Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

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Harry Potter books
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Author J. K. Rowling
Illustrators Cliff Wright
Mary GrandPré
Genre Fantasy
Publishers Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, Scholastic Press, Raincoast Books
Released 2 July 1998
June 2, 1999
Book no. Two
Sales ~77 million (Worldwide)
Story timeline 1943
1992-1993
Chapters 18
Pages 251
341
Preceded by Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Followed by Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, is the second novel in the Harry Potter series written by J.K. Rowling. The book was published on 2 July 1998.

Contents [hide]
1 Plot
1.1 An unusual summer
1.2 Heir of Slytherin
1.3 The Chamber of Secrets
1.4 Resolution
2 Pre-release history
3 Editions
4 Translations
5 References
6 External links



Plot

An unusual summer
While home with the Dursleys for the summer, Harry Potter is not getting any mail from his friends, Ron and Hermione. On his twelfth birthday (July 31) Harry is visited by Dobby, a house-elf, who warns Harry that he will be in mortal danger if he returns to Hogwarts. Harry ignores Dobby's dire warning and is determined to return. It turns out that Dobby has been collecting Harry's letters to make it seem as though his friends had forgotten him, hoping Harry might then not want to return to Hogwarts. Seeing that he will have to use force, Dobby decides to destroy, by the use of a charm, a pudding that Aunt Petunia has made for an important dinner party attended by a potential client and his wife of Vernon Dursley. Harry is blamed by the Ministry of Magic for Dobby's charm, and is told that if he does magic outside school again, he will be expelled. On learning that Harry cannot perform magic outside school, the Dursleys, previously fearful of his wizarding, lock Harry’s books and wand away and Vernon Dursley fits bars onto his bedroom window and door, making Harry a prisoner.

A few days later, Fred, George and Ron Weasley come to his rescue in their father's enchanted Ford Anglia. After a pleasant summer together in the the Weasley house, everyone heads to Platform 9¾ to take the Hogwarts Express back to school. To their shock, Harry and Ron are unable to enter the barrier between platforms 9 and 10. In desperation, they fly to Hogwarts in the car, crashing into the Whomping Willow and damaging Ron's wand. The semi-sentient car ejects them and their belongings and disappears into the Forbidden Forest.


Heir of Slytherin
Harry Potter soon finds he is the unwanted center of attention of three people: the vain new Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor, Gilderoy Lockhart (a wizard perpetuating his own legend), admirer Colin Creevey (a young first year Gryffindor who endlessly takes photos of Harry and begs for autographs), and Ron's sister, Ginny Weasley, who fancies Harry. Events take a turn for the worse when the Chamber of Secrets is opened and a monster stalks the castle, with the power to turn people to stone. To the horror of Hogwarts, the monster petrifies several students. According to legend, the Chamber was built by Salazar Slytherin and can only be opened by his heir, in order to purge Hogwarts of students who are not pure-blood wizards. Many suspect Harry is the heir of Slytherin, especially after he inadvertently speaks Parseltongue (the language of snakes), a rare ability Harry gained after Voldemort's failed murderous attack upon him when he was an infant.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione attempt to discover the Heir of Slytherin's true identity. Using Polyjuice Potion brewed by Hermione, Ron and Harry disguise themselves as Slytherin students, Crabbe and Goyle, hoping to learn from Draco Malfoy the identity of the Heir. Malfoy, they learn, does not know who the Heir of Slytherin is, but he inadvertently provides Harry and Ron with an important clue about the Chamber of Secrets.

Unfortunately, the hair that Hermione took from Millicent Bullstrode's uniform was from a cat, and as the Polyjuice Potion is only intended for human transformations she assumes a feline appearance; it takes several weeks to restore her normal human form. During her time in the hospital wing, the shades are pulled around Hermione's bed so that she does not have to endure the shame and humiliation of being stared at by other students, with rumours going around about her disappearance, and Harry and Ron bring Hermione her homework at her request. She is released from the hospital wing in early February, her normal appearance restored, and looks over the diary of Tom Riddle when Harry shows it to her, but she cannot make much of it.


The Chamber of Secrets
The attacks increase throughout the year, petrifying more students, including Hermione. Most horribly, a message written on a wall declares that Ginny Weasley has been taken into the Chamber, where "her skeleton will lie forever."

