“ — LETTER FROM DUMBLEDORE LAST NIGHT, I THOUGHT YOUR FATHER WOULD DIE OF SHAME, WE DIDN’T BRING YOU UP TO BEHAVE LIKE THIS, YOU 1 страница

Harry Potter

And the Chamber of Secrets

also by j. k. rowling

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Year One at Hogwarts

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Year Two at Hogwarts

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Year Three at Hogwarts

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Year Four at Hogwarts

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Year Five at Hogwarts

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Year Six at Hogwarts

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Year Seven at Hogwarts

Harry Potter

and the Chamber of Secrets

J. K. Rowling

ILLUSTRATIONS BY Mary GrandPrй

ARTHUR A. LEVINE BOOKS

AN IMPRINT OF SCHOLASTIC Press.

F or Seбn P. F. Harris.

Getaway driver and foul-weather friend

Publishers since 1920.

scholastic, scholastic press, and the lantern logo

are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

harry potter, characters, names, and related indicia are trademarks and © Warner Bros. Harry Potter Publishing Rights © J. K. Rowling

No part of this publication may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write

to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rowling, J. K.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets / by J. K. Rowling.

p. cm.

Summary: When the Chamber of Secrets is opened again at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, second-year student Harry Potter finds himself in danger from a dark power that has once more been released on the school.

ISBN 0-439-06486-4

[1. Wizards — Fiction. 2. Magic — Fiction. 3. Schools — Fiction.

4. England — Fiction. ] I. Title.

PZ7. R7968Har 1999

[Fic] — dc21 98-46370

60 59 58 57 56 55 54 53 02 03 04 05 06 Printed in the U. S. A. 23

First American edition, June 1999

Contents

ONE

The Worst Birthday · 1

TWO

Dobby’s Warning · 12

THREE

The Burrow · 24

FOUR

At Flourish and Blotts · 42

FIVE

The Whomping Willow · 65

SIX

Gilderoy Lockhart · 86

SEVEN

Mudbloods and Murmurs · 104

EIGHT

The Deathday Party · 122

? v ‘

Contents

NINE

The Writing on the Wall · 140

TEN

The Rogue Bludger · 161

ELEVEN

The Dueling Club · 182

TWELVE

The Polyjuice Potion · 205

THIRTEEN

The Very Secret Diary · 227

FOURTEEN

Cornelius Fudge · 249

FIFTEEN

Aragog · 265

SIXTEEN

The Chamber of Secrets · 283

SEVENTEEN

The Heir of Slytherin · 306

EIGHTEEN

Dobby’s Reward · 327

? vi ‘

Harry Potter

And the Chamber of Secrets

C H A P T E R O N E

THE WORST BIRTHDAY

ot for the first time, an argument had broken out over

breakfast at number four, Privet Drive. Mr. Vernon Durs- ley had been woken in the early hours of the morning by a loud, hooting noise from his nephew Harry’s room.

“Third time this week! ” he roared across the table. “If you can’t control that owl, it’ll have to go! ”

Harry tried, yet again, to explain.

“She’s bored, ” he said. “She’s used to flying around outside. If I

could just let her out at night —”

“Do I look stupid? ” snarled Uncle Vernon, a bit of fried egg dan- gling from his bushy mustache. “I know what’ll happen if that owl’s let out. ”

He exchanged dark looks with his wife, Petunia. Harry tried to argue back but his words were drowned by a long, loud belch from the Dursleys’ son, Dudley.

? 1‘

CHAPTER ONE

“I want more bacon. ”

“There’s more in the frying pan, sweetums, ” said Aunt Petunia, turning misty eyes on her massive son. “We must build you up while we’ve got the chance. . . . I don’t like the sound of that school food. . . . ”

“Nonsense, Petunia, I never went hungry when I was at Smelt-

ings, ” said Uncle Vernon heartily. “Dudley gets enough, don’t you, son? ”

Dudley, who was so large his bottom drooped over either side of the kitchen chair, grinned and turned to Harry.

