Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter/Books/Chamber of Secrets/Chapter 16
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Chapter 16 of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: The Chamber of Secrets
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[edit] Synopsis
With increased security, getting into Moaning Myrtle's bathroom will be difficult, but Harry and Ron will need to talk to Myrtle to find out if their guess is correct.
Professor McGonagall reminds them that exams will be starting in only a week's time. Apparently this catches everyone by surprise. With the school in the state it is in, it seemed unlikely that exams would continue.
Three days later, Professor McGonagall announces at breakfast that the Mandrakes are ready, and the Petrified victims will be revived that night. Ginny sits down beside Harry and Ron. It seems she has something important to say to them, but when Percy arrives after a night's patrolling, she runs away. Percy says he knows what she was going to talk to them about, and that it had nothing to do with the Chamber; but he deflects questions about what it was.
While it is possible that the mystery will be solved with Hermione's revival, Harry still wants to see if Moaning Myrtle can help them. An opportunity appears that morning: as Professor Lockhart escorts students to History of Magic class, Harry and Ron suggest that he doesn't really need to guard them with Hagrid arrested and the threat gone, and he agrees and goes off to take a nap. Harry and Ron manage to leave the group and head for Myrtle's bathroom, but are found by Professor McGonagall, who demands to know what they are doing. Harry says they want to visit Hermione in the hospital wing. Touched by their concern, McGonagall allows them to go, and now they are forced to actually go to the infirmary. While visiting Hermione, they find paper caught in her hand. Removing it with some difficulty, they see it is a page from a book describing Basilisks. "Pipes" is handwritten in the margin. Harry realizes that a Basilisk kills with its gaze, but because no one was looking directly at it, nobody died. Mrs. Norris saw a reflection in the water on the floor. Colin Creevey was looking through his camera lens. Justin saw it through Nearly Headless Nick, and, of course, Hermione had her mirror. This explains both the spiders fleeing it and the roosters being killed — a rooster's crow is fatal to it. Harry can hear the voice because he is a Parselmouth—the Basilisk is a snake. It travels through the walls and ceilings using the plumbing. It occurs to Ron that, if Myrtle was the Basilisk's victim last time, the Chamber's entrance may be in Moaning Myrtle's washroom.
Harry and Ron go to the staff room to report their findings to Professor McGonagall; nobody is there, so they decide to wait. There is an announcement ordering all students to their Houses. Harry and Ron hide so they can find out what has happened. Professor McGonagall and the staff arrive, and McGonagall says a student has been taken into the Chamber. It is Ginny Weasley. Lockhart arrives, belatedly, and is told what has happened. Several teachers call him on his boasts over the past few weeks and he is appointed to open the Chamber and defeat the Monster. He excuses himself to go to his office and "prepare". Having gotten rid of him, the remaining instructors plan how they will inform the students and the future of the school.
Harry and Ron rush to Lockhart's office to tell him what they know. There they find him hastily packing his belongings. He admits that he never actually did the feats in his books. Rather, he took credit for other wizards accomplishments and used a charm to erase their memories. He threatens Harry and Ron with a memory charm, but Harry disarms him, and Ron throws his wand out the window. They force Lockhart to go with them to Moaning Myrtle's washroom. Myrtle says that when she was a student, she went into the washroom to have a bit of a cry. Hearing a boy's voice, she looked out of the cubicle and saw big yellow eyes—then she died. She points out one particular basin. Harry addresses it in Parseltongue, and it opens to reveal a vertical shaft. Ron and Harry push Lockhart down the shaft first, then follow.
Finding themselves in a tunnel, they investigate. A giant snake skin is lying on the ground. Lockhart pretends to faint, but as Ron approaches him, he grabs Ron's wand. He says he will tell everyone that he defeated the monster, and use a piece of the snake skin as proof, but that Harry and Ron were unfortunately rendered insane after seeing Ginny's dead body. He casts a memory charm, but Ron's broken wand backfires and explodes, causing Lockhart to erase his own memory and the ceiling to collapse. Harry and Ron are unhurt, but the fallen rubble separates them. Harry leaves Ron to clear the rock fall while he explores the tunnel further ahead. He finds a door, which also opens when he speaks Parseltongue.
