Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter/Books/Chamber of Secrets/Chapter 13
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Chapter 13 of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: The Very Secret Diary
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[edit] Synopsis
Returning to Gryffindor tower after visiting Hermione in the Hospital Wing, Harry and Ron hear an outburst from Filch and cautiously investigate. A large puddle of water has covered the floor near Filch's usual post, the hallway where Mrs. Norris was petrified. The water is coming from Moaning Myrtle's washroom. When Harry and Ron enter the washroom, they find she is even more distraught than usual. Someone threw a book at her while she was in her favorite U-bend pipe. In her watery reaction, she washed the book from the cubicle and onto the floor. Harry finds it is a diary, dated fifty years previously, belonging to one T. M. Riddle, but the pages are blank. From his detention, Ron remembers that a T. M. Riddle received an award for Special Services to the School fifty years ago. He especially remembers having to polish it about fifty times because of slug slime.
In early February, Hermione, now fur-free and tailless, leaves the Hospital Wing. Harry tells her about Riddle's diary. She notices a correlation between the diary and the Chamber of Secrets: the Chamber was last opened fifty years ago. Thinking the diary may contain information about the Chamber, she attempts several revealing spells on it, but it remains stubbornly blank. Harry visits the Trophy Room to find some information about Riddle, but apart from his award, and his name on the list of Head Boys, there is no mention of what he did or who he is. Harry keeps the diary, hoping to learn about Riddle.
The mood at school is lighter; the attacks have ceased for now and spring is coming. The only cloud on the horizon is Professor Lockhart claiming credit for halting the attacks. Lockhart proposes a little "morale-booster" for Valentine's Day, which turns out to be a squad of dwarves dressed as Cupids running around the school delivering live Valentines. One corners Harry to deliver a Valentine (most likely from Ginny). In the resulting fracas, Harry's bag is ripped, and ink from a broken bottle spills over everything. Malfoy is there, grabs the diary, and starts waving it around. Ginny seems terrified, and Harry reclaims the diary using the disarming jinx. Harry notices that the diary does not have any ink stains. He tries to point this out to Ron, but Ron is occupied with his recalcitrant wand and ignores him.
That night, Harry discovers that if he writes in the diary, it responds with Tom Riddle's written words. When Harry asks about the Chamber of Secrets, the diary shows him the events of 13 June, fifty years back. Tom Riddle asks then-headmaster, Professor Dippet, if he can remain at Hogwarts for the summer, rather than return to his orphanage "home." Professor Dippet says because the Chamber of Secrets has been opened, that is impossible, and the school may have to close permanently. Riddle is then seen in the dungeons, secretly watching another student sneak in to care for an unknown large creature. It is Hagrid, then a third-year student. Tom confronts Hagrid and accuses him of releasing the Monster from the Chamber. As the creature scuttles away, Harry is suddenly ejected from the memory. He then tells Ron what he saw and that it was Hagrid who supposedly opened the Chamber of Secrets fifty years ago.
[edit] Analysis
It is mentioned here that Filch's usual post is a chair under the writing on the wall where Mrs. Norris was found. Thus, Mrs. Norris was found very close to Moaning Myrtle's washroom. While Harry and Ron never consciously make this connection, it may help Harry solve the riddle of the entrance to the Chamber later in the story. This also, incidentally, explains where the water came from that was on the floor of the hallway when Mrs. Norris was found. We had already seen that Peeves' insults had chased Myrtle back to her washroom; her distraught turning on of all the water in the washroom on that occasion, and the resulting flood in the hall, will likely prove important to the story.
The "mood lightener" at the school shows exactly how little understanding Lockhart has of how real people think. It does allow us to see how the other teachers feel about Lockhart. Additionally, it causes Harry to ask a question about the diary (why didn't it get ink-stained?), and as a result he learns how to communicate with it.