“Pass the frying pan. ”

“You’ve forgotten the magic word, ” said Harry irritably. The effect of this simple sentence on the rest of the family was incredible: Dudley gasped and fell off his chair with a crash that shook the whole kitchen; Mrs. Dursley gave a small scream and clapped her hands to her mouth; Mr. Dursley jumped to his feet, veins throbbing in his temples.

“I meant ‘please’! ” said Harry quickly. “I didn’t mean —” “WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU, ” thundered his uncle, spraying spit over the table, “ABOUT SAYING THE ‘M’ WORD IN OUR HOUSE? ”

“But I —”

“HOW DARE YOU THREATEN DUDLEY! ” roared Uncle Vernon, pounding the table with his fist.

“I just —”

“I WARNED YOU! I WILL NOT TOLERATE MENTION OF YOUR ABNORMALITY UNDER THIS ROOF! ”

Harry stared from his purple-faced uncle to his pale aunt, who was trying to heave Dudley to his feet.

? 2‘

THE WORST BIRTHDAY

“All right, ” said Harry, “ all right. . . ”

Uncle Vernon sat back down, breathing like a winded rhinoceros and watching Harry closely out of the corners of his small, sharp eyes.

Ever since Harry had come home for the summer holidays, Un- cle Vernon had been treating him like a bomb that might go off at

any moment, because Harry Potter wasn’t a normal boy. As a mat-

ter of fact, he was as not normal as it is possible to be.

Harry Potter was a wizard — a wizard fresh from his first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. And if the Dursleys were unhappy to have him back for the holidays, it was nothing to how Harry felt.

He missed Hogwarts so much it was like having a constant stomachache. He missed the castle, with its secret passageways and ghosts, his classes (though perhaps not Snape, the Potions master), the mail arriving by owl, eating banquets in the Great Hall, sleep- ing in his four-poster bed in the tower dormitory, visiting the gamekeeper, Hagrid, in his cabin next to the Forbidden Forest in the grounds, and, especially, Quidditch, the most popular sport in the wizarding world (six tall goal posts, four flying balls, and four- teen players on broomsticks).

All Harry’s spellbooks, his wand, robes, cauldron, and top-of- the-line Nimbus Two Thousand broomstick had been locked in a cupboard under the stairs by Uncle Vernon the instant Harry had come home. What did the Dursleys care if Harry lost his place on the House Quidditch team because he hadn’t practiced all sum- mer? What was it to the Dursleys if Harry went back to school without any of his homework done? The Dursleys were what wiz- ards called Muggles (not a drop of magical blood in their veins),

? 3‘

CHAPTER ONE

and as far as they were concerned, having a wizard in the family was a matter of deepest shame. Uncle Vernon had even padlocked Harry’s owl, Hedwig, inside her cage, to stop her from carrying messages to anyone in the wizarding world.

Harry looked nothing like the rest of the family. Uncle Vernon was large and neckless, with an enormous black mustache; Aunt Petunia was horse-faced and bony; Dudley was blond, pink, and porky. Harry, on the other hand, was small and skinny, with bril- liant green eyes and jet-black hair that was always untidy. He wore round glasses, and on his forehead was a thin, lightning-shaped scar.

It was this scar that made Harry so particularly unusual, even for a wizard. This scar was the only hint of Harry’s very mysterious past, of the reason he had been left on the Dursleys’ doorstep eleven years before.

At the age of one year old, Harry had somehow survived a curse from the greatest Dark sorcerer of all time, Lord Voldemort, whose name most witches and wizards still feared to speak. Harry’s par- ents had died in Voldemort’s attack, but Harry had escaped with his lightning scar, and somehow — nobody understood why — Voldemort’s powers had been destroyed the instant he had failed to kill Harry.

