2.4. Ron learns about the Chamber of Secrets

In this episode, we (and Ron) get to learn a little bit about the title of this book aka The Chamber of Secrets. But before that, a whole bunch of stuff happens:

- Harry and Ron get assigned detentions. McGonagall smartly tailors the detentions - Harry gets assigned time with his favoritest Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor and Ron has to clean the trophy room, in the Muggle way, with Filch. Talk about fun. During his detention, Harry hears a disembodied voice but can't be sure where it was coming from or who it could be.

- Harry almost gets another detention from Filch for dripping mud in the corridor but is saved by Nearly Headless Nick. Nick also invites him to his 500th Deathday Party on Halloween; Harry agrees to attend, with Hermione and Ron, out of sheer gratitude.

- As per Ron's prediction, the Deathday party turns out to be dead depressing so they split midway to go back to the feast. Harry hears the disembodied voice again in the corridor (Ron and Hermione can't), except this time it's saying a lot of scary stuff like 'Rip. Tear. Kill.' and 'I smell blood'. Harry runs towards the voice, a confused Ron and Hermione in tow, and end up in front of some writing on a wall ('The Chamber of Secrets is open. Enemies of the heir, beware') and a petrified cat - Mrs. Norris. The entire school shows up just after they do and catches them at the scene of the crime.

- Filch accuses Harry of killing his cat because Harry figured out he's a Squib. But thankfully, Dumbledore believes that Harry had nothing to do with the incident and gets him off the hook. Hermione remembers reading about the Chamber of Secrets but she doesn't have her copy of Hogwarts, A History to refresh her memory and all the copies have been borrowed from the library. So, she interrupts Professor Binns during a History of Magic lecture and asks him. That's how Ron learns about the Chamber of Secrets.

HARRY POTTER STORIES

In this episode, this segment features Pavithra Muthalagan, a friend and listener of the podcast.

If you are interested in sharing your story with us, just record yourself telling the story of how you starting reading the books and send it to [e-mail].

PREPARATION

You can prepare for this episode by reading

• Chapter 7: Mudbloods and Murmurs (from when Ron started throwing up slugs)

• Chapter 8: The Deathday Party

• Chapter 9: The Writing on the Wall

of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

You can also listen to this podcast on iTunes, Google Podcast, or any other favorite podcast app. Just search for Mimblewimble - The Harry Potter Podcast.

NOTES

The wikipedia entry for a Kelpie. Looks like they figure in the newest Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: The Crimes of Grindelwald movie.