[edit] Analysis
It is here that the truth about Lockhart's abilities is revealed: all the things he said he did in his books were actually done by other people, and having learned their stories, he alters their memory so that he can claim the credit for the others' doings, without fear of their contradicting his claims. As we have seen, he is magically quite weak, with the apparent exception of his Memory charms, and here is defeated by Harry's disarmament charm, as he was by Professor Snape in the Dueling Club. We can suppose that he is somewhat transparent to other wizards as well; he is certainly not held in particular esteem by any of the instructors at Hogwarts, so it is entirely possible that he is given misinformation by those whose stories he is stealing. This would, in fact, explain his confidence in the ineffectual Pixie-banishing charm he had used in the first Defence Against the Dark Arts class. Of course, he had never used it himself, merely borrowing it from a more accomplished wizard. It is likely that the wizard he borrowed it from, out of disgust at Lockhart's general pandering to the audience, gave him an ineffectual charm in hopes that it would bring Lockhart down a few notches when he did try to use it.
It is worthwhile examining the technique used by the Weasley children for de-gnoming the garden earlier in the light of this revelation. While we are never explicitly told that the technique was from Lockhart's book, the reference to Gilderoy Lockhart's Guide to Household Pests does tend to indicate that as the source. The fact that the technique is, ultimately, ineffectual would also tend to suggest Lockhart as the original source.
This is a particularly telling comment on the nature of celebrity and those who seek it. Lockhart, who the author has said was modeled on a real person, is clearly willing to sacrifice anyone and anything in order to keep his own star bright. Harry, who Hagrid had earlier said was more famous than Lockhart would ever be, clearly is not interested in the fame he has fallen into; we see throughout this book that he is trying, in some cases futilely, to stay out of the limelight. In contrast to Harry, who remains a solid, sympathetic character despite his renown, Lockhart has made himself into a glossy, empty shell, and the reader cannot help but be pleased to see him hoist by his own petard.
When they are approaching the Chamber, Ron's broken wand finally does something well: when Lockhart steals it and, ignoring the possibility that Ginny may still be alive, attempts to erase Harry and Ron's memories, it backfires and Obliviates him, as well as causing a small explosion. This backfire ends Lockhart's plan to claim to have found the Chamber and destroyed the Monster, at the cost of three student lives; it also causes a rock fall that separates Harry and Ron. Now, Harry will have to search for Ginny alone, without his friends' help.
[edit] Questions
[edit] Review
[edit] Further Study
[edit] Greater Picture
We will later find out that the effects of the memory charm backfire on Lockhart are quite long-lasting, and Lockhart is not yet recovered when we meet him some three years later. This is to be expected, in a way; Lockhart had been intending the charm he placed on Ron to be permanent, so when it backfired on him, it is only to be expected that it act permanently.
Even as early as this, we start to see some signs of the future romantic entanglements of the main characters in the series. Ginny, having something important that she needs to tell people, approaches Harry first, rather than one of her own brothers. Of course, earlier in the book, we had seen that Ginny was showing all the signs of the classic schoolgirl crush on Harry, but it should be noted that a person with such a crush is almost always too much in awe of the subject of the crush to ever approach him. This would be an indication that Ginny's feelings have matured and deepened, possibly beyond the crush level. Despite several side roads on both Harry's and Ginny's part, this relationship will persist, off and on, throughout the entire series.
We also see the first of several progressively-larger hints that the author drops about the relationship between Ron and Hermione. While Ron is upset at the depredations of the Monster, we can see that he is much more upset at Hermione's Petrification than at the fate of anyone else, except Ginny, his sister. True to his character, though, Ron will not recognize his concern for what it is for several years yet.
The fact that Harry is unable to tell whether he is speaking English or Parseltongue should be unsurprising, as he cannot tell the difference between the two languages when hearing them. It is in this chapter that this is pointed up; nobody else can hear the Basilisk, because to them its speech is a low, undifferentiated hissing, but to Harry it sounds like plain speech. This will prove a plot point in the final book of the series.
