Headscratchers / Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

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Slytherin Spy

• During the first Quidditch practice, Oliver Wood comments that Colin Creevey could be a Slytherin spy. How does he not recognise a first-year who he witnessed get sorted into his house less than a week earlier?
  • When you were a senior in high school, did you know the name and face of every freshman who happened to have classes near you by the second week or so of the year?
  • Wood has always been a bit...fanatic when it comes to Quidditch. In the next book, he freely admits that he didn't care if Harry's possibly-cursed broomstick bucked him off during a match, just as long as he caught the Snitch first. The notion that a new student would pass information to another house, even one that rivaled the student's own, doesn't seem far-fetched in comparison.
  • And in the books, the uniforms don't identify people by which house they're in (which they do in the films). So you can't tell what house someone's in just by looking at them.
  • One of the most common complaints about the Sorting system is how little the choice of the student matters through it all — Harry was almost sorted into Slytherin and had to beg to be placed into Gryffindor, and Neville was sorted into Gryffindor despite begging to be placed into Hufflepuff. Even if Wood knows Colin is a Gryffindor, he could rationalize it as him being a Gryffindor who wanted to be a Slytherin, and so is trying to make the best of things by spying on the rivals of his favorite Quidditch team.

The Basilisk's Whispers

• I understand that no one is going to hear "Let me rip you" except Harry, but shouldn't they hear the hissing? Now, hissing probably would slip under most people's 'active listening radar' so to speak, but if Harry can hear and decipher it OVER the ambient conversation or noise, doesn't that mean it's loud enough to be heard? It's slightly more bearable the very first time, as Lockhart is probably too interested in his own voice to notice or care about a hissing noise, but the other times... I mean... I can't help wondering why no one ever says, "Hear what? *listens* What, that hissing sound? Probably the pipes." Wow... there goes 10 chapters...
  • With all the other weird stuff that goes on at Hogwarts (talking paintings, moving staircases, a ceiling that reflects the sky outside, ghosts, etc...), I am sure anybody who heard a little hissing on the walls didn't think twice about it. They probably just thought it was another weird feature of the place.
  • Maybe for non-muggle borns. Anyone else in the canon time frame would know it was a gas leak; anyone from Hagrid's time would know a boiler was about to explode. Then again, muggle-born lose all common sense when they become wizards.
  • Truth in Television. This actually makes a lot of sense, though I don't know if Rowling meant it to. Different parts of your brain interpret sounds in different ways. Because Harry's a Parselmouth, he hears snakes hissing and interprets it as language. If anyone else did hear it, even when Harry brought it to their attention, it wouldn't be audible enough to bypass the ambient noise filter.
  • Even if they did hear it, it's hissing, coming from pipes. My pipes hiss all the time whenever water's turned on, so hearing random hissing coming from pipes wouldn't alert him to anything. He simply assumed that's what everyone else thought when it was brought up.
  • It's just hissing. With all the different sounds going on around, anyone could easily just include the sound with the mix of many voices going on around them. It's only because Harry can understand it as a language that it's particularly distinguishable for him. Much like anyone who speaks a second language. If there's a bunch of people speaking in all sorts of languages, you'll only ever distinguish the ones that you understand; however, every other foreign language to you will just mesh with every other sound unless you're specifically trying to eavesdrop on that conversation.
  • It's really simple, Harry always talked about a voice, so naturally they don't connect it with the hissing sound even if they do hear it. It's only later when the school's empty and Hermione's with Harry that she puts two and two together. The only sound, hissing, must be a snake and therefore the monster!
  • Considering that snakes don't really communicate much by hissing, or any other way that we know of, it's possible there would be a semi-telepathic component to Parseltongue. Of course, that raises the already tricky question of why Parselmouths hear snakes ssspeak like thisss. Kinda cartoonish, when you think about it. (They shouldn't have a "snake accent" because they shouldn't actually be using their mouths to say things.)
  • Makes sense. Snakes don't have eyelids, yet Harry saw (or thought he saw) the boa wink at him. That could have been a telepathic insight into the animal's body language, "translated" visually rather than audibly.
  • Perhaps they have a "snake accent" because there's a semi-telepathic component to Parseltongue, like you suggested, and Harry subconsciously thinks snakes should sound like that? By now, he subconsciously knows what Parseltongue sounds like - he talked to that snake in the zoo before he went to Hogwarts - so it's plausible that he simply doesn't consciously realize something his subconscious recognizes.
  • In the later books Parseltongue gets less cartoonish. The extra s's in this book are probably there because the earlier books are for a slightly younger audience and likely made to sound more like what the target age group would expect a snake language to sound like.
  • Or maybe Harry's fluency in Parseltongue improved as he practiced using it, and as his link with Voldemort got stronger over the course of the books.
  • Even worse, the basilisk specifically asks for permission to "rip... tear..." But snakes not only don't rip and tear their prey, they can't rip and tear their prey, because they have no limbs, and their teeth are made for piercing, no ripping/slashing. And in addition, at least one of the basilisk's fangs broke off in Harry's leg, so it's obvious that its fangs were not strong enough to rip human flesh without breaking off... Idiot Ball much?
  • It could have been repeating its instructions.
  • Snakes don't rip and tear their prey, but they do sort of rip and tear their skin as they grow, which they can only do if they have prey to eat.
  • In the book the Basilisk is described as a snake, but snakes do not have a solid under jaw like it did in the movie. Maybe it was a limbless lizard that was snake-like enough for Harry to understand.
  • More mundanely, think about all the times the Basilisk attacks. The first is at Halloween, when everyone is at the feast in the Great Hall, and Harry and co only stumble across Mrs Norris because they went to Nick's Deathday Party. The second is in the middle of the night, with Colin sneaking out of bed. The fourth is right before a Quidditch game, where most of the school would be down at the pitch, and Hermione was only hanging back to look something up in the library. So in three out of four attacks, it happens when the majority of the school wouldn't be around to hear anything. In Colin's attack, the students are either in the towers or the dungeons, and thus too far away to hear anything. Even in Justin's, it happens after class time when Harry is in late detention.

