Fridge / Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Warning: Marked and Unmarked spoilers ahead. Read at your own discretion.

Fridge Brilliance

• The Deathday Party was basically a Wacky Wayside Tribe to get Harry relatively isolated while he's looking completely off his rocker. But after Order of the Phoenix, you can see this is their shallow imitation of the afterlife.
• When the security at the school is stepped up, one of the first rules to be introduced is that students must be accompanied in the bathrooms. The teachers don't know about the Chamber, but they know that is where Moaning Myrtle died.
  • Nevermind that incident just a year earlier with Hermione nearly getting killed in one of the bathrooms by the troll let loose by Quirell.
• Acromantulas are probably not Always Chaotic Evil. Aragog just failed horribly at teaching restraint to his children because he himself was raised from birth by Hagrid, the physical embodiment of Skewed Priorities who thinks raising a dragon in a wooden shack is a good idea.
• When Harry and Ron Polyjuice themselves, Malfoy brags about how the Ministry doesn't know about "the secret chamber under their drawing room". Harry, Ron, Hermione, Luna, Ollivander, Dean, and Griphook will see that chamber first-hand in Deathly Hallows.
• The amazingly casual mentions of the Vanishing Cabinets throughout this book, given the roles they would later play.
• In the movie, Acromantulas such as Aragog and his children look like wolf spiders, not tarantulas. It turns out that the word "tarantula" is originally Italian and was once used to describe what are now called wolf spiders.
• Why are spiders (and Acromantulas) so particularly afraid of the basilisk? Because spiders have eight eyes pointing in every direction, and no eyelids. If there's a basilisk anywhere near them, they can't help but look directly at it and be killed.
• Lockhart makes it quite known that he blames Hagrid for the attacks whilst escorting students from one class to the next. This seemed unusual, but Lockhart was probably still bitter that Hagrid hadn't read any of his books and considered Harry more famous than him. His pettiness knows no bounds, and he'd be so secured in declaring such an opinion openly since Hagrid had been arrested and expelled because of the last series of attacks.
  • No doubt he also wants to make himself look better by acting as if he'd suspected the culprit all along.
• Dumbledore knows about the Curse on the Defence Professorship and presumably knows that Lockhart is a fraud. With no evidence to arrest Lockhart, perhaps Dumbledore, in a case of Fridge Horror, hired him as a Defence Professor precisely in the hope that the Curse would take care of him.
  • Pottermore states that this is exactly what Dumbledore was doing. Lockhart had already preyed upon at least two of Dumbledore's friends, and Dumbledore wanted to expose him.
• One that doubles as a bit of Foreshadowing: in Wandering with Werewolves, Lockhart refers to Wagga Wagga as a village. Except Wagga Wagga isn't a village: it's a city, and a major regional one to boot. If Lockhart really had vanquished the Wagga Wagga werewolf, he would've known this.
• Dobby's name. Dobby or Dobie is a type of fairy, one described as "foolish and helpful". Dobby sincerely wanted to help Harry stay safe (helpful), but went around trying to achieve that aim in the completely wrong way (foolish).
  • And a Dobby (or Dobbie) Stone is a stone that grants magical protection - just as Dobby was trying to do for Harry.
• When Harry first sees Ron's room at the Burrow, Scabbers is curled up asleep in a sunny spot. Real rats avoid direct sunlight, as it's too bright for their dark-adapted eyes and makes it easy for predators to spot them. But this rat isn't actually a rat—he's an Animagus.
• The real reason Hermione is so annoyed with Harry and Ron for flying the car to Hogwarts? She is not known to have other friends at this point and may have had to be on her own the whole train ride. This would be especially prominent given that she'd just made friends very recently after, it's implied, a childhood being alone as well.
• The throwaway mention of Flitwick having been a duelling champion in his youth makes a lot of sense when you look at him or read a description of him. He probably fought with Charms, repurposed non-combat magic you wouldn't normally think would be used for duels. Not to mention, an effect of his goblin ancestry is that he's just three feet tall. Of course most adult wizards would have trouble beating him in a duel. As a highly intelligent Charms user, he probably thought outside the box in ways that most would-be duellists wouldn't see coming. But more importantly, his low profile probably made him much harder even to hit with a spell. In short, he's a master of the wizarding equivalent of Confusion Fu.
