chapter sixteen of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Ginny tries to tell Harry and Ron something, but is interrupted. The boys then visit Hermione and solve the mystery of the Chamber – but soon learn that Ginny has been taken by Slytherin’s heir. Harry and Ron find Lockhart to offer help, but when they discover him trying to flee, they force him to join them in the Chamber instead. Lockhart accidently traps himself and Ron, though, so Harry proceeds after the Basilisk on his own.
 

Ginny opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Harry leaned forward and spoke quietly, so that only Ginny and Ron could hear him. “Is it something about the Chamber of Secrets?”

(by Loleia)

 

“The Heir of Slytherin,” said Professor McGonagall, who was very white, “left another message. Right underneath the first one. Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever.”

(by Marta T)

 

about the chapter

Something You May Not Have Noticed

McGonagall always has such a stern presence in the classroom, but we get a brief glimpse here of how she runs the school, and interestingly, despite Dumbledore’s eccentricities and permissiveness, she actually seems to exert less control over the student body – instead of setting off firecrackers when trying to get students’ attention, she instead waits until “the hubbub had subsided.” On the other hand, it could just be her sentimental side, as she is announcing the first bit of good news the school has heard in quite some time.
 

The Power of Magic

There’s a fairly logical and obnoxious question that jumps from the pages of this chapter, which is that if Salazar Slytherin hid the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets one thousand years ago, how on earth did he manage to make it within a modern plumbing system?

There are really only two possibilities, unless wizards invented plumbing centuries before Muggles did (and why would they?). It’s been suggested many times that Slytherin cast spells so the Chamber would move its own entrance around as Hogwarts changed, which is certainly a possibility. But I think I prefer the idea that an heir of Slytherin at some point moved the Chamber’s entrance personally. If you think about it, it makes sense that sometime after the plumbing was installed, it would occur to an heir that the pipes would allow the Basilisk to move around undetected, thereby making it all the more dangerous.
 

Life at Hogwarts

We learn in other places that library books often have spells on them to prevent mistreatment, such as when Dumbledore accidentally doodled on a book and “found the book beating me fiercely about the head” (according to his foreward in Quidditch Through the Ages). So I wonder what kind of curse might have been placed on Hermione when she ripped out the page about the basilisk? Is it possible that her being cursed indirectly led to her being Petrified?

Incidentally, the text that she rips from the library book isn’t the same description that is written in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. But if Hermione had been in third year, she would have already read this book – it was required for Care of Magical Creatures class that startsd that year – and probably solved the mystery quite a bit sooner.
 

The Boy Who Lived

It’s funny that for the first few years Harry’s at Hogwarts, we very rarely ever see him actually accomplish anything in class. Usually he’s much more like we see him here where he looks “down at the pair of white rabbits he was supposed to be turning into slippers,” and can’t “seem to think of anything that would be useful in an exam.” Obviously we’re not getting the whole picture, because he does get through his exams just fine. But it will be a couple more years before we really get a chance to see him excel at much of anything involving magic – other than Quidditch, of course.
 

Something to Remember

When Ginny nearly spills her secret to Harry and Ron, it seems like the fact that her mannerisms remind Harry of Dobby is little more than description – but it will prove to be much more than that. After all, why would little Ginny Weasley remind Harry specifically of someone who is enslaved and forbidden to reveal information?
 

The Final Word

Question: “In the second book, Harry and Ron went to the girls’ toilet and met McGonagall. They told her that they were going to visit Hermione, and she started crying. Why?”

“She found it very touching that Harry and Ron were missing Hermione so badly (or so she thought). Under that gruff exterior, Professor McGonagall is a bit of an old softy, really. “–J.K. Rowling, October 2000
 

“I had to decide the glasses couldn’t protect you [from a basilisk]. I just had to, because obviously there would be quite a few people at Hogwarts who were wearing glasses and I thought that might cause me plot difficulties, so I decided that glasses alone wouldn’t protect you. But as you know, I had Justin protected by the camera lens, so I think I am open for criticism there, but the way I explained to myself he was looking through several lenses and wasn’t actually seeing the thing directly, it wasn’t through his eyeline, when you look through a camera you are looking through the lens, it is a little distorted. You can argue with me on that and I wouldn’t blame you but that is how I explained it to my self at the time. “–J.K. Rowling, July 2005