The Deathday Party and First Attack

The Deathday Party and First Attack is a pivotal event in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets where Harry, Ron, and Hermione attend Nearly Headless Nick's five-hundredth deathday party, only to discover upon leaving that the Chamber of Secrets has been opened and Mrs. Norris, the caretaker's cat, has been Petrified, marking the first physical manifestation of the threat that will define the school year.

Background and the Deathday Party

Nearly Headless Nick, the ghost of Gryffindor Tower, had been bitterly rejected by the Headless Hunt because his neck was still attached by half an inch of skin and sinew, making him ineligible for their activities such as Horseback Head-Juggling and Head Polo. He invited Harry, Ron, and Hermione to his five-hundredth deathday party, held in a roomy dungeon on Halloween night. The party was a grim affair: the passageway was lined with long, thin, jet-black tapers burning bright blue, casting a dim, ghostly light, and the temperature dropped with every step. The dungeon was filled with hundreds of pearly-white, translucent ghosts waltzing to the dreadful sound of thirty musical saws played by an orchestra on a raised, black-draped platform. A chandelier blazed midnight-blue with a thousand black candles, and the guests' breath rose in mist before them. The food table was covered in black velvet and held large, rotten fish on silver platters, cakes burned charcoal-black, a great maggoty haggis, a slab of cheese covered in furry green mold, and an enormous gray cake in the shape of a tombstone with tar-like icing reading "SIR NICHOLAS DE MIMSY-PORPINGTON / DIED 31ST OCTOBER, 1492." The ghosts walked through the food to taste it, and the smell was disgusting. Peeves the Poltergeist, wearing a bright orange party hat and a revolving bow tie, offered them peanuts covered in fungus and then summoned Moaning Myrtle, who burst into anguished sobs after being teased about her appearance. The Headless Hunt arrived, led by Sir Patrick Delaney-Podmore, who rode a ghost horse and carried his bearded head under his arm, blowing a horn. Sir Patrick mocked Nearly Headless Nick and began a game of Head Hockey, drawing the crowd away from Nick's speech. Harry, Ron, and Hermione, cold and hungry, decided to leave.

The Discovery of the Message and Mrs. Norris

As they hurried back up the passageway toward the entrance hall, Harry heard the same cold, murderous voice he had heard in Lockhart's office, saying "... rip... tear... kill..." and "... soo hungry... for so long..." and "... kill... time to kill..." The voice was moving upward, and Harry, convinced it was going to kill someone, ran up the marble staircase to the first floor, with Ron and Hermione following. They hurtled around the entire second floor until they turned a corner into a deserted passage. Hermione gasped and pointed: foot-high words were daubed on the wall between two windows, shimmering in the torchlight: "THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED. ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE." Beneath the message, hanging by her tail from a torch bracket, was Mrs. Norris, the caretaker's cat, stiff as a board with her eyes wide and staring. A large puddle of water was on the floor. As they stood frozen, students flooded the corridor from both ends as the Halloween feast ended, and Draco Malfoy pushed to the front, shouting, "Enemies of the Heir, beware! You'll be next, Mudbloods!"

Aftermath and Investigation

Argus Filch arrived and, seeing his cat, shrieked that Harry had murdered her. Albus Dumbledore arrived, followed by other teachers, and detached Mrs. Norris from the torch bracket. They moved to Gilderoy Lockhart's office, where Dumbledore examined the cat and pronounced her not dead but Petrified, though he could not say how. Filch accused Harry, revealing that he was a Squib and that Harry had seen his Kwikspell letter. Severus Snape suggested that Harry and Ron were in the wrong place at the wrong time and questioned why they were not at the feast. Harry, unable to explain the voice he alone could hear, claimed they were tired and wanted to go to bed, a story Ron's growling stomach undermined. Snape recommended taking Harry off the Gryffindor Quidditch team, but Minerva McGonagall objected, and Dumbledore firmly stated, "Innocent until proven guilty, Severus." Dumbledore revealed that Professor Sprout had procured Mandrakes and that a potion would be made to revive Mrs. Norris once they matured. The attack had an immediate effect on the school: Filch guarded the spot obsessively, scrubbing the message with Mrs. Skower's All-Purpose Magical Mess Remover to no effect; Ginny Weasley was disturbed; Hermione began reading obsessively, trying to find information on the legend of the Chamber of Secrets; and the school was filled with rumor and suspicion. The legend, as later recounted by Professor Binns, held that Salazar Slytherin built a hidden chamber and sealed it so that his true heir could open it, unleash a monster, and purge the school of Muggle-borns. Binns dismissed it as arrant nonsense, but the attack made the legend terrifyingly real.