So Harry had been brought up by his dead mother’s sister and her husband. He had spent ten years with the Dursleys, never un- derstanding why he kept making odd things happen without meaning to, believing the Dursleys’ story that he had got his scar in the car crash that had killed his parents.

And then, exactly a year ago, Hogwarts had written to Harry,

? 4‘

THE WORST BIRTHDAY

and the whole story had come out. Harry had taken up his place at wizard school, where he and his scar were famous. . . but now the school year was over, and he was back with the Dursleys for the summer, back to being treated like a dog that had rolled in some- thing smelly.

The Dursleys hadn’t even remembered that today happened to be Harry’s twelfth birthday. Of course, his hopes hadn’t been high; they’d never given him a real present, let alone a cake — but to ig- nore it completely. . .

At that moment, Uncle Vernon cleared his throat importantly and said, “Now, as we all know, today is a very important day. ” Harry looked up, hardly daring to believe it.

“This could well be the day I make the biggest deal of my ca- reer, ” said Uncle Vernon.

Harry went back to his toast. Of course, he thought bitterly, Un-

cle Vernon was talking about the stupid dinner party. He’d been talk-

ing of nothing else for two weeks. Some rich builder and his wife were coming to dinner and Uncle Vernon was hoping to get a huge order from him (Uncle Vernon’s company made drills).

“I think we should run through the schedule one more time, ” said Uncle Vernon. “We should all be in position at eight o’clock. Petunia, you will be —? ”

“In the lounge, ” said Aunt Petunia promptly, “waiting to wel- come them graciously to our home. ”

“Good, good. And Dudley? ”

“I’ll be waiting to open the door. ” Dudley put on a foul, sim- pering smile. “May I take your coats, Mr. and Mrs. Mason? ”

“They’ll love him! ” cried Aunt Petunia rapturously.

? 5‘

CHAPTER ONE

“Excellent, Dudley, ” said Uncle Vernon. Then he rounded on

Harry. “And you? ”

“I’ll be in my bedroom, making no noise and pretending I’m not there, ” said Harry tonelessly.

“Exactly, ” said Uncle Vernon nastily. “I will lead them into the lounge, introduce you, Petunia, and pour them drinks. At eight- fifteen —”

“I’ll announce dinner, ” said Aunt Petunia.

“And, Dudley, you’ll say —”

“May I take you through to the dining room, Mrs. Mason? ” said Dudley, offering his fat arm to an invisible woman.

“My perfect little gentleman! ” sniffed Aunt Petunia.

“And you? ” said Uncle Vernon viciously to Harry.

“I’ll be in my room, making no noise and pretending I’m not there, ” said Harry dully.

“Precisely. Now, we should aim to get in a few good compli- ments at dinner. Petunia, any ideas? ”

“Vernon tells me you’re a wonderful golfer, Mr. Mason. . . . Do

tell me where you bought your dress, Mrs. Mason. . . . ”

“Perfect. . . Dudley? ”

“How about — ‘We had to write an essay about our hero at

school, Mr. Mason, and I wrote about you. ’”

This was too much for both Aunt Petunia and Harry. Aunt Petu- nia burst into tears and hugged her son, while Harry ducked under the table so they wouldn’t see him laughing.

“And you, boy? ”

Harry fought to keep his face straight as he emerged. “I’ll be in my room, making no noise and pretending I’m not there, ” he said.

? 6‘

THE WORST BIRTHDAY

“Too right, you will, ” said Uncle Vernon forcefully. “The Ma- sons don’t know anything about you and it’s going to stay that way. When dinner’s over, you take Mrs. Mason back to the lounge for coffee, Petunia, and I’ll bring the subject around to drills. With any luck, I’ll have the deal signed and sealed before the news at ten. We’ll be shopping for a vacation home in Majorca this time to- morrow. ”

Harry couldn’t feel too excited about this. He didn’t think the Dursleys would like him any better in Majorca than they did on Privet Drive.