The Ancient Wisdom of Harry Potter
Prof. Abditus Questor
Book 2: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
PLOT SUMMARY: After his usual miserable summer with his Muggle relatives on Privet Drive, Harry returns to Hogwarts. New characters and new challenges for Harry enter the story. Dobby is a house-elf admirer of Harry's who tries to save him from harm and in the process nearly kills him. Gilderoy Lockart is the new but fraudulent teacher for Defense against the Dark Arts. Tom Riddle is Voldemort at the age of 16, whose spirit emerges from his diary and possesses Ginny, Ron Weasley's sister. Through her, Riddle brings out of the Chamber of Secrets, deep under Hogwarts, a basilisk serpent monster whose direct sight kills and whose reflection petrifies. Harry rescues Ginny and slays the basilisk.
Early in Harry's second year at Hogwarts, a message has been daubed on a wall: THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED. ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE. The “heir” is a descendant of Salazar Slytherin, one of the founding Wizards of Hogwarts, the only one who believed that none but pure-blood Wizards should be admitted as students. To enforce that belief, he created deep underground a secret chamber that only his true heir, a descendant who shared his belief, could open. In that secret chamber was concealed a deadly basilisk. The identity of the heir is a mystery through most of the story, Harry himself being suspected for a time. But the heir turns out to be Voldemort, whose real name, when he was a student at Hogwarts, was Tom Marvolo (from his mother's family, descended from Slytherin) Riddle (from his muggle father).