• Snape's silently furious reaction to Lockhart's Valentine's Day festivities makes a lot more sense with the added context of his own failed romance with Harry's mother. He's naturally going to be averse to anyone else reminding him of love, especially when it's thrown in his face by students asking him for love potions (as Lockhart suggests).
  • Not to mention how Half-Blood Prince demonstrates that Love Potions are essentially wizard roofies and also how Voldemort was conceived. Of course he's going to also show disapproval in the fact that Lockhart is essentially recommending date-rape drugs to teenagers.
• Why did the Anglia move of its own free will? As Hermione points out in Goblet of Fire, Hogwarts is enchanted so that Muggle electronics go haywire within the perimeter. The magic already on the car made it go crazier.
  • A Ford Anglia has no electronics, but it's possible that it still made the engine go crazy.
• When the rogue bludger breaks Harry's wrist, Lockhart tries to cast a healing spell and botches it, leaving Harry's arm boneless. In the film, the spell was given as "Brachiam emmendo", which is Canis Latinicus for "mend wrist". As often happens with magic, it possibly involved the caster imagining exactly what he's trying to achieve, in this case a wrist with all bones intact. Lockhart likely had no knowledge of human anatomy, thus he imagined literally nothing and that's what he turned Harry's bones into.
  • This also leads into Fridge Brilliance as to why healing magic is described to be very difficult; if you don't visualize exactly what you want to happen, all kinds of nasty things could occur.
• Pottermore eventually reveals Lockhart's birth year as 1964, meaning that he was only twenty-eight at this point. His age explains many things if you think on it a bit:
  • His appeal to multiple female demographics. Middle-aged women tend to be most attracted to celebrities who have either aged very gracefully or are still in their prime. Lockhart fits the latter bill. Conversely, teenaged girls' celebrity crushes tend to be a bit older than them, but not too much. Again, Lockhart fits the bill. Furthermore, he's (we're fairly certain) the only young male Hogwarts professor around, other than Snape. Who, Alan Rickman's compelling performance aside, is definitely not going to attract anyone.
  • The fact that the rest of the professors are almost instantly annoyed with his presence, despite their trust of Dumbledore. Of course, Dumbledore knows that he's an incompetent fraud, but the other professors aren't privy to that information. Since he'd just graduated not even a decade ago, though, all the major professors there have taught him save for possibly Snape (depending on whether Lockhart took N.E.W.T.-level Potions, which he probably didn't), and Snape is young enough that he and Lockhart would have been students at Hogwarts together for Snape's last four years as a Hogwarts student. All the professors remember him and how much of an ass he was as a student and thought they'd never have to deal with him again.
  • Not only that, but there's another layer to it: Lockhart openly admits the only thing he's good with is memory charms, meaning anyone who was in school with him (either as a teacher or a fellow student) no doubt remembers him being an absolute crap-out who couldn't do even the most basic of spells... but now, suddenly, he's an international celebrity. Either they suspect him of being the fraud he really is, or they're just pissed that the former idiot went on to become a world famous celebrity. Imagine how you'd feel if you studied hard and got a prestigious position as a teacher in a famous school... only to see your drop-out idiot classmate get awards for doing exactly the same thing that you can do.
• When Harry and Ron are hiding under the Invisibility Cloak in Hagrid's hut, Harry notices that Dumbledore seems to have quickly glanced in their direction, essentially underlining the significance of his words towards them. At first, this seems like Dumbledore having some ability similar to Mad-Eye Moody's magic eye (which can see through Invisibility Cloaks), until you realise that Hagrid had left their tea mugs out on the table. It wouldn't take much to guess who was visiting Hagrid and where they would be hiding, especially with his knowledge of the Invisibility Cloak and the contents of the mugs.
• The Ministry sends Hagrid to Azkaban, a nest of soul-sucking monsters whose mere presence drains happiness and causes severe psychological problems, with no trial on weak circumstantial evidence. This is not treated as unusual; this serves as the Establishing Character Moment for Fudge as a man and for the Ministry as an organisation. Harry starts to see that Wizarding society is flawed in a deeper sense than turning out the occasional rogue psychopath (which is an unavoidable problem in all societies).
• Harry's detentions with Lockhart involve helping him answer his fanmail. While it appeals to Lockhart's vanity, he doesn't have the ability to do so magically, so has to do it by hand.
• The second writing on the wall, "Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever." actually becomes true. Even though Ginny, the intended victim, was rescued by Harry, there is another female being in the chamber — the basilisk, who was killed and left there. So indeed, her (the basilisk's) skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever.
