Overview

In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry has a rough start to the summer. A house elf named Dobby visits Harry at the home of his muggle relatives, the Dursleys, to warn him that it would be dangerous to return to Hogwart’s this year. Harry tells Dobby that Hogwart’s is his home and that he has to return, so the elf smashes a dessert while his relatives are entertaining business guests in order to have Harry blamed and prevented from going back to school. Harry is rescued by his best friend, Ron Weasley, and his two brothers Fred and George. He stays with the Weasleys for the rest of the summer.

Hogwart’s experiences several attacks on students, a ghost and even the caretaker’s cat. The attacks are attributed to the monster that is rumoured to live in Salazar Slytherin’s Chamber of Secrets which he is said to have built when the school was founded in order to clear the school of muggle born students and “half-bloods”. Harry experiences a high level of loneliness as his fellow students begin to suspect that he is the heir of Slytherin and is controlling the monster.

Eventually, Ginny Weasley, Ron’s sister is taken to the Chamber of Secrets and Harry accompanied by Ron, his other friend Hermione and the arrogant-yet-useless Prof. Gilderoy Lockhart enter the Chamber to save Ginny after finding the entrance by speaking to a historical victim of previous attacks (Moaning Myrtle who haunts a girls’ bathroom). Harry gets cut off from the others when a part of the cave entrance to the Chamber collapses and ends up face to face with Slytherin’s monster and, once again, Lord Voldemort. This time, Voldemort appaears in the form of a memory which has been magically concealed within an old diary. Though Harry comes close to facing death after Slytherin’s monster attacks him, he managed to kill the monster in the end. Harry is saved from his wounds by Fawkes, Professor Dumbledore’s phoenix who comes to Harry after he shows loyalty to Dumbledore, and who’s tears have healing properties.

Published in 1998 in Canada and the UK. Followed by the US in 1999.