Basilisk's Prey

• A snake that big would need at least a horse every two weeks. And bones wouldn't have been found in the chamber because snakes eat their prey whole, digesting the bones. Another animal related Just Bugs Me is when Wormtail is able to get information from other rats. Rats have to establish relationships before they tell other rats things (And yes, they do inform each other of danger. At least that's true).
  • Snakes don't hibernate, they brumate. Also, larger snakes eat less often and can go up to a year without food. A snake that big eating a horse every two weeks would be incredibly unhealthy and fat, as their metabolisms are extremely efficient. My vote is magic snake that doesn't necessary need to eat, or there is another exit where it can get food as needed.
  • Not necessarily. The Basilisk in the book was 20 feet long. A 20 feet long Nile Crocodile doesn't need anywhere near as much food as a horse very two weeks. It can actually go months without eating again after a meal of an animal less than half the size of horse. Add to that the ability of some snakes to hibernate for many months at a time. A cold blooded animal, even a very large one, needs surprisingly little food. (And also, it's a magic snake!).
  • It has been implied that there was more than one way out of the Chamber. So that the Basilisk could be feeding off various creatures in the Forbidden forest, namely the swarm of acromantulas deep in the forest that were so scared of it.
  • Who's to say he didn't form relationships with other rats? Wormtail isn't the kind of person who would turn his nose at the idea of befriending some rats if he saw some personal gain in it.
  • Maybe Riddle put it in some sort of magical hybernation before he stopped the attacks and the hybernation ended when the Chamber was opened. Also while he was raising the Basilisk Riddle magically enlarged the Basilisk's food (rats, mice those sorts of things) as it grew.
  • Yet I second the hibernation theory, because that Basilisk has been in the Chambers for a thousand years before Riddle found it. So maybe it hunted when it could, and went into sleep when there wasn't any prey, so yeah.
  • For the film's version, little prey wouldn't suffice, but Salazar Slytherin could've installed spells into the Chamber that would periodically transport cattle or other large meals in from outside, to keep his pet fat and happy. As for the rat bones in the book, those were probably from animals that saw the basilisk incidentally and died, not ones it hunted down for food.
  • That can't be. If they saw the snake, they would have been petrified. And there is a distinct lack of little rat statues. (Thats a very good headscratcher, by the way. Where are the little rat statues anyway?).
  • Yes, it can. It's only petrification if you're not looking directly, otherwise it's death.
  • I always assumed it was sneaking out of the castle and into the Forbidden Forest to prey on the colony of Acromantulas who were so afraid of it.
    • Good guess for 1990s. Earlier, however, there was no acromantula colony in the forest (in 1943, during the previous opening of the Chamber, Hagrid had only just brought Aragog to Hogwarts).
  • Riddle was making Ginny strangle roosters and paint messages on the walls. Maybe he had her conjure up food for it as well? She could throw one rooster in for it (after it's been strangled of course) and he'd instruct her to multiply it so the Basilisk would have enough to eat.

