering voice, Harry received a sword. Harry plunged the sword into the roof of the basilisk's mouth, killing it. However, one of it's poisonous fangs got Harry in his shoulder. Meaning, that he would die. However Fawkes started crying on the wound, and as phoenix tears are healing powers, this saved Harry.
Harry than plunged the venomous basilisk fang into Riddle's diary. Ink began pouring out of the book and the memory of Riddle frailed out of existence. Ginny than woke up. Harry and Ginny traveled back through the Chamber and found Ron and Lockhart. When Lockhart had tried to do the memory charm, it hit Lockhart instead of Harry and Ron, meaning Lockhart didn't know who he was, or where he was.
Harry, Ron, Ginny and Lockhart grabbed onto Fawkes and flew out of the Chamber. They found Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, Professors McGonigall and Dumbledore and explained the story. Ginny wasn't punished as she hadn't been acting of her free will.
Harry than had a word with Dumbledore in which he exspressed his concern that he belonged in Slytherin. Dumbledore revealed that Voldemort tranferred some of his powers to Harry when he gave him his scar, explaining his ability to speak parsletongue. Dumbledore asked Harry why the Sorting Hat put him in Gryffindor, and Harry said because he asked it to. Dumbledore said, "exactly," and told him that it isn't our abilities that make us who we are, it's our choices and pointed out that the sword Harry had pulled out the Sorting Hat had "Godric Gryffindor" written on it.
This was when Lucius Malfoy showed and it was revealed that he had blackmailed the other governors into suspending Dumbledore and that Mr. Malfoy was the master of Dobby. Harry tricked Malfoy into freeing Dobby. Hagrid was released from Azkaban and everyone petrified was all right again. The story ends when Harry and company arrives to King's Cross Station.
The film stars Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter, Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley, and Emma Watson as Hermione Granger and was written by Steve Kloves and directed by Chris Columbus. On 14 January 2003, it won the award for "Best Live Action Family Film" in the Phoenix Film Critics Awards.
Warning: Spoilers Follow
Many fans noted that Dumbledore said that Voldemort was the last remaining ancestor of Salazar Slytherin, instead of descendant. J. K. Rowling said this was a "deliberate mistake." This could support the theory that time travel will recur in the series (see "Rumour" note for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. This mistake was fixed on further printings, though, so it's more likely to be a mistake that slipped past the editors than an actual hint.
Plot of the book
Warning: Spoilers followThe film
Rumours
Preceded by:
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Harry Potter Series
Followed by:
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
