Review Detail

Reader reviewed by tiff

I though this one was funny because of the wopping tree.Harry is once again back "home" with the Dursleys, and his summer holidays are not going to plan. The Dursleys have forbidden his broom, wand and all of his schoolbooks. Harry Potter has not yet received any letters from his friends Ron and Hermione. On his twelfth birthday (July 31), Dobby the house elf, arrives to warn Harry that he will be in mortal danger if he returns to Hogwarts, confessing that he has been intercepting Harry's letters to make it seem as though his friends had forgotten him. Then he punishes himself by hitting himself with a lamp and other types of self-punishment. Harry is still determined to return to Hogwarts, the only true home he has ever known, so Dobby destroys the dessert for an important dinner party attended by Uncle Vernon's potential client and the client's wife. 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. The Dursleys were unaware that Harry could not practice magic outside of school; now that they are no longer afraid of this, they lock him in his room and fit bars onto the bedroom window only letting him out for using the restroom. They fed Harry by installing a cat door in his bedroom door, and sliding food through it.

Fred, George, and Ron Weasley rescue Harry and take him to The Burrow, the Weasleys' home. After a pleasant month together in the Burrow, everyone heads to Platform 9¾ at King's Cross Station 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 steal the family's enchanted Ford Anglia and fly to Hogwarts but crash into the Whomping Willow and damage Ron's wand. The semi-sentient car ejects them and their belongings and disappears into the Forbidden Forest.

Events at school take a turn for the worse when the legendary Chamber of Secrets is opened and a monster stalks the castle, petrifying anyone who meets its gaze. According to legend, the Chamber was built by Salazar Slytherin and can be opened only by his heir, in order to purge Hogwarts of "all those who were unworthy to study magic" - viz. Muggle-born wizards. The danger starts when Harry and his friends find the caretaker's cat, Mrs. Norris, petrified after they visit Nearly Headless Nick's death day party. Many suspect Harry is the heir of Slytherin because, while trying to save another student during a duel against Malfoy, he inadvertently speaks Parseltongue, a rare talent which he gained during Voldemort's unsuccessful attack on him eleven years previously. Harry himself begins to believe he might be Slytherin's Heir, as the Sorting Hat wanted to put him in Slytherin when he entered Hogwarts.

In order to discover the identity of Slytherin's Heir, Ron and Harry use Polyjuice Potion to disguise themselves as Slytherin students, Crabbe and Goyle, as they think Draco Malfoy is the Heir. He is not, but he does inadvertently provide Harry and Ron with an important clue about the Chamber of Secrets. Later, Harry finds a blank diary belonging to Tom Riddle and decides to keep it.

The attacks increase throughout the year, petrifying more students, including Hermione. All activities, including Quidditch, are cancelled, and students are not allowed to leave their dormitories or classes without their teachers. Hagrid, who had been wrongly blamed for the attacks that had taken place before and expelled, is sent to Azkaban as a precautionary measure. All Hagrid says beforehand to Harry and Ron (who were invisible at the time) is "follow the spiders." The two of them go into the forest only to come across a colony of acromantulas and their leader, Aragog. Aragog tells them that Hagrid could not possibly have been responsible for the attacks of fifty years before and that he, Aragog, was not Slytherin's monster. He refused to speak the name of the monster out of fear. Harry and Ron are rescued by the Ford Anglia, which had taken to running wild in the Forbidden Forest. Using the information that Hermione was studying at the time of her petrification, Harry and Ron deduce that the entrance lies in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom and find out the monster is a Basilisk. They try to inform the teachers, but a message written on a wall declares that Ginny Weasley has been taken into the Chamber, where "her skeleton will lie forever."

He and Ron force Gilderoy Lockhart to go with them. Once they find the entrance to the Chamber, Lockhart reveals that he is not the hero he pretends to be. He attempts to use Ron's broken wand to erase Harry and Ron's memories, but the spell backfires on him, thus erasing his memory instead. The ceiling caves in, separating Harry from Ron and Lockhart.

Harry reaches the Chamber of Secrets, where he finds an unconscious Ginny and a ghostlike 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, imprinted his memory in an enchanted diary, in order to continue the work he began when he opened the Chamber fifty years ago ridding Hogwarts of non-pureblood witches and wizards. Hagrid, a Hogwarts student at the time, was blamed for the attacks and expelled.

It is this fragment of soul in the diary which has set loose the basilisk. The basilisk attacks Harry, despite his ability to speak Parseltongue; Dumbledore's phoenix, Fawkes, arrives just in time with the Sorting Hat, from which Harry draws out the mystic sword of Godric Gryffindor. Fawkes blinds the basilisk, destroying its fatal gaze, and Harry slays it with the sword. Harry's arm is pierced by the creature's poisonous fang as he kills it, but Fawkes heals Harry with his tears. Harry destroys the diary by stabbing it with one of the basilisk's fangs.

Everyone petrified by the basilisk recovers, from Mrs. Norris to Hermione. Dumbledore dispels Harry's fears about whether he belongs in Gryffindor or Slytherin 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. With Ron and Harry granted two hundred points each for their adventure, Gryffindor wins the House Cup for the second year in a row. As a school treat, all final exams are cancelled, much to Hermione's dismay; she studied for nothing.

Dobby reveals he is the Malfoys' servant, and knowing their treachery, had been trying to protect Harry all year. Harry realizes Lucius Malfoy, Draco's father, slipped the diary into Ginny's cauldron when he encountered the Weasleys in a Diagon Alley bookshop. House elves can be freed only when their masters give them clothing; Harry tricks Malfoy into giving Dobby clothes by hiding his sock in the diary, remembering what Dobby had said on his birthday that his (Dobby's) owners would not even give him a sock, in fear of setting him free. Malfoy tosses the sock, still slimy from Harry's battle with the Basilisk, straight into Dobby's hands. Lucius Malfoy attempts to attack Harry when he realizes what Harry has made him do, but the grateful Dobby, no longer bound to obey the Malfoy family, intervenes and blasts Lucius with some magic of his own. A dishevelled Lucius gathers himself and exits Hogwarts, declaring that Harry will soon meet the same end as his parents for his meddling.