The Strange Case of the Basilisk in the Plumbing

• Magical pipes. It's possible that Salazar worked on the plumbing (amusing since indoor plumbing wasn't around during the supposed creation of Hogwarts). It's also possible that Hogwarts changed over the centuries and made the pipes all throughout the school able to move like the staircases.
  • Plumbing existed as far back as ancient Rome (from whom we get the term "plumbing") and probably even further. It's not much of a stretch to assume that Wizards, who don't have to rely on technological innovations to advance, were able to invent the magical equivalent of toilets and so forth centuries before Muggles figured it out.
  • When you consider the apparent Wizard phobia to convenience and efficiency, it is a stretch. They still haven't adopted ballpoint pens or paper money, I don't see why they'd develop plumbing on their own.
  • Agreed, it's difficult to believe that wizards would adopt any sort of innovative convenience before Muggles did that wasn't catalyzed by magic. Flying broomsticks and floo powder transport, sure, but not mundane plumbing.
  • Once again, plumbing has existed for thousands of years. It's not some newfangled technology, it's almost as old as western civilization. The fact that they use quills and parchment instead of pen and paper doesn't change the fact that they do make some technological adaptations; they have radios, telescopes, cars, etc, so plumbing is not that far outside the realm of possibility. As for paper money: paper can be Transfigured. Gold can't.
  • Since when? Was gold stated as one of the 5 principal exceptions to Gamp's law of elemental transfiguration? I believe that only Food was ever stated outright, though love is hinted to be a part of this by Slughorn. And if you consider what the Philosopher's stone can do to be transfiguration, Gold is definitely transfigurable, despite the extreme difficulty.
  • So wizards have plumbing, and yet they don't have any pumbles...
  • It's implied that a Stone would make a wizard wealthy just as it would a Muggle, which suggests that gold is "normally" immune to transfiguration — otherwise that aspect of the Stone would be as appealing as a device to convert lead into cheese. Still, seems people can be fooled by Leprachaun gold, etc.
  • To original poster: The basilisk was explicitly stated to be about twenty feet long. That is slightly bigger than the average king cobra. Take a grown man's fist. That is the size of a cobra's head. It would be more than possible for the basilisk to navigate the pipes of any institution potentially capable of servicing thousands.
  • People are probably envisioning the massive Basilisk from the movie. I know I was.
  • There are recorded real snakes that are 20 feet long (reticulated pythons). A retic is fairly heavily built, even, but could probably manage to fit through some decently sized pipes. King cobras, as noted above, aren't as heavily built and almost as long, so could easily manage it. Twenty feet long sounds enormous, but isn't that big by snake standards (not something you'd want to run into, but not limited to the realms of fantasy). One presumes that what makes the basilisk so scary is it's fatal and/or petrifying gaze, the fact that it's more malicious than any real snake, and the fact that it seems more inclined to wander about than a real snake of that size.
  • On the flip side, the basilisk is described as being "at least" twenty feet long, but later, Harry putting the sword through the roof of the basilisk's mouth puts the basilisk's fangs at Harry's elbow. That puts the head of the basilisk at considerably bigger than a king cobra, or a reticulated python.
  • Also, the snake was described as something gigantic, heavy enough to make the floor shake when it landed, and being heavy and strong enough to smack Harry into the wall with its body. The book also mentions its "as thick as an oak," and attacking with its tail. It certainly seems like it was a *lot* bigger than your average cobra the way it was described, and probably much longer. I suspect Rowling was thinking more of the snake Jafar turned into, that certainly would match the description a lot better.
  • To be honest I think this may be another case of Rowling being bad with numbers, like she has stated in other cases. Twenty feet sounds huge even though it’s really not so big, she probably thought twenty feet sounded right while she was writing and never picked up on the fact that it didn't really fit. Also it’s not something most people would catch as an inaccuracy.
  • The book never stated how long the basilisk was. "At least twenty feet" was how long it said the empty snake skin that Harry, Ron and Lockhart found in the entry tunnel was. That skin could've been lying there for centuries, shed when the basilisk was much younger and smaller; for that matter, given that Slytherin's heirs all have a chronic serpent fixation, it could've come from a completely different snake.

