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2. HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS
A bizarre house elf named Dobby tries to prevent Harry from returning to Hogwarts — he even ruins a Dursley dinner party, provoking an enraged Uncle Vernon to lock Harry in his room. But faster than you can say Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Ron and his impish twin brothers, Fred and George, arrive in their dad's flying Ford Anglia. Harry heads to the Burrow, the Weasleys' magical home (with pesky garden gnomes and a noisy ghoul in the attic). Then things really go wrong: When Harry goes to Diagon Alley, his first use of Floo powder — a magic mode of transport via fireplace — lands him in the nearby Dark Arts shop Borgin and Burkes. Worse, the passage to platform 9 3/4 closes before he and Ron can pass through. So they do what any self-respecting 12-year-old boys would: borrow Dad's flying car, follow the Hogwarts Express to school, and crash-land into a rather annoyed Whomping Willow. Once at Hogwarts, Harry (and Harry alone) begins to hear a chilling voice presaging attacks on students born to nonmagical Muggles that leave them literally petrified. It's somehow linked to the Chamber of Secrets, a room that supposedly can be opened only by the heir of Hogwarts cofounder Salazar Slytherin. Harry, Ron, and Hermione suspect the heir is Draco — but that's a false lead. Then Harry receives the enchanted diary of Hogwarts alum Tom Marvolo Riddle, which implicates Hagrid as the one who opened the chamber 50 years ago, killing the student-turned-ghost Moaning Myrtle. When Hagrid is hauled off to the wizard prison Azkaban, Harry and Ron must clear his name.
Major Introductions Ron's Muggle-fascinated father, Arthur, and his Harry-obsessed youngest sibling, Ginny; Gilderoy Lockhart, the dangerously vain new Dark Arts teacher; Cornelius Fudge, the risk-averse Minister of Magic; and Draco's father, Lucius Malfoy, a former follower of You-Know-Who.
Coolest Magical Element Polyjuice potion, which lets Harry and Ron briefly impersonate Draco's buds, Crabbe and Goyle. It's made of rare ingredients (fluxweed picked at a full moon) and a bit of the intended target, prompting Ron to complain: ''I'm drinking nothing with Crabbe's toenails in it.''
Voldemort Watch Turns out Tom Marvolo Riddle is an anagram for I Am Lord Voldemort. Before school began, the elder Malfoy (and — aha! — Dobby's master) furtively passed the Dark Lord's schoolboy diary to Ginny, who was in turn manipulated by the trapped-in-the-book Riddle to open the Chamber of Secrets. When Harry confronts Riddle in the Chamber, the 16-year-old fledgling Voldemort is almost fully corporeal, having sapped much of Ginny's life away; Harry defeats Riddle's basilisk (a giant serpent) and destroys the diary with one of its fangs, obliterating Riddle's living memory for good.
What Harry Learns Horrified by all he and Riddle had in common — both orphans, both from half-Muggle parentage, both able to speak to snakes in Parseltongue — Harry fears he's doomed to the same fate. But Dumbledore points out that it's our choices (like Harry's resistance to being sorted into Slytherin) that define us more than our abilities. — Adam B. Vary