  • Which becomes important in DH
• Hermione suddenly dashing off to the library before her petrification seemed like a normal and usual thing for her to do. But the whole school had just found out at the Duelling Club that Harry was a Parselmouth. Then, some time after that, Harry claims he heard a voice that he had been hearing all year again, even though no-one else could hear it. Since Harry could speak Parseltongue and he was hearing a voice no-one else did, Hermione deduced that the monster behind the attacks was a snake. She rushed to the library in an effort to determine which snake creature had the ability to petrify people.
  • Likewise, why did she get petrified? Because she figured it out. Tom knows from Ginny Weasley that Hermione is considered the cleverest witch in her grade. Hermione somehow managed to tear out a page from one of Madam Pince's library books, clutch it, and grab a mirror. If Hermione had reached the boys sooner with what she had found, they would have been able to notify Professor McGonagall about the beast.
  • Moreover, the reason Hermione got petrified rather than dying after figuring it out was that she bumped into Penelope Clearwater specifically. The mirror found with both girls is a small one— probably used for touching up make-up. Hermione is twelve and unconcerned with her appearance, while Penelope is sixteen with a secret boyfriend she's been having snogging sessions with. It's far more likely her mirror, used to look nice for her boyfriend and then fix her lipstick afterwards. And why did Penelope listen when a second year came up to her in a panic, asking for a mirror to check corners with? Because said boyfriend is Percy. She's heard of how clever his brothers friend is and how obsessed with the petrifications they are. Thus, instead of blowing her off, Penelope figures Hermione has a good chance of being right, pulls out her compact, checks the corner with Hermione leaning in to see— and they both get petrified rather than turning the corner blindly and walking straight into the basilik's undiluted vision.
• In her Valentine poem to Harry, Ginny refers to Voldemort as "the Dark Lord". Later, particularly in Order of the Phoenix, Harry notes that only Death Eaters call Voldemort by that moniker; everyone else uses "You Know Who" or "He Who Must Not Be Named". (Dobby's use of the moniker can be attributed to his master, Lucius Malfoy.) It is in fact subtle Foreshadowing that Ginny is under Voldemort's control.
• Something subtle that probably contributed most of the school into suspecting Harry as the Heir of Slytherin was the rumour mill surrounding what had happened at the end of the first book. While Voldemort's possession of Professor Quirrell would go unnoticed, the fact that Harry ventured into a secret part of the castle and once again survived an attempted murder by the most powerful Dark wizard of all time, while Quirrell died, would not. The Parseltongue incident sent the rumour mill into overdrive.
• Tom Riddle's line to Hagrid about keeping monsters as pets are especially interesting considering his true identity as the Heir of Slytherin, with his own pet monster.
• Percy wandering around the dungeons near the Slytherin dormitories at night seems suspicious at first, but makes a lot more sense after his relationship is revealed. He was meeting Penelope there, further evidenced by the fact that Harry and Ron ran into her around the same area a few minutes earlier.
• Riddle engages in Bond Villain Stupidity when Harry enters the Chamber. He lets Harry think they're on the same side, confiscates his wand, and reveals that he is the real Heir of Slytherin. We find out that it's not because he's mentally a sixteen-year old on his way to advocating for genocide; it's that Voldemort simply likes to monologue and gloat. He's always been arrogant and smug that he couldn't get caught. Voldemort didn't learn from his mistakes in book two because this Tom Riddle was essentially a clone of him, created from the diary. Not only that, but it's a copy of him as a teenager, rather than a fully-grown adult who might be expected to know better.
• The elaborate depiction of Snape's Expelliarmus in the film becomes especially amusing once non-verbal spells are introduced in the sixth book. Snape is basically going all-in on the Awesome, but Impractical spellcasting because he knows Lockhart is a joke and is taking the opportunity to flex on him.
• Ron burping up slugs all over a trophy during detention? Gross, but sort of funny (particularly if you read it as a child). Ron burping up slugs all over Tom Riddle's trophy, once you learn Riddle not only framed Hagrid to get that trophy but turned into the freaking Dark Lord? Hysterical karma for Voldemort.

Fridge Horror

• Ron tries and fails to perform "Ferreverto" on Scabbers, turning him into a fuzzy goblet with a twitching tail instead of a crystal goblet. Funny at the time, right? But coming back after reading the later books, knowing that Scabbers is actually Peter Pettigrew in his Animagus form, the whole thing is Body Horror at its finest. And Pettigrew would've known that Ron's wand was damaged and malfunctioning, yet would've had to play dumb and just sit there and wait to be transformed into what he could only hope was an intact goblet.
