Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is a fantasy novel written by British author J. K. Rowling and the second novel in the Harry Potter series. The plot follows Harry's second year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, during which a series of messages on the walls of the school's corridors warn that the "Chamber of Secrets" has been opened and that the "heir of Slytherin" would kill all pupils who do not come from all-magical families. These threats are found after attacks which leave residents of the school "petrified" (frozen like stone). Throughout the year, Harry and his friends Ron and Hermione investigate the attacks.
The book was published in the United Kingdom on 2 July 1998 by Bloomsbury and in the United States on 2 June 1999 by Scholastic Inc. Although Rowling found it difficult to finish the book, it won high praise and awards from critics, young readers and the book industry, although some critics thought the story was perhaps too frightening for younger children. Much like with other novels in the series, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets triggered religious debates; some religious authorities have condemned its use of magical themes, while others have praised its emphasis on self-sacrifice and on the way in which a person's character is the result of the person's choices.
Several commentators have noted that personal identity is a strong theme in the book, and that it addresses issues of racism through the treatment of non-magical, non-human and non-living people. Some commentators regard the diary as a warning against uncritical acceptance of information from sources whose motives and reliability cannot be checked. Institutional authority is portrayed as self-serving and incompetent. The book is also known to have some connections to the sixth novel of the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
The film adaptation of the novel, released in 2002, became (at that time) the seventh highest-grossing film ever and received generally favourable reviews. Video games loosely based on Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets were also released for several platforms, and most obtained favourable reviews.

Plot

On Harry Potter's birthday in 1992, the Dursley family—Harry's Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, and cousin Dudley—hold a dinner party for a potential client of Vernon's drill-manufacturing company. Harry is not invited, but is content to spend the evening quietly in his bedroom, although he is upset that his school friends have not sent cards or presents. However, when he goes to his room a house-elf named Dobby warns him not to return to Hogwarts and admits to intercepting Harry's post from his friends. Having failed to persuade Harry to voluntarily give up his place at Hogwarts, Dobby then attempts to get him expelled by using magic to smash Petunia's dessert on a dinner party guest and framing it on Harry, who is not allowed to use magic out of school. Uncle Vernon's business deal falls through, but Harry is given a second chance and allowed to return at the start of the school year.
In the meantime, Uncle Vernon punishes Harry, fitting locks to his bedroom door and bars to the windows. However, Ron Weasley arrives with his twin brothers Fred and George in their father Arthur’s enchanted Ford Anglia and they rescue Harry, who stays at their family home, the Burrow, for the remainder of his holidays. Harry and the other Weasleys—mother Molly, third eldest son Percy, and daughter Ginny (who has a crush on Harry)—travel to Diagon Alley. There, they are reunited with Hermione Granger and introduced to Lucius Malfoy, father of Harry’s school nemesis Draco, and Gilderoy Lockhart, a conceited autobiographer who has been appointed Defence Against the Dark Arts professor after the death of Professor Quirrel. When Harry and Ron approach Platform 9 3/4 in King's Cross station it refuses to allow them to pass; instead, they fly Arthur’s car to Hogwarts, where they crash into a sentient willow tree on the grounds.
In trouble for the crash, Ron is punished by having to clean the school trophies and Harry by helping the celebrity teacher Professor Lockhart, whose classes are chaotic, with addressing his fan mail. Harry learns of some wizards' prejudice about blood status in terms of “pure” blood (only wizarding heritage) and those with Muggle parentage. He is alone in hearing an unnerving voice seemingly coming from the walls of the school itself, and during a deathday party for Gryffindor House's ghost Nearly Headless Nick, he, Ron, and Hermione happen upon the school caretaker Argus Filch’s petrified cat, Mrs. Norris, and a warning scrawled across one of the walls: “The chamber of secrets has been opened. Enemies of the heir, beware.”