With the help of Ron and Moaning Myrtle, Harry discovers the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. They force Gilderoy Lockhart, a fraud who wipes clean other wizards' memories and claims their achievements, to go with them. Once they find the entrance to the Chamber, Lockhart attempts to use Ron's broken wand to erase Harry and Ron's memories, but the spell backfires on to himself and brings the ceiling caving in, separating Harry from Ron and Lockhart. Lockhart revives, but has now lost his own memory.

Harry makes it to the Chamber where he finds an unconscious Ginny. He also meets a young man named Tom Riddle, who claims to be a "memory". Harry learns that Ginny, under the control of Lord Voldemort, opened the Chamber. Voldemort, whose real name is Tom Marvolo Riddle (the anagram of which is "I am Lord Voldemort"), imprinted his memory in an enchanted diary, in order to one day continue the work he began when he opened the Chamber fifty years ago — ridding Hogwarts of non-pureblood witches and wizards. It was Hagrid, a Hogwarts student at the time, who was blamed for the attacks and expelled.

Tom Riddle's memory grows more powerful as it steals life from Ginny's body, and it tries to kill Harry by setting loose a basilisk (the monster responsible for petrifying the students). But Dumbledore's phoenix, Fawkes, arrives carrying the Sorting Hat, from which Harry draws out the sword of Godric Gryffindor. Fawkes blinds the basilisk, destroying its fatal gaze, and Harry slays it with the sword. In attempting to slay the basilisk, Harry's arm has been pierced by the creature's fang, and Riddle tells him that the venom will kill him within a minute. Harry stabs the diary with one of the basilisk's fangs, and the memory of Riddle is destroyed; Ginny awakens from her near-death state. Fawkes returns to heal Harry with his tears (phoenix tears have healing power). Ginny recovers fully, along with Hermione, Mrs Norris, Justin Finch-Fletchley, Nearly Headless Nick, Colin Creevey, and Penelope Clearwater.


Resolution
Harry realises it was Lucius Malfoy, Draco Malfoy's father, who slipped the diary into Ginny's cauldron when he encountered the Weasleys in a Diagon Alley bookshop, but he is unable to prove it. Dobby reveals he is the Malfoys' servant, and knowing their treachery, had been trying to protect Harry all year. In gratitude, Harry hides one of his old socks in the diary and hands it to Lucius. Lucius throws the diary back at Harry, but Dobby catches it and opens it to reveal the sock. This constitutes, in Dobby's eyes, a gift of clothing — the traditional manner in which a master frees a house-elf from servitude. The freed Dobby declares he is eternally grateful to Harry and protects him from an attempted reprisal from Lucius.

Dumbledore dispels Harry's fears that he should have been put into Slytherin rather than into Gryffindor when he tells Harry that it is his choices that define him and not his abilities, and that Harry could not have wielded the sword of Gryffindor if he did not truly belong to that house.


Pre-release history
In the early drafts of this book, the author had the ghost Nearly Headless Nick sing a self-composed song explaining his condition and the circumstances of his death. The material was cut as the book's editor did not care for the poem, although it has been subsequently published as an extra on J.K. Rowling's official website [1]. Another sub-plot cut from Chamber of Secrets was the family background of Dean Thomas, which was removed from the draft because Rowling and her publishers considered it an "unnecessary digression", and she considered Neville Longbottom's own journey of discovery "more important to the central plot"[2].

This book is thematically linked with the sixth book of the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. In fact, Half-Blood Prince was the working title of Chamber of Secrets and certain "crucial" plot information from that book was intended to be placed in this volume, but Rowling ultimately felt that "this information's proper home was book six"[3]. Several items that later play a role in Half-Blood Prince first make their appearance in Chamber of Secrets, including the Hand of Glory and the opal necklace that appear when Harry is in Borgin & Burkes, Tom Riddle's diary and a Vanishing Cabinet damaged by Peeves the Poltergeist.

First edition printings had several errors, which were fixed in subsequent reprints. This includes Dumbledore saying that Voldemort was the last remaining ancestor of Salazar Slytherin, instead of descendant. Also, Lockhart's book on werewolves is entitled "Weekends with Werewolves" at one point, and "Wanderings with Werewolves" later in the book.


Editions
Bloomsbury (United Kingdom, Australia, Canada etc.)
ISBN 0-7475-3849-2 Hardcover
ISBN 0-7475-3848-4 Paperback
ISBN 0-7475-7361-1 Hardcover (adult edition)
ISBN 0-7475-7448-0 Paperback (adult edition)
Scholastic (United States etc.)
ISBN 0-439-06486-4 Hardcover
ISBN 0-439-06487-2 Paperback

Translations
Main article: Harry Potter in translation