  • To bring it back to Fridge Brilliance: perhaps the reason that spell didn't work for Ron wasn't because his wand was damaged, but rather because Scabbers wasn't a real rat. (Perhaps the human sentience in Pettigrew even worked to actively resist Ron's attempt at the spell.) On several other instances, attempts at human transfiguration are exceedingly difficult and explicitly incomplete if not performed perfectly. (Which goes back, ironically, to establishing that James and Sirius were considered exceptionally skilled wizards because they perfected the Animagus spell by their fifth year as Hogwarts students, a process so difficult for most adult wizards to learn that the number of them who've registered with the Ministry is very low).
• Throughout his time at Hogwarts, Tom Riddle was sent back to the orphanage during the summer holidays, and this notably upset him. According to Word of God, The Chamber of Secrets takes place during the 1992-93 school year, and the Chamber was originally opened fifty years before that, meaning circa 1942. Given that Riddle was a fifth year in 1942, that means he was repeatedly sent back to an orphanage in London during World War II.
• The Dursleys are not just petty jerks, they're child abusers. Including, in the first two books, actively trying to prevent Harry from escaping so that they can continue to abuse him.
  • There's also the bit where Petunia casually swings a frying pan at Harry's head, with the implication that that's nothing out of the ordinary.
• A rather minor one, but consider Voldemort's preferred means of disposing of dead bodies, namely, feeding them to Nagini. Now imagine what was in store for Ginny once Tom Riddle had returned to full strength with a Basilisk on hand. Particularly since the Basilisk probably hasn't had anything but rats and small vermin to eat in about 1000 years.
• Do we know whether or not the Basilisk can choose who it kills with its gaze? Because if it just kills anyone who stares it in the eye, what would happen if Draco happened upon it? Could it have killed him too? Lucius's level of arrogance that he knows what he's doing is even more disturbing when you realize he let a monster loose in the school that could have killed his own son, and he never showed any sign that he thought that Draco might be in danger. Not only was it capable of killing Muggleborns, the basilisk could have killed anyone who looked into its eyes, including teachers as well as students! The ones who were petrified were extremely lucky, considering that their condition was able to be cured.
• Anyone else notice that the developmental process for the Mandrakes included them throwing a party? Yes, it was a joke about teenage behavior, but it also suggests an unsettling degree of cognitive ability and emotion on the part of organisms that Professor Sprout is raising for the express purpose of cutting them into pieces and stewing them.
  • Fortunately a bit of Brillians kicks in if you think about it. The Mandrakes aren't actually possessed of human like intelligence, they're simply mimicks that put on a facade of humanity to get humans' guard down. And then the horror comes back around with the reality that this is so they can kill humans who will then fertilize the ground.
• Lockhart specializes in erasing memories. He shows a clear lack of morals in wiping a piece of person's mind and is even willing to leave a young girl to die and destroy the minds of two boys (and maybe leave them in the Chamber to die as well). He was in a school for a year. Part of that year, the well-known, respected, and sometimes feared headmaster was gone. It was perfectly acceptable for teachers to be alone and unsupervised with students, even extremely late at night (in Harry's detention with him, it starts at 8:00, lasts four hours, and no one looks in once, even to point out how late it was and Harry has classes the next day or even to talk with Lockhart about something). So, alone with minors for significant periods of time, lacking morals and able to erase memories that could cause trouble for him. Not to mention that Lockhart very consciously exercises his non-magic charm (at least for what we know) on girls as young as twelve.
• The "Cornish Pixies" debacle takes on Fridge Horror elements if you've read Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. From that book, it's clear that Lockhart had mistaken doxies for pixies, a much more troublesome type of small fae. Heaven only knows what might've happened if he'd tried to start off his first class with something more impressive, and mixed that up.
• When Harry sees Floo Powder for the first time, he's freaked out by it. Understandable given that it is fire that seems to turn someone to ashes in seconds, but the real kicker? It is green, and what is Harry's earliest memory? Seeing his mother die from the Killing Curse, which takes the form of a brilliant green light.
• The rogue Bludger tears through a heck of a lot of wooden support beams at the Quidditch stadium. Lucky for the students and staff in the stands, a couple hundred feet above the ground (and the ditch of many wooden beams surrounding the field), it didn't destroy any really important ones.
