Chapter three: Parseltongue and Poetry
After the fiasco that was Harry Potter's first year at Hogwarts, nobody thought that he could make his life any more hectic, but how wrong they were! His second school year started in an even more confusing way than the last, as he managed to make headlines in the Daily Prophet twice in a week- not bad for a twelve year old, one might say!
His first entry into the well known British magical newspaper was with the then famous author and fantasist (this writer's opinion only, readers!), Gilderoy Lockhart, taken in Diagon Alley's Flourish and Blott's. Lockhart had just released his wittering and long-winded autobiography, Magical Me, and, not content with being vaguely famous himself, decided to drag someone else into the picture- Harry Potter, a twelve-year-old boy who was more famous than him without even trying to be. As the resulting photograph showed, Potter displayed an unusual bout of sensibility, looking less than impressed at having his photograph taken with such a drivelling buffoon, so much so that his image seemed to be trying to escape the frame- something repeated in a photograph obtained from Dennis Creevey, brother of Potter's pitiful and ill-fated friend Colin.
However, this doesn't mean that Potter was reluctant to flaunt his fame. Barely a week later, he was seen on the front page of the Prophet flying a blue car belonging to Weasley's father (a ministry of magic employee no less) in a blatant disregard for the Statute of Secrecy, and was seen by numerous Muggles across the country. Potter was not named in the article (no doubt a cover-up by dubious headmaster Albus Dumbledore) but we know from Argus Filch's extensive (and probably obsessive- Filch seems to have noted every piece of rule-breaking ever) records that Potter and Weasley received detentions for this misdemeanour - a mild punishment for something that would land any normal person in a cell in Azkaban. But yet again Potter slipped through the net, dragging Weasley through (not reluctantly, one assumes).
Potter's second year in Hogwarts was probably even weirder than his first. Halloween seemed to be Potter's rule-breaking date of choice, as once again he either dived or was dragged into yet another suspicious circumstance, this time entwined with the (obviously mythical) story of the Chamber of Secrets, supposedly built into the castle by the noblest of the four Hogwarts founders, Salazar Slytherin.
So how did Potter use this myth to break the rules? Filch's records go into extreme detail regarding the whole scenario; Potter obviously struck a nerve with him on this one. Strange happenings were occurring in the school, and Filch claims that Potter "petrified" his cat, along with a number of students that Potter appeared to have run-ins with throughout the year, ending with a Ravenclaw Prefect and his friend and future love interest, Hermione Granger.
It is unknown how Potter Petrified these people and animals, but it adds to the long list of magic he seems to have, which also includes the ability to speak Parseltongue (a fact that Potter claims is no longer true since the demise of You Know Who). Petrifying Granger was a rare inspired moment for Potter, obviously putting people off the scent, but this writer can see through that thinly veiled decoy.
When the youngest member of the Weasley family, Ginevra (known as Ginny and now married to Potter) went missing near the end of the school year, Dumbledore suspiciously put out the story that she had been taken into the Chamber of Secrets and Potter, who received a singing Valentine from Ginny, saved her from a Basilisk. This conveniently covers up the petrification mystery, and a backfiring wand was blamed for the tragic memory loss of the buffoon Lockhart. Yet again Dumbledore (whose motives always were dubious) nicely covered up another sinister and probably illegal episode of Harry Potter's life.