Chapter Thirteen: The Very Secret Diary
In chapter thirteen of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Harry’s eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad, a mysterious diary is thrown through Myrtle’s head, and Lockhart is probably beaten by Snape with a Valentine’s cookie or something.
(Please be advised that this is a reread and I will be discussing book and movie spoilers.)
Hermione’s in the hospital wing for ages as a part human part cat hybrid, and to make it worse she’s got one of the most regretful crushes of all time on Gilderoy Lockhart, a crush that will no doubt horrify her for years in the future. And let’s be real, Ron will never let her forget. Under your pillow, Hermione?! Poor girl, haven’t we all been there at least once?
Harry and Ron find that Myrtle’s gotten a diary thrown through her head in her special toilet–and look, it’s about time we talked about how Myrtle’s legit the most pathetic ghost in the history of ghosts–and Ron is proven helpful twice over, when he tells Harry not to read random, suspicious books and provides some info on who T.M. Riddle is. Take that, movie portrayal of Ron! (No disrespect to Rupert Grint, who is an international treasure and not to blame for his character’s dialogue.)
Of course Harry being Harry has gotta pick up the diary and read it anyway, and it would kind of serve him right if the diary burned his eyeballs out of his head, like Ron warned him.
Ron triples his wisdom when he makes this prescient joke that further gives credence to the “Ron is Dumbledore” theory:
And our trio discovers that this highly mysterious diary is fifty years old, written by someone who was awarded a special services to the school fifty years ago, right when the Chamber of Secrets was open fifty years ago…hmmm…
Lockhart decides to throw the world’s most sickening Valentine’s Day celebration, and I do wish we’d seen a cut scene where Lockhart tries to force Snape into a pink robe in the teacher’s lounge and gets pelted with cookies and chocolates by an enraged Snape. Come on we all know it happened!
We then get a scene that was removed from the movies to my deepest disappointment because it’s so amusing to me to picture. Harry’s accosted by a singing dwarf and humiliation after humiliation piles on when Ginny, Percy, and Malfoy all appear as witnesses. Harry tries to run for it when he hears Percy, and even I don’t blame him, weirdo Percy apologist that I am, and he gets tackled by a dwarf who delivers the worst Valentine in the history of the world.
Harry’s left with no choice but to pretend to find this funny too, and I feel we’ve all been in that situation, where something completely awful to us but deadly funny to others happens and we have to weakly laugh like we haven’t internally died and fled the country. Ginny what were you thinking this was so awful!
Percy tries to disperse the crowd, coming to Harry’s rescue (#JusticeForPercy!) but of course D-Malfs cannot possibly let this go and snatches Riddle’s diary, leading Harry to his first usage of his iconique “Expelliarmus” spell, which let’s add to the Harry Potter BINGO card/drinking game, as he’s going to use it quite a lot.
Harry notices that the diary isn’t covered in ink like the rest of his belongings, and figures out he has to write in the diary himself. He has a little chat with a person inside the diary claiming to be Tom Riddle, and while this is all very reckless on Harry’s part, I’m not going to lie and say I wouldn’t have done the exact same thing in his situation. So Harry jumps inside a suspect and random diary and finds out that Tom Riddle is a Slytherin prefect, orphan half-blood and just as desperate to remain at Hogwarts over summer as Harry is to escape the Dursley’s, who least we forget, are demon monkey people in the form of relatives.
Oh, and that Hagrid opened the Chamber of Secrets. Allegedly.
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Have you ever gotten a Valentine as cringey as “His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad…?”
Should Hagrid have kept Aragog in the castle?
If Tom Riddle had been raised by at least one of his parents, would he have turned out differently?
Do you have a crush you regret like Hermione will regret Gilderoy Lockhart?
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