The Mystery of the Mysterious Culprit

• Why on earth can nobody work out (except a twelve year-old Badass Bookworm) that a basilisk is the culprit? Presumably, any decent healer that understands the need to depetrify people with mandrakes would know the possible causes of petrification. So you've got your list of things that cause petrification - go through it systematically, and find your culprit.
  • The key clue was that Harry could hear it speaking via Parseltongue; i.e., narrowing your search focus down to magical reptiles only. And that was a clue only the Trio had. There is a specific scene in the book of Harry considering whether or not to tell Dumbledore that he's "hearing voices", and deciding not to.
  • Dumbledore might have known - it was said that he could understand Parseltongue, but not speak it himself. He could have heard it too.
  • DD has access to Occlumency. What Harry knows, he knows.
  • LEGILIMENCY is reading minds, not Occlumency. And not only would it be tremendously unethical to read the mind of one of your students without their permission, Harry would know he was being mind-read, since Snape's attempts on him caused the searched thoughts to arise to the top of his mind.
  • Sure, my bad, not that it changes anything. "...tremendously unethical to read..." of course it would, what's your point? "Harry would know he was being mind-read..." Nope. If you refer to that time in "Half-Blood Prince", it was merely the "don't think about white monkey" effect. But in OotP when Snape reads Harry's mind, the kid doesn't feel anything (apparently, because Severus didn't trust him to play along convincingly), and in Chamber of Secrets all Harry feels when DD read his mind was "like he was X-rayed".
  • Untrue, when Snape cast Legilimens on Harry, all the thoughts Snape saw were also seen by Harry. There is no evidence that Dumbledore read his mind in Chamber of Secrets.
    • Those were training sessions, of course he'd make it obvious. But when he read Harry's mind in Umbridge's office, the kid didn't feel anything, and he didn't even say the spell.
    • Snape not saying the spell is the whole point. When Legilimency does not use an incantation, it can only discover what the target is currently thinking about (Snape made it clear by explaining how Voldemort always knows who is lying to him) and the only time Legilimency is shown to read memories is after a spell is cast. When Harry was trying to make Snape read his thoughts about Sirius being captured, Snape would of course not have needed to delve into his memories.

  • It's been a while since I've read the book, but I don't think that Snape read Harry's mind in Umbridge's office. Also, if that was Snape pointing out the obvious in the lessons, no wonder Harry failed so spectacularly. Snape didn't really give him anything to go on.
    • It's ambiguous whether Snape does or doesn't in that scene, but certainly not all mental intrusions are noticeable, as we know from Voldemort being unaware of Harry's Deus ex Machina ability to livestream his thoughts in the last book. (And for the record, Snape told Harry what he was going to do, what Harry should do in response, and compared it to another thing Harry was good at; the problem was Harry not practicing because he wanted to know what the book's MacGuffin was.)
    • While not all mental intrusions are noticeable, except for the Legilimens cast by Severus, in no other case does the mindreader discover anything that the person he was using Legilimency on wasn't thinking about. Not conclusive evidence, but certainly significant.
  • Even if he didn't, V did later in the same book, and again, no noticable effect. But even if there were some, so what? If the kid doesn't even know that mind reading is possible or what its effects should be, he wouldn't understand what is happening to him.
    • The effects of reading through memories, as happened after Snape cast Legilimens on Harry are completely obvious and would hardly remain unnoticed.
  • Basilisks don't usually petrify, they usually KILL. If every known encounter with a Basilisk to date has resulted in death, that is the expected result. An ancient wizard explorer who found himself face-to-face with a Basilisk in the wild^note If they are found in the wild, that is, rather than being a type of engineered creature, as suggested by the egg-of-rooster-hatched-by-toad mythology probably wasn't looking through a camera, mirror, water-reflection or convenient ghost. There is some case for a hand-telescope (looking glass?), but do we know if those who were petrified remember what petrified them? I know Myrtle did, but becoming-a-ghost might be a special case.
  • None of the people remembered anything beyond 'yellow eyes', if that. Otherwise everyone would know what it was from the last time the Chamber opened. This makes sense... if the glaze instantly petrifies people, it would happen before their brain could realize what they were looking at.
  • Eh, no. That's not how mind works. You cannot remember eyes but not that what was around those eyes. Especially since it's completely improbable that every time the Basilisk would be able to instantly meet his gaze with the victim's, which is a necessary condition for it to work, before they could see what it is.

  • Considering how wildly-improbable it is that so many people would have just missed being killed outright by the basilisk's gaze, it's possible that Dumbledore at least suspected the possibility of a basilisk, and worked some sort of subtle protection over Hogwarts that would ensure anyone seeing Slytherin's "pet" did so indirectly. He didn't tell others about his suspicion, because he wasn't certain he'd guessed right and didn't want everyone hiding their eyes all the time, in case it really was some other sort of monster.
  • I know this page is speculative, but can we stick to theories that actually have some trace of support? There is nothing in the books even hinting that such a 'subtle protection' is possible, and fanfic recommendations are on another page.
  • Not to mentioned how ludicrous such idea is. Giving one person that kind of luck for several hours was considered a huge deal. Giving it to the whole castle for an entire year is out of all borders.