• The whole concept of Polyjuice potion becomes this on second reading (and especially in the wake of Barty Crouch Jr.'s yearlong impersonation of Mad-Eye Moody in Goblet of Fire, or the trio's use of it to infiltrate the Ministry in Deathly Hallows) because all you need are a few ingredients and a single hair to commit perfect identity fraud. That person could do almost anything to you: ruin your reputation through illicit or deviant behaviour, take photographs of your body naked, murder someone using your face as a mask, end relationships, get you fired, empty your bank account (perhaps not Gringotts, but almost certainly from a Muggle bank), and even just outright replace you and steal your life. And the scariest thing? You probably won't even know until long after the damage is irreparable because this whole scenario is potentially one stolen comb or trip to the barbers later. You'll just wake up one day and find your entire life changed forever.
• One alternative turn of events chock full of Nightmare Fuel of a different kind to explain away Lucius's attempt to cast the Killing Curse in the film (ad-libbed by Jason Issacs) is that Lucius was intending to kill Dobby rather than let his house-elf go free. The Unforgivable Curses are only grounds for lifelong imprisonment if you use them on a human, after all, and Lucius's in-laws are members of the House of Black, who have been getting away with beheading their own house-elves for generations, suggesting that it's not illegal to put a house elf under the Imperius Curse, torture one with the Cruciatus Curse, or murder one. And Dobby probably knows a lot of Malfoy family secrets that Lucius would prefer not to have him blabbing about, and it'd only be Harry's word against Lucius's that Dobby was ever freed.
• It's a damn good thing that Diary!Riddle decided to toy with Harry before setting the basilisk on him. If Riddle simply summoned the serpent as soon as Harry entered the Chamber, there would have been no opportunity for Fawkes to come, so Harry and Ginny would have died, and the diary would never have been destroyed...
  • As usual, Terry Pratchett has an appropriate line : "If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you're going to die. So they'll talk. They'll gloat. They'll watch you squirm. They'll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar. So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.”
• The fact that Hermoine brews the Polyjuice Potion in Moaning Myrtle's Bathroom seems innocent, but by the end of the book it becomes Fridge Horror because we learn that the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets is in there, which is also the most reliable way for the Basilisk to get out! The Golden Trio are extremely lucky Ginny didn't happen in there while they were brewing it, or even chose to stay away at Tom's suggestion if she did know!
• Lockhart was a fraud who stole the achievements of others via memory charms. In Wandering Werewolves, he describes changing a werewolf back to human form, something that is never brought back up in future books, not even later ones where Greyback is an issue. Did someone come up with a new charm to force a werewolf back into human form or even outright cure them of their lycanthropy only for Lockhart to wipe their memory of it and cause it to be lost? He did say that he was going to tell everyone Ron and Harry went insane, so maybe all of his victims were left in the state he had planned for those two.
  • A less horrifying idea is that it was someone with an Animagus wolf form pretending to be a werewolf.
  • If memory serves Professor Lupin mentions in future books that during his childhood the Wolfsbane Potion hadn't yet been invented and thus there was no cure for lycanthropy. It would seem that much like the rabies vaccine for muggles theres a lycanthropy potion brewed from Wolfsbane that, if administered in a timely manner, can cure the condition. Future books also show it being used to near perfectly control the psychological symptoms in older cases which are passed the point of curing entirely.

Fridge Logic

• What exactly would have happened if Diary!Riddle had drained Ginny's life force? Would the Voldemort in Albania be revived, or would Diary!Riddle become its own entity?
  • The most logical answer is that Diary!Riddle would have hunted down the real Voldemort and joined with him.
  • Diary!Riddle becomes the dominant soul fragment being in better more complete condition. Then finds and either absorbs or kills/imprisons the older worn out version.
• In the film, how does Draco (or any other Slytherin, for that matter) not notice that Crabbe's hair has become longer and scarlet red in the time it took him to run across the common room? They even show it growing back while the two are standing not six feet away from him! Failed a Spot Check, perhaps?
  • Given the amount of weirdness that goes on at Hogwarts, they may think it was a hair-growing charm gone wrong or something.
  • Either that or, more likely, a prank. Consider that Fred and George are also at Hogwarts, and setting a booby trap to turn a Slytherin’s hair Weasley red is exactly the sort of thing they would do.