Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets By J. K. Rowling chapter one the Worst Birthday

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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CHAPTER FIVE 
 
 
The Whomping Willow 
The end of the summer vacation came too quickly for Harry’s liking. He was looking forward to 
getting back to Hogwarts, but his month at the Burrow had been the happiest of his life. It was 
difficult not to feel jealous of Ron when he thought of the Dursleys and the sort of welcome he 
could expect next time he turned up on Privet Drive. 
On their last evening, Mrs. Weasley conjured up a sumptuous dinner that included all of Harry’s 
favorite things, ending with a mouthwatering treacle pudding. Fred and George rounded off the 
evening with a display of Filibuster fireworks; they filled the kitchen with red and blue stars that 
bounced from ceiling to wall for at least half an hour. Then it was time for a last mug of hot 
chocolate and bed. 
It took a long while to get started next morning. They were up at dawn, but somehow they still 
seemed to have a great deal to do. Mrs. Weasley dashed about in a bad mood looking for spare 
socks and quills; people kept colliding on the stairs, half-dressed with bits of toast in their hands; 
and Mr. Weasley nearly broke his neck, tripping over a stray chicken as he crossed the yard 
carrying Ginny’s trunk to the car. 
Harry couldn’t see how eight people, six large trunks, two owls, and a rat were going to fit into 
one small Ford Anglia. He had reckoned, of course, without the special features that Mr. 
Weasley had added. 
“Not a word to Molly,” he whispered to Harry as he opened the trunk and showed him how it 
had been magically expanded so that the luggage fitted easily. 
When at last they were all in the car, Mrs. Weasley glanced into the back seat, where Harry, Ron, 
Fred, George, and Percy were all sitting comfortably side by side, and said, “Muggles do know 
more than we give them credit for, don’t they?” She and Ginny got into the front seat, which had 
been stretched so that it resembled a park bench. “I mean, you’d never know it was this roomy 
from the outside, would you?” 
Mr. Weasley started up the engine and they trundled out of the yard, Harry turning back for a last 
look at the house. He barely had time to wonder when he’d see it again when they were back. 
George had forgotten his box of Filibuster fireworks. Five minutes after that, they skidded to a 
halt in the yard so that Fred could run in for his broomstick. They had almost reached the 
highway when Ginny shrieked that she’d left her diary. By the time she had clambered back into 
the car, they were running very late, and tempers were running high. 
Mr. Weasley glanced at his watch and then at his wife. 
“Molly, dear —” 

---

“No, Arthur —–” 
“No one would see — this little button here is an Invisibility Booster I installed — that’d get us 
up in the air — then we fly above the clouds. We’d be there in ten minutes and no one would be 
any the wiser —” 
“I said no, Arthur, not in broad daylight —” 
They reached King’s Cross at a quarter to eleven. Mr. Weasley dashed across the road to get 
trolleys for their trunks and they all hurried into the station. 
Harry had caught the Hogwarts Express the previous year. The tricky part was getting onto 
platform nine and three-quarters, which wasn’t visible to the Muggle eye. What you had to do 
was walk through the solid barrier dividing platforms nine and ten. It didn’t hurt, but it had to be 
done carefully so that none of the Muggles noticed you vanishing. 
“Percy first,” said Mrs. Weasley, looking nervously at the clock overhead, which showed they 
had only five minutes to disappear casually through the barrier. 
Percy strode briskly forward and vanished. Mr. Weasley went next; Fred and George followed. 
“I’ll take Ginny and you two come right after us,” Mrs. Weasley told Harry and Ron, grabbing 
Ginny’s hand and setting off. In the blink of an eye they were gone. 
“Let’s go together, we’ve only got a minute,” Ron said to Harry. 
Harry made sure that Hedwig’s cage was safely wedged on top of his trunk and wheeled his 
trolley around to face the barrier. He felt perfectly confident; this wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable 
as using Floo powder. Both of them bent low over the handles of their trolleys and walked 
purposefully toward the barrier, gathering speed. A few feet away from it, they broke into a run 
and — 
CRASH. 
Both trolleys hit the barrier and bounced backward; Ron’s trunk fell off with a loud thump, 
Harry was knocked off his feet, and Hedwig’s cage bounced onto the shiny floor, and she rolled 
away, shrieking indignantly; people all around them stared and a guard nearby yelled, “What in 
blazes d’you think you’re doing?” 
“Lost control of the trolley,” Harry gasped, clutching his ribs as he got up. Ron ran to pick up 
Hedwig, who was causing such a scene that there was a lot of muttering about cruelty to animals 
from the surrounding crowd. 
“Why can’t we get through?” Harry hissed to Ron. 
“I dunno —” 

