Harry Potter

Hogwarts Chamber Of Secrets

The basilisk is the best LEGO has ever made, and eleven figures back it up.

Brick Rated Score

4.2/5

Set 76389 · 2021

Pieces1,172

Minifigs11

Year2021

Set number76389

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The verdict

This is the set that got me properly excited about the modular Hogwarts line again.

You get eleven minifigures, a glow-in-the-dark Nearly Headless Nick, a golden anniversary Voldemort, and a posable basilisk that actually looks like it could eat someone. The build itself is a bit straightforward for the money, and the price is the sticking point, but if you love the second film this one rewards you.

Best for: Harry Potter fans building the modular Hogwarts castle room by room

The full review

If you have been slowly assembling the minifigure-scale Hogwarts castle, this LEGO® set is the chapter you have been waiting for. It picks up where 75954 Hogwarts Great Hall left off in 2018 and adds three connected sections: the Chamber of Secrets down below, a slice of classroom and corridor above, and the Defence Against the Dark Arts feel running through it. The whole thing is modular, so it clicks onto the Great Hall and stacks into a proper castle silhouette. The headline, though, is what comes in the boxes. Eleven minifigures is a lot for a set this size, and they are not filler. You get Harry, Ginny Weasley, Tom Riddle, Luna Lovegood, Gilderoy Lockhart, Albus Dumbledore, Professor Sinistra, Colin Creevey, Justin Finch-Fletchley, a glow-in-the-dark Nearly Headless Nick, and the golden 20th anniversary Voldemort with his little display stand.

Then there is the basilisk, and it earns its own sentence. It is built from 41 pieces, uses new 2x2 tube elements down the body, and has a head with two rotating joints plus a tail made of three reconfigurable sections, so you can pose it curling out of the pipes or reared up mid-strike. It genuinely looks like the serpent from the film rather than a green tube with teeth, and that is a first for this creature in LEGO form.

Now the caveats, because I want to be straight with you. The build is simple. Most of it is stacking walls and dropping in the printed details, and there is not much of the clever sideways engineering that makes some sets a joy to put together. The back is left open and fairly plain, so this is a display-from-the-front model. And the price is the real hurdle. At 129.99 dollars new it always felt like you were paying for the minifigure roster more than the architecture, and now that it has retired you are looking at around 150 dollars on the secondary market. If you came for a challenging, surprising build, you may find it a touch quick and flat.

So who is this really for. If you love the Chamber of Secrets film, if you are already committed to the modular Hogwarts, or if that minifigure lineup and the basilisk make your heart do a little flip, you will be very happy here. It is the kind of set that looks fantastic on a shelf and plays even better if there are kids around to send Harry down the pipes. If you build mainly for engineering and technique, or you are on a tight budget, this is one you can comfortably skip and not lose sleep over. For me the figures and that snake tip it firmly into buy territory, price grumble and all.

The parts story

What the build is actually like, and the pieces worth knowing about.

Building it feels less like one big project and more like three quick ones stacked together, which is either relaxing or slightly anticlimactic depending on your mood. You work section by section: the lower Chamber with its pipe openings and the Salazar Slytherin statue face, then the middle floor with a classroom and staircase, then the upper level. Each module comes together fast because the technique is mostly wall building and detail placement rather than intricate substructure. The nicest moments are the small interior touches, the printed portraits, the little accessories, and posing the basilisk once it is assembled. Do not expect the sideways SNOT trickery of a modular building, but the pacing is friendly and it is a lovely one to do over an evening with the film on.

On parts, the basilisk is the star of the bin. The new 2x2 round tube elements make its body segments work, and there is a sand green 2x2x3 cone that shows up as a fresh mold too. You also get the golden Voldemort, which is a printed chrome-gold figure produced only for the 20th anniversary run, and a glow-in-the-dark Nearly Headless Nick that genuinely lights up in a dark room. Add the pixies, the candelabra, the printed wizard card tiles, and a stack of gold and printed detail pieces, and the parts value leans heavily toward figures and prints rather than raw brick count. With 1,172 pieces for eleven figures and a full creature build, the per-piece value is fine, but the real reason collectors chase this one is that minifigure roster and the anniversary golden Voldemort you cannot get anywhere else.

Fun facts

01The set was part of LEGO's 20th anniversary Harry Potter celebration in 2021, when sixteen sets each hid one of a run of collectible solid-gold anniversary minifigures, and this one contained the golden Voldemort.
02Nearly Headless Nick here is a glow-in-the-dark minifigure, a fittingly ghostly touch that makes him one of the standout figures in the whole anniversary wave.
03It is a direct expansion of 2018's 75954 Hogwarts Great Hall, part of an ongoing minifigure-scale modular castle designed so the sections click together into one growing Hogwarts.
04The set ran from June 2021 until it retired at the end of 2023, and sealed copies now trade around 150 dollars, above the original 129.99 dollar retail price.