Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: Chapter 9 Summary & Analysis

Filch bursts through the crowd, stunned when he sees Mrs. Norris. He immediately turns on Harry, saying that he murdered Mrs. Norris. Dumbledore and other teachers arrive and escort Harry, Hermione, Ron, and Filch over to Lockhart’s office, along with Mrs. Norris. Dumbledore concludes that Mrs. Norris is petrified, not dead, and that the magic is too advanced for Harry to have done it.

Filch, who has been sobbing, again accuses Harry, saying that Harry knows that he is a Squib. Harry argues that he didn’t touch Mrs. Norris and doesn’t even know what a Squib is. Snape then steps forward and asks why he, Ron, and Hermione weren’t at the feast and why they went up to that corridor. They explain that they went to Nick’s deathday party, but when Harry begins to explain why he went up to the corridor, he worries that explaining the bodiless voice no one else can hear will sound far-fetched. He says that they were too tired to go the feast, but Snape doesn’t believe him.

Dumbledore says that the kids are innocent until proven guilty, and adds that the Mandrakes that Professor Sprout is growing will be able to cure Mrs. Norris. When the teachers leave, Harry asks Ron and Hermione if he should have told them about the voice. Ron immediately says no: hearing voices isn’t good even in the wizarding world. Harry asks if Ron believes him and Ron immediately says yes, but he adds that what Harry described is admittedly strange.

Harry asks Ron what a Squib is, and Ron chuckles. He explains that it’s someone who is born into a wizarding family but who doesn’t have any magical powers, like the opposite of a Muggle-born. He explains that it’s very rare, and it’s probably why Filch hates the students so much.

For a few days, the entire school talks about the attack on Mrs. Norris. Ginny in particular seems very disturbed by what happened, though Ron tries to assure her that they’ll “catch the maniac who did it.” Hermione, for her own part, does nothing but read, trying to find out information about what the Chamber of Secrets might be. Additionally, when Harry is walking to meet Ron in the library, he sees Justin Finch-Fletchley, who sees him and immediately turns in the opposite direction.

Hermione is unable to find information on the Chamber of Secrets, and so one day in their History of Magic class, she asks Professor Binns (who is a ghost) about the Chamber of Secrets. Binns is hesitant at first, but then he reveals some of the backstory of Hogwarts’s founders. There were four founders, for whom the four Houses are named. They built the school at a time when “magic was feared by common people, and witches and wizards suffered much persecution.”

Binns explains that at first, the founders worked together to seek out young wizards and witches, but then a rift grew between Salazar Slytherin and the other founders. He believed that magical learning should be kept only in all-magic families, believing Muggle-born students to be “untrustworthy.” This rift led Slytherin to leave the school, but legend has it that Slytherin had built a Chamber within the school that could only be opened by his heir.

Binns states, however, that no one has ever been able to find the Chamber. Hermione asks what is in it, and Binns says that it is said to hold some sort of monster, which the Heir of Slytherin alone can control, and which can be used to “purge the school of all who [are] unworthy to study magic.” However, he begins to get angry at the students’ questions, repeating that the Chamber is a myth.

After class, Ron says that he never knew the “pure-blood stuff” started with Slytherin, and that if the Sorting Hat had tried to put him in Slytherin, he would have taken the train straight home. Harry remains silent, because the Hat did consider putting him in Slytherin. He asked the Hat not to, knowing Slytherin’s bad reputation, and so the Hat put him in Gryffindor instead. Harry realizes that people are starting to believe that he is Slytherin’s heir, thinking of Justin that afternoon.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione walk back to their dorm through the corridor where the attack happened. They look for clues, noticing scorch marks on the ground, and at the window near the message, about twenty spiders are scurrying to get outside. Ron mentions that he’s terrified of spiders. Harry remembers the water on the floor during the attack and wonders where it came from. Hermione says that it’s coming from the bathroom nearby, which is the one that Moaning Myrtle haunts.

That night, Harry, Ron, and Hermione try to speculate who the Heir of Slytherin might be. Hermione asks who would want to “frighten all the Squibs and Muggle-borns out of Hogwarts.” Ron immediately jumps to Draco, who hates Muggle-borns and who comes from an old family that has always been in Slytherin. Harry suggests that the Malfoys could have handed down a key from generation to generation.

Hermione proposes a plan to find out if it is Draco: take Polyjuice Potion, which transforms a person into the appearance of someone else. She, Ron, and Harry can then sneak into the Slytherin common room and ask Draco about the Chamber. They’d be “breaking about fifty school rules,” she says, and they’d need to get a note from a teacher in order to take the book with the recipe out of the Restricted Section of the library.