Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

A house-elf's catastrophic warning locks Harry behind bars

Harry's twelfth birthday arrives unmarked by the Dursleys, who've padlocked his owl and confiscated his wand.

A house-elf's catastrophic warning locks Harry behind bars

Harry's twelfth birthday arrives unmarked by the Dursleys, who've padlocked his owl and confiscated his wand. No letters have come from Ron or Hermione all summer. That evening, while the Dursleys host an important dinner downstairs, Harry finds a strange creature on his bed: Dobby, a house-elf, who begs him not to return to Hogwarts. Terrible things are being plotted there, Dobby insists, though he punishes himself violently each time he nearly reveals details. He has been intercepting Harry's mail, hoping isolation would keep him away. When Harry refuses to promise he'll stay home, Dobby levitates Aunt Petunia's dessert and drops it onto the dinner guests. An owl delivers a Ministry warning about underage magic. Uncle Vernon, delighted to learn Harry can't use spells outside school, bars his window and locks him in.

Ron's brothers rip the bars from Harry's window at midnight

Three days into captivity, Harry wakes to find Ron Weasley's freckled face floating outside his barred window — in a turquoise Ford Anglia hovering in midair. Ron's twin brothers Fred and George have come too. They hook a rope to the bars, wrench them free, and help Harry haul his trunk through the window while Uncle Vernon grabs at his ankles. They fly to the Burrow, the crooked, wonderfully chaotic Weasley home, where Mrs. Weasley's fury at her sons for stealing the car dissolves into warmth for Harry. She piles his plate with sausages and fusses over his socks. The Burrow — with its self-washing dishes, backyard gnomes, and a clock tracking the family's whereabouts — gives Harry his happiest summer. He belongs here in a way Privet Drive never allowed.

A blocked gateway sends two boys crashing into a violent tree

On September first, Harry and Ron charge toward the barrier between platforms nine and ten at King's Cross — and slam into solid brick. The gateway to the Hogwarts Express has sealed itself shut, stranding them as the train departs. Ron proposes flying his father's enchanted car to school. They soar above the clouds, following the scarlet train northward, but the engine dies over Hogwarts. The car plummets into the Whomping Willow, a tree that batters anything within reach. Ron's wand snaps nearly in two. Snape catches them, relishing the headline about Muggles spotting a flying car. Dumbledore declines to expel them but warns there will be no second chances. Harry later learns the barrier was Dobby's doing — the elf sealed it, hoping Harry would give up and go home.