  • Or it could be that the teachers at Hogwarts did work out that it was a basilisk, but there was nothing they could do about it. They couldn't find out where it was coming from or predict where it would attack next. So that's why they felt they had no choice but to close down the school.
  • And the reason Dumbledore doesn't look into the matter when it happens is because he's not headmaster. He doesn't become headmaster until a few years before Harry's parents are killed.
    • Dude, Dumbledore is the headmaster when James and Lilly were ATTENDING Hogwarts (book 3 states that Dumbledore becoming the headmaster is the only reason that Remus (i.e. Lupin) was able to attend Hogwarts.

Dippet is the headmaster before then and the implication seems to be that he was happy to pin the case on Hagrid to prevent the school from being closed. If he goes investigating then that means Hagrid wasn't the culprit and the school is in danger of being closed. This calls back to the Ministry's habit of just locking up people so the public thinks things are under control. And in the modern age, Dumbledore is looking for a creature that petrifies its victims and can move about undetected in the castle. It's possible that people don't even know that a basilisk petrifies people who look at it through something else. If it can only be controlled by a rare Parselmouth and it's illegal, then it probably wouldn't be common knowledge. And it's not exactly something you can test. Dumbledore doesn't know that Harry's hearing voices in the walls. Hermione just one day has a "Eureka!" Moment and wonders if Harry might be hearing a snake-like monster - and goes to see if there are any that match that description.

• The main reason why the Basilisk reveal is so shocking to everyone is because, up to this point, there doesn't seem to have been a documented case of petrification caused by one, only death; or if there has been, it's so rare and coincidental that it bears no merit worth mentioning in the textbooks. Look at it from the staff's point of view: children are getting petrified. Already, you have a lovely narrowed-down list of things that can freeze you by looking at you, biting you, yelling at you, etc. Probably a decent size, considering how many mythical creatures exist in the wizarding world with bizarre magical abilities. Except the Basilisk, which KILLS you, not petrifies, isn't on this list. It's nowhere on the game board! It has been "ruled out" long ago. Even if Dumbledore had used Legilimency, (I'm not saying he didn't, not saying he did,) his own list would be narrowed down to "petrifies", "moves unseen," and "talks snake". I wouldn't be surprised if there actually was some sort of snake that petrified you that they were investigating.
• Ah, but it also "doesn't like roosters" and "scares spiders" which should immediately bring Basilisk back to the game board. Actually, scratch all that. None of it matters due to the inescapable fact that they have the best possible witness to the monster's attacks: Myrtle. Meaning they know the creature kills by sight. They know the creature was summoned by a boy, and it should be very easy to establish that that boy was not Hagrid. They know where the monster comes from - bathroom, which implies the pipes. If I remember correctly, Myrtle even recalled the hissing sounds the boy made, meaning they know about Parseltongue, therefore a snake.
  • Only Hagrid knew it "scares spiders" and nothing indicated that he has reported to Dumbledore. For "doesn't like roosters", Riddle has covered it up: it's possible that everyone thought the Heir of S killed the roosters to get their blood and draw the threatening lines.
• Eventually, the staff (after ruling out all manner of wacky creatures that can petrify you) would have started branching out their search to other creatures that fit the evidence - which is why it took so long. I suspect that the staff was nearing the Basilisk conclusion. As for Myrtle - this troper is convinced that there is something about magic that turns people into idiots. It's probably the part where you can make or fix anything with a wave of your hand that makes you not have to worry about working hard or using logic. This goes especially for the Wizarding government and bureaucracy. Any muggle investigator would have sold his own mother for the chance to talk to the murder victim (Myrtle). I can just hear the Minister of Magic: "Another case closed! The criminal (filthy half-breed) is caught, the spider is killed (even though there's a distinct possibility that the thing had babies that crawled into the forest), and Hogwarts can remain open! Ah, and Hogwarts has a new ghost, wonderful. Aren't you glad that we caught your killer, dear? What's that? A snake killed you? Oh, pish posh! You're confused, it wasn't a snake, it was a spider!"
• "...the spider is killed..." Not even that, actually, since Riddle didn't have Aragog's body, so apparently he had to tell them he annihilated it without a single trace, and I would just love to hear this story made to sound even remotely plausible.
• Hermione had way more clues than any of the teachers did. The two really big ones that were exclusive to the main trio were Harry hearing a voice in the walls, and the spiders' fear. Hagrid might have known the latter, but almost nothing else and isn't exactly much of a reader anyway. Given the same clues, someone on the Hogwarts staff would probably have worked out that it was a basilisk as well.
• As an aside, I think Myrtle says that when she first became a ghost, she tried to haunt the Alpha Bitch that bullied her. So she wasn't always in the out of order girls' bathroom, and therefore not able to be called as a witness at will. Depending on what year Olive Hornby was in (she could have been seventh) it might have been ages before they forced her to stay at Hogwarts.