---

Ron looked wildly around. A dozen curious people were still watching them. 
“We’re going to miss the train,” Ron whispered. “I don’t understand why the gateway’s sealed 
itself —” 
Harry looked up at the giant clock with a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach. Ten 
seconds… nine seconds…
He wheeled his trolley forward cautiously until it was right against the barrier and pushed with 
all his might. The metal remained solid. 
Three seconds… two seconds… one second…
“It’s gone,” said Ron, sounding stunned. “The train’s left. What if Mum and Dad can’t get back 
through to us? Have you got any Muggle money?” 
Harry gave a hollow laughed. “The Dursleys haven’t given me pocket money for about six 
years.” 
Ron pressed his ear to the cold barrier. 
“Can’t hear a thing,” he said tensely, “What’re we going to do? I don’t know how long it’ll take 
Mum and Dad to get back to us.” 
They looked around. People were still watching them, mainly because of Hedwig’s continuing 
screeches. 
“I think we’d better go and wait by the car,” said Harry. “We’re attracting too much atten —” 
“Harry!” said Ron, his eyes gleaming. “The car!” 
“What about it?” 
“We can fly the car to Hogwarts!” 
“But I thought —” 
“We’re stuck, right? And we’ve got to get to school, haven’t we? And even underage wizards are 
allowed to use magic if it’s a real emergency, section nineteen or something of the Restriction of 
Thingy —” 
“But your Mum and Dad…” said Harry, pushing against the barrier again in the vain hope that it 
would give way. “How will they get home?” 
“They don’t need the car!” said Ron impatiently. “They know how to Apparate! You know, just 
vanish and reappear at home! They only bother with Floo powder and the car because we’re all 

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underage and we’re not allowed to Apparate yet…” 
Harry’s feeling of panic turned suddenly to excitement. 
“Can you fly it?” 
“No, problem,” said Ron, wheeling his trolley around to face the exit. “C’mon, let’s go. If we 
hurry we’ll be able to follow the Hogwarts Express —” 
And they marched off through the crowd of curious Muggles, out of the station and back onto the 
side road where the old Ford Anglia was parked. 
Ron unlocked the cavernous trunk with a series of taps from his wand. They heaved their 
luggage back in, put Hedwig on the back seat, and got into the front. 
“Check that no one’s watching,” said Ron, starting the ignition with another tap of his wand. 
Harry stuck his head out of the window: Traffic was rumbling along the main road ahead, but 
their street was empty. 
“Okay,” he said. 
Ron pressed a tiny silver button on the dashboard. The car around them vanished — and so did 
they. Harry could feel the seat vibrating beneath him, hear the engine, feel his hands on his knees 
and his glasses on his nose, but for all he could see, he had become a pair of eyeballs, floating a 
few feet above the ground in a dingy street full of parked cars. 
“Let’s go,” said Ron’s voice from his right. 
And the ground and the dirty buildings on either side fell away, dropping out of sight as the car 
rose; in seconds, the whole of London lay, smoky and glittering, below them. 
Then there was a popping noise and the car, Harry, and Ron reappeared. 
“Uh-oh,” said Ron, jabbing at the Invisibility Booster. “It’s faulty —” 
Both of them pummeled it. The car vanished. Then it flickered back again. 
“Hold on!” Ron yelled, and he slammed his foot on the accelerator; they shot straight into the 
low, woolly clouds and everything turned dull and foggy. 
“Now what?” said Harry, blinking at the solid mass of cloud pressing in on them from all sides. 
“We need to see the train to know what direction to go in,” said Ron. 
“Dip back down again — quickly —” 

