Chamber of Secrets starts off strongly with an introduction to Dobby the house elf that can’t make you want to hate him more. The best part of his character is how cute his name would be for a pug. It honestly surprises me how much he’s mourned when he dies later. Let’s get this one bit out of the way: there is zero mention of Sirius Black in this one, which is a crime, but we are getting close to The Best Book in The Series, so it’s forgivable. We get a loving scene of Harry living with the Weasley’s for a minute before school starts, which I adore. He deserves some quality time with his favorite adoptive family. Honestly, screw family lines, they should’ve stuck him with Mrs. Weasley. Toss her some of (all of– she deserves it) the money from Harry’s vault for child support and she would’ve made it work. Okay, fine, that’s pretty taxing on poor Molly, but the point stands that anyone would have been better than the Dursleys. This was a fast-paced adventure through the school year where Harry learns new things and becomes more comfortable at the school. And learns he can speak Parseltongue, to which even his best friends react poorly. It’s also a perfect example of how unsafe the school can actually be and how bad the faculty truly is. Not only did they hire a literal famous, but horribly unqualified, author for a professor when Snape is right there for the Defense Against the Dark Arts slot, but they barely even send notes home to the parents when students are literally being attacked and petrified! In the real world, schools call the parents and let them come to pick them up as soon as even a minor accident happens. But I guess we’re all still delusional that Hogwarts is the safest place on Earth! Dumbledore would never let anything bad actually happen to the students! It’s not like there’s a literal ghost in one of the bathrooms because a girl was killed by a monster years ago! Nah, what are you talking about? What ghost?! On that note, we assumed Hagrid brought said monster (Aragog) into the building, so we took his magic and kicked Aragog to the curb, but we STILL LET HIM STAY ON AT SCHOOL? I love Hagrid of course, but you have to admit this bodes badly for Dumbledore being a good decision-maker. And then right when the crux of the story happens and Harry and his friends are ready to face the Big Bad Evil Guy, guess who disappears immediately?! That’s right, our old pal, most powerful wizard, Dumbledore! Leaving Harry and Ron to once again face off a giant snake and Tom Riddle all alone! Granted, we had Lockhart, who’s slippery slope of character development was funny and honestly great, no notes, but he was entirely useless. At first, I was like “well at least Dumbledore sent along a hat and a bird! Two points to you, Dumbledork” but NO! Harry showed great loyalty and Fawkes took the hat and went after him of his own volition. Because even the bird is smarter than the most powerful wizard alive! The best part about this book was how few Dumbledore sightings we had. The final count of how many times he was a Dumbledork was about 6. Times Ron was a bad friend: 2. And times luck turned undeservedly in Harry’s favor: only once!