The episode with the diary will re-confirm that the Chamber had been opened fifty years before, and a girl had died at that time. Draco Malfoy had told us this earlier, and that he did not know who had been responsible then. Evidence later in the series will indicate that Lucius Malfoy, Draco's father had attended Hogwarts some twenty years before Harry, so he could not have been there when the Chamber had been opened previously; it is possible that Lucius does not actually know who the Heir is, as he told Draco, though by now he may be having some suspicions.
This will be the first, but by no means the last, of Harry's experiences in other people's memories. Note that Harry is initially confused that Dippet does not react to him; this is the key indicator that he is in someone else's memories, which are of course unchanging. One possibly confusing issue is that if we are in Tom's memory, as stated, how can we see what Dippet is doing before Tom arrives? This is never completely explained. The author has said that when you are in someone else's memory, what you see is what happened, not what they perceived. It is possible that there is a range of effectiveness of the charm that retrieves the memory, such that anything happening within 30 feet (10M) or so of the owner of the memory can be retrieved.
[edit] Questions
[edit] Review
[edit] Further Study
[edit] Greater Picture
For several reasons, this is a pivotal chapter in the book.
An important part of the whole plot of the Harry Potter series is shown here: this is Harry's first contact with Tom Riddle's diary, which we learn in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was the first Horcrux found of six believed made by Voldemort (whose original name was Tom Marvolo Riddle). We will learn that it is this soul shard of Tom's that is opening the Chamber, and he is doing it by controlling Ginny. It is because Ginny has finally connected the diary with the strangeness that is going on that she attempts to get rid of it by flushing it down the toilet in Moaning Myrtle's washroom, thus arousing Myrtle's ire and attracting Harry and Ron's attention. The episode with Draco Malfoy, where he is waving the diary around, particularly disturbs Ginny because she recognizes the diary and thought she had gotten rid of it, and now was deathly afraid that Harry might learn how to communicate with it, and through it learn the secrets that she had entrusted to it. We are led to believe, however, that her mortification is because she is the originator of the Valentine greeting being delivered to Harry.
It is because Ginny no longer has the diary, and thus is no longer being controlled by it, that the attacks cease. Ginny will eventually retrieve the diary, and the attacks will immediately start up again, though nobody will make the connection between the two events.
This is also where Harry learns a fundamental piece of the story, although it is incomplete: apparently, Hagrid had something to do with the opening of the Chamber of Secrets fifty years ago. However, we will shortly learn that the pet Tom Riddle saw him with was an Acromantula, a large spider which is capable of speech. While Hagrid and the Acromantula will prove to be totally unconnected with the Chamber, it will be this Acromantula, Aragog, who will give Harry a clue he needs to find the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets.
While the memory that Tom shows Harry is accurate, it is incomplete and is slanted to imply Tom is innocent and Hagrid is the one who opened the Chamber. Harry, like the school of Tom Riddle's day, is taken in by this. Of course, it was Tom, who was the only remaining heir of Slytherin at that time, and who had been exploring the school extensively, who had found and opened the Chamber, and who was controlling the Monster within it. It is because of Tom's exposure of Hagrid, and his carefully not releasing the Monster again after Hagrid's expulsion, that the Headmaster of the day, Dippet, and the rest of the school (with the possible exception of Professor Dumbledore), believed he had correctly identified the one who was opening the Chamber. It is for this that Tom was given the Special Services award.
As a side note, we should mention that memories of this nature can be edited; we will see an instance of that in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince that Professor Slughorn has edited his memories before giving them to Professor Dumbledore. The editing in that case was done rather clumsily. Unlike Slughorn, Riddle does not try to replace segments of memory which he wants to keep hidden; instead he simply jumps over them.
It is actually in this book, looking back on it from the end of the series, that we first see the habit of Dumbledore to hold his cards extremely close to his vest. Dumbledore, we are told, had his suspicions about Riddle from the beginning, suspicions that were held by none of the other staff. Dumbledore seems to have suspected that Riddle had not been entirely truthful in his exposure of Hagrid as the one who was opening the Chamber. Dumbledore has clearly retained this suspicion through the intervening fifty years, and believes that it is Riddle who is again opening the Chamber, but as seen in an earlier chapter, only wonders how he is doing it.