Rumours fly around the school regarding the Chamber of Secrets' history. Harry and his friends discover from Cuthbert Binns, the ghostly professor of History of Magic, that it houses a terrible monster and was created by one of the school’s founders, Salazar Slytherin, after a fundamental disagreement with the other founders (Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, and Rowena Ravenclaw). Slytherin believed that students of non-magical parentage should be refused entry to the school. When a Bludger, one of the balls involved in Quidditch, chases after Harry instead of zigzagging toward any player it can hit, breaking his arm, Dobby returns in the middle of the night to visit Harry in the hospital wing, revealing that it was he who charmed the Bludger and sealed the gateway at King’s Cross and that the Chamber of Secrets had been opened before. Another attack occurs, this time to a first-year Gryffindor named Colin Creevey who idolises Harry, and the school enters panic mode, setting up a dueling class for the students (led by Lockhart and Potions master/Head of Slytherin House Severus Snape), during which it is revealed that Harry is a 'Parselmouth', meaning he has the rare gift to speak to snakes.
This sparks the rumour mill yet again, as students around the school suspect Harry of being the Heir of Slytherin (as Slytherin was also a parselmouth), and circumstantial evidence to support this theory arrives in the form of another attack, this time on Hufflepuff second-year Justin Finch Fletchley and the Gryffindor ghost. Harry, Ron, and Hermione begin to suspect that Draco is behind the attacks, given his family history of remaining well within Slytherin ranks and open hostility toward Muggle-born students, and so Hermione concocts Polyjuice potion, which allows them to become Draco’s boorish lackeys, Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle, for an hour to interrogate him. This comes to nothing, as Draco’s father only told his son the general facts of the previous opening of the Chamber and that it occurred fifty years previously. Meanwhile, Myrtle Warren, an existentially mopey ghost that haunts a bathroom, unwittingly provides a new clue in the form of a diary deposited in her stall—a diary, moreover, that belonged to Tom Riddle, a student who knows all too well about the Chamber, having been witness to a fellow student’s death fifty years ago. The culprit, he reveals to Harry, was none other than Rubeus Hagrid, now gamekeeper for Hogwarts School; when Hermione is attacked next, alongside a Ravenclaw prefect, the school is put on lockdown, and Dumbledore and Hagrid are forced to leave the premises.
Fortunately for Harry and Ron, Hagrid left a set of instructions: to follow the spiders currently fleeing into the Forbidden Forest, which they do, only to find the monster blamed for the attacks fifty years before, a massive spider named Aragog, who explains to the duo that the real monster is one that spiders fear above all others. Hermione provides the last set of clues that inform them of the monster’s identity: It is a basilisk, (hence Harry’s ability to understand it,) that kills with a stare (although no one is dead because of various devices through which they indirectly saw the monster) and which spiders (such as Aragog and his offspring) fear above all others. Harry figures out from hints Aragog dropped that a student who died during the previous attacks is Myrtle, and when Ginny is apparently taken by the monster into the Chamber, they discover that the entrance is in the bathroom they have been using to make Polyjuice Potion. Harry, Ron, and Lockhart enter the Chamber, but the dunderheaded professor (who reveals that he is a fraud) causes a rockfall while attempting to modify the boys’ memories with Ron’s damaged wand. Harry must enter alone. He arrives to find Ginny in a weakened state being watched over by a shadowy, ghostly Riddle. Riddle explains that he is not only the heir of Slytherin, but he also grew up to become Voldemort himself. Riddle sets the basilisk upon Harry, who fights the monster with the help of Dumbledore's phoenix Fawkes and the Sword of Gryffindor drawn from the Sorting Hat. Harry defeats the monster and destroys the diary with one of the basilisk's fangs, erasing Riddle.
Harry, Ron, Ginny, and Lockhart return to the main castle and reunite with McGonagall, Dumbledore, and Mr. and Mrs. Weasley. Ginny, whose possession by Voldemort caused all of the petrification and troubles over the course of the year, is given a reprieve by Dumbledore, who reasons that greater wizards have been duped by Voldemort before and takes great interest in the qualities of the diary, which Harry gives to him. Lucius Malfoy bursts in after this meeting, demanding to know why and how Dumbledore has returned to the school and accompanied by Dobby, revealing the family to whom he is enslaved. The house-elf also provides Harry with unspoken cues regarding the diary’s ownership: While it was Tom Riddle’s, it had been in the Malfoys’ possession, and Harry returns it, devising a scenario involving his own sock that frees Dobby from the Malfoys’ employment, hence provoking an attack on Harry, only for Dobby to jump in and save him. The petrified students are cured, the end-of-year exams are cancelled (much to Hermione’s chagrin), Hagrid comes back in the middle of the final feast, and Harry returns to Privet Drive in higher spirits than he last left it.