Stolen ingredients

• A different culprit and different crime altogether; Snape is characterized in such a way that the moment supplies for Pollyjuice potion went missing from his stores, he would immediately have suspected Harry of doing so. Given that Snape is also shown to be a skilled Legillimens, why did he never have Harry stay after class and ask him about the missing ingredients? Harry would immediately have thought about the secret Pollyjuice brew, which Snape would have Legillimensed from his brain as the 12 year old wizard wouldn't even know that mind reading is a possibility. Why didn't the above scenario occur?
  • Who says he doesn't know? He does but cannot do anything permanent about it because it's Harry Potter. And for people wondering why Snape is being a dick to Harry and Hermione: that's why (among other things).
  • Actually, considering how Snape acts WRT Harry, it seems clear he does know Harry has stolen Polyjuice supplies in the past. Which he could have easily figured out from Hermione's hospital stint to be un-catted. He doesn't need any Legillimens verification.
  • Well if we're taking things into account from the fourth book, the reason Snape notices supplies missing is because Barty Crouch Jr is raiding them regularly. Snape probably wouldn't miss one theft. But Crouch has to take regular supplies if he's to be disguised every day for a whole year. Snape doesn't even challenge Harry about it until February or March, showing it took a while for him to notice.
  • Snape confronted Harry about the thefts after the second task, when he used the gillyweed he had stolen. This implies that Snape had been investigating the thefts, suspected Harry (for obvious reasons), but for once was actually being reasonable and not jumping to accuse him without grounds; the gillyweed was the evidence he needed to connect him with all of the thefts.
  • It could be that Hermione stole the ingredients and started to brew the ingredients before letting Harry and Ron know she started. Even if Snape had inquired or used Legillimency with Harry, it's entirely possible that Harry had no idea what ingredients were required for the Polyjuice Potion and thus would not know about those specific thefts.

The Basilisk's Four Senses

• Why did the basilisk lose its sense of smell in the movie? Oh, and apparently gain the ability to hear?
  • To be able to do the scene in which Harry fools it by throwing a stone farther. Is it such a big deal?
  • Who says it heard it? Could have just sensed the vibration the stone made when it hit something. Plus, who says basilisks can't hear? It's a magic snake, one that's killed when it hears a rooster crowing, and the fact that Harry and Tom can speak to snakes means they can hear in some fashion.
  • ^^Riddle did, in the movie. Here's the exact line: "Your bird might have blinded my snake, but it can still hear you!" The easy explanation? Kloves fails biology forever. In the book, Riddle yells at the Basilisk to smell Harry out. I suppose it could be argued that having the snake sniff Harry out wouldn't have created as much dramatic tension, but seriously, that change was just as stupid as the one they made to Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stone's Mythology Gag about Hagrid buying Fluffy off a Greek man. (They made the guy Irish in the movie. *facepalm*)
  • Not so unbelievably bad. A number of snakes can in fact hear as well as see and smell, though by far not as well. It is quite possible that Fawkes's attack on the eyes crippled the Basilisk's ability to smell as well (though that seems unlikely).
  • The snakes in the Potterverse have a spoken, sound-based language! They have to be able to hear. Real snakes can, in fact hear. It's just that many of them sense the vibrations through the ground, and not through the air.
  • So wait... in the book, the basilisk HEARD Riddle telling it to smell it, which is good because it can't hear? How is that better than the basilisk hearing the stone in the movie?
  • ^ I don't know about the stone , but I assume the basilisk HAS to listen to whatever Riddle says (probably even what’s not said in Parseltongue), because it's under his command. It's most likely a magical "Basilisk-must-obey-its-master" binding thing, rather than biological.
  • Just because Riddle told Basie to sniff Harry out, doesn't mean it cannot hear - smell is omnipresent and permeating, it's easier to track. You can stop making sound, you cannot stop smelling. Kloves, of course, didn't give a damn, because if it can smell then you cannot have all those dramatic scenes with it's trying to find Harry and missing by an inch.
  • And snakes don't have eyelids, but one blinked in the first book/movie. Is that an outrage too?
  • YES!
  • A Basilisk ISN'T a giant Snake. Otherwise they would have said "Giant Snake" A basilisk is a mythical creature, that hatches from a rooster's egg, or the egg of a hen without yolk, and is breeded by a snake. It, too, is a NON-Existing creature, and as such free for the author to decide what it can do or not...
  • um KING of Seperants. Sperants=snakes right? so that basically means "Giant Snake" Here's the quote from the book: "Of the many fearsome beasts and monsters that roam our land, there is none more curious or more deadly than the Basilisk, known also as the King of Serpents. This snake, which may reach gigantic size"
  • At the very least, it would make the Basilisk part snake, part bird (that would make kind of like a dinosaur, actually), and birds can hear very well.
  • The problem with this is that it means that Parselmouths can either talk to creatures which are partly snake, or simply snake-like...
  • Who says they can't? Snakes are probably just the best-known example, being the most famous Parselmouth, Slytherin's favourite animal and all.
  • So, your "proof" that a Basilisk is a snake is that they're nicknamed "King of Serpents?" By that standard, manatees count as cows because they're nicknamed "sea cows."
  • Well, the book excerpt does specifically refer to the Basilisk as a "snake", as opposed to "creature", "beast", "reptile", etc.
  • Yes the Basilisk can hear, because Harry tossed a stone down the tunnel and it reacted - as well as taking commands from Riddle. Yes it's a snake but since regular snakes can't kill or petrify people with their eyes, it's safe to say that it doesn't obey a normal serpent's biology.