---

They dropped back beneath the clouds and twisted around in their seats, squinting at the ground. 
“I can see it!” Harry yelled. “Right ahead — there!” 
The Hogwarts Express was streaking along below them like a scarlet snake. 
“Due north,” said Ron, checking the compass on the dashboard. “Okay, we’ll just have to check 
on it every half hour or so — hold on —” 
And they shot up through the clouds. A minute later, they burst out into a blaze of sunlight. 
It was a different world. The wheels of the car skimmed the sea of fluffy cloud, the sky a bright, 
endless blue under the blinding white sun. 
“All we’ve got to worry about now are airplanes,” said Ron. 
They looked at each other and started to laugh; for a long time, they couldn’t stop. 
It was as though they had been plunged into a fabulous dream. This, thought Harry, was surely 
the only way to travel — past swirls and turrets of snowy cloud, in a car full of hot, bright 
sunlight, with a fat pack of toffees in the glove compartment, and the prospect of seeing Fred’s 
and George’s jealous faces when they landed smoothly and spectacularly on the sweeping lawn 
in front of Hogwarts castle. 
They made regular checks on the train as they flew farther and farther north, each dip beneath the 
clouds showing them a different view. London was soon far behind them, replaced by neat green 
fields that gave way in turn to wide, purplish moors, a great city alive with cars like multicolored 
ants, villages with tiny toy churches. 
Several uneventful hours later, however, Harry had to admit that some of the fun was wearing 
off. The toffees had made them extremely thirsty and they had nothing to drink. He and Ron had 
pulled off their sweaters, but Harry’s T-shirt was sticking to the back of his seat and his glasses 
kept sliding down to the end of his sweaty nose. He had stopped noticing the fantastic cloud 
shapes now and was thinking longingly of the train miles below, where you could buy ice-cold 
pumpkin juice from a trolley pushed by a plump witch. Why hadn’t they been able to get onto 
platform nine and three-quarters? 
“Can’t be much further, can it?” croaked Ron, hours later still, as the sun started to sink into their 
floor of cloud, staining it a deep pink. “Ready for another check on the train?” 
It was still right below them, winding its way past a snowcapped mountain. It was much darker 
beneath the canopy of clouds. 
Ron put his foot on the accelerator and drove them upward again, but as he did so, the engine 
began to whine. 

---

Harry and Ron exchanged nervous glances. 
“It’s probably just tired,” said Ron. “It’s never been this far before…” 
And they both pretended not to notice the whining growing louder and louder as the sky became 
steadily darker. Stars were blossoming in the blackness. Harry pulled his sweater back on, trying 
to ignore the way the windshield wipers were now waving feebly, as though in protest. 
“Not far,” said Ron, more to the car than to Harry, “not far now,” and he patted the dashboard 
nervously. 
When they flew back beneath the clouds a little while later, they had to squint through the 
darkness for a landmark they knew. 
“There!” Harry shouted, making Ron and Hedwig jump. “Straight ahead!” 
Silhouetted on the dark horizon, high on the cliff over the lake, stood the many turrets and towers 
of Hogwarts castle. 
But the car had begun to shudder and was losing speed. 
“Come on,” Ron said cajolingly, giving the steering wheel a little shake, “nearly there, come on 
—” 
The engine groaned. Narrow jets of steam were issuing from under the hood. Harry found 
himself gripping the edges of his seat very hard as they flew toward the lake. 
The car gave a nasty wobble. Glancing out of his window, Harry saw the smooth, black, glassy 
surface of the water, a mile below. Ron’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. The car 
wobbled again. 
“Come on,” Ron muttered. 
They were over the lake — the castle was right ahead — Ron put his foot down. 
There was a loud clunk, a splutter, and the engine died completely. 
“Uh-oh,” said Ron, into the silence. 
The nose of the car dropped. They were falling, gathering speed, heading straight for the solid 
castle wall.