Basilisk's Length

• A slight nitpick, but how come the basilisk in the book, which should be around a thousand years old, is only 20 feet long? The Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them said that the average length of an adult basilisk is 50 feet long.
  • Technically, it's only the snake skin that's stated to be about 20 feet long. If it's a really old skin, the basilisk could have grown quite a bit since that molting.
  • It also says they can live for an essentially indeterminate length of time like thousands of years. So it could be relativity young still. Out-of-Universe its more likely an oversight.
  • Easy, a wild Basilisk hunts and is well fed, the Slytherins Basilisk has been dormant in the chamber for at least 50 years, not only that, but there was no evidence that anyone had opened the chamber prior to that, except Corvinus Gaunt who was said to have hidden the entrance once modern plumbing started becoming a thing, so this Basilisk is probably extremely underfed, or at least it was kept in magical hibernation to prevent it starving, so technically the Basilisk might not be old in the traditional sense, but actually a "young" Basilisk.

An Heir with Surviving Predecessors

• Why is Draco considered one of the candidates for Heir of Slytherin if both his parents are still living? Wouldn't one of them be the heir? Does it skip generations? Does it skip women?
  • Ron claims it's because Draco's father taught him how to do it over the summer, but even that seems silly as he'd wait until he was old enough to be able to sneak around easier. Much of the first two books, when looking back, you realize things don't makes sense, but this is because they're young kids and don't think things through as much as they should. For example, should they really have shot a firecracker into a potion during a potions class so Hermione could steal ingredients? Who knows what that could have done if they'd had a particularly dangerous potion being brewed?
  • No, but what I mean is, being the heir is an inherited feature. It comes from being descended from Slytherin. And the phrasing "the" heir makes the referent unique, at least in my interpretation. Presumably, traits such as being a Parselmouth could exist in multiple descendants at once, arising at birth, but I always thought the title was written in a way that made it sound unique. Like, Prince Charles can't be the monarch until his mother dies. Thorin became the Heir of Durin when his father, Thrain, died. But both Draco's parents are alive, so one of them should be the heir. Unless there are multiple heirs simultaneously, or a reason for the title to skip over the relevant parent and land on Draco.
  • Draco's parents weren't hanging around at Hogwarts when all the trouble happened, which put them off the suspect list.
  • I am obviously not making myself clear. My question is not how Draco could be suspected of the actions carried out at Hogwarts. My question is how he could be what appears — at least to me — to be a unique entity, "the Heir" with a capital H and a definite article, to what appears to be an inherited position, when he should, according to my understanding, have to wait until his relevant parent is dead. Yes, he could be acting *on behalf* of the Heir, but I don't see how he could *be* the Heir, unless there are multiple heirs simultaneously, or it skips a generation.
  • Heir — "A person who inherits some or all of the estate of a recently deceased person. The legal successor is usually selected because they are related to the deceased by a direct bloodline or have been designated in a will or by a legal authority." It's possible they're thinking he was designated in a will. After all, there are no male heirs to the Black family out of Azkaban. It was entirely possible for him to have been declared the Heir to Slytherin through an imprisoned family. Of course, they don't realize that it's a hereditary trait that's necessary to open the chamber, which is why they're mistaken in the first place.
  • Haven't read the book in a while, but wasn't it mainly Harry, Ron and Hermione who suspected Draco of being the Heir? Harry and Ron probably wouldn't know/care about the proper definition of the word "Heir," and even if Hermione knew (as well she might), she could have just decided to let it go. Okay, maybe not completely in character for her, but then she did have more important things to worry about.
  • I think the "Heir" was a specific person, not a position. Voldemort was always the heir; his mother/grandfather didn't hold the position before him. So yes, it skips generations until it finds someone evil enough.
  • Did you miss the part of the backstory where the Gaunts spoke solely in Parseltongue, and Marvolo was waving Slytherin's family ring about (possibly without knowing its exact significance)? They were heirs, they just (at least seemingly, to me) didn't go to Hogwarts and (almost definitely didn't) find the Chamber.
  • The trio specifically searched for "the Heir" because the message on the wall referred to "The Heir of Slytherin". It was Diary-Tom's own ego that proclaimed him the Heir (singular), not anything the trio thought or theorized.
  • Just replace "heir" with "descendant" and the problem will go away.
  • All descendants were 'heirs' (lowercase). The one to find the Chamber would then become the 'Heir' (capital). If, using the Draco example, Narcissa found the Chamber, she would have been the 'Heir' because the very action of finding it made it so. If Voldemort's grandmother's uncle had found it, they would get the designation of Capital H 'Heir'.
  • I think this calls for an application of Occam's Razor. The phrase "the Heir" was used because it's more dramatic than saying "an heir."
  • I always thought "Heir" in context just meant the next parseltounge to "take up Slytherin's mantle" so to speak, by opening the chamber, which turned out to be Tom Riddle. Nothing to do with actual blood-succesion. The rumors of a new heir is just him messing with Hogwarts through Ginny, at which point Harry and Ron just think Draco the most Slytherin-Heir-ish student currently in the school.
  • At this point in the series, the trio is just twelve and have limited knowledge of their world. They know Malfoy is a Slytherin and a dick, so it's logical (for them) to assume he is the heir.
  • Salazar Slytherin has a number of descendants (though not as many as the other Hogwarts founders, for a number of reasons), but only one 'Heir' - the one who metaphorically 'inherits' his crusade to rid the school of muggleborns.
  • Nope. According to DD, V is the only living descendant of SS.
    • Although this was true during Chamber of Secrets. It was not true the last time the chamber was opened in 1943 when there were at least two living descendants of Slytherin; Voldemort and Morfin Gaunt.
  • THEY'RE TWELVE. How much rationality do you want from twelve year-olds? Particularly ones that would quite like to blame Draco.
  • It is possible for there to be multiple heirs of Slytherin (any and all of his descendants who are Parselmouths). The trio are only looking for "The Heir" (singular, capital H), because they are looking for the ONE person who is currently opening the Chamber and petrifying people. (Why they didn't consider that there could be multiple people working together I don't know.) Of course, at this point, there was only one heir, because Voldemort's family is all dead. If Voldemort had ever had kids, they, too, would have been Slytherin's heirs/descendants.
  • Which begs the question of why Dumbledore was so sure that "there is no question of who" had opened the Chamber. Why was he so very sure that Voldemort hadn't had a kid? Voldemort had been more or less human prior to his encounter with baby Harry, and many of his Death Eaters had practically worshiped the guy; having an affair with one or more of his female followers wasn't beyond the range of possibility, and any wizarding offspring that resulted could easily have been at Hogwarts (under the mother's surname) at the time these events occurred. Dumbledore didn't start his hunt for the Horcruxes until after he'd learned of Riddle's diary, so he shouldn't yet have known enough about the Big Bad's personal life to be certain this hadn't happened.
  • Theres a very simple answer to this: The trio believed that Lucius was the one who opened the Chamber 50 years ago.
  • With one problem: Lucius wasn't even alive 50 years before Chamber of Secrets, let alone at Hogwarts (he was born post-Sep 1953 or pre-Sep 1954).
  • Like they know that. People age slower in the wizarding world anyway, so it must be harder to visually estimate ages.
  • Would you honestly believe that Lucius Malfoy was over 61 years old, if you were at school with his 12 year old son? It seems far more likely they would think he was the same age as Arthur.
  • Wait a second, they didn't even know the Chamber had been opened fifty years ago until they talked to Draco in the Slytherin common room! Prior to that, they knew it had been opened before (from what Dobby had said), but not when. So they could've just assumed it was when Lucius was at school, and by the time they found that it wasn't, they knew it wasn't Draco anyway. (And really, you think it's so far out that a wizard could look like Lucius at 61 when Hagrid is 63? Really?)
  • Draco not being the Heir should have been pretty obvious when the first attack was discovered and he ran to the front of the crowd to taunt and threaten them while speaking about the heir in third person. If he wanted to admit it, he should have just said it(the third person thing till then had been almost exclusive to Voldemort and Dobby) and if he wanted to hide it he shouldn't have called so much attention to himself. But Harry and Ron (understandably)hate Malfoy and Hermoine has the fact she's part of a discrimination suffering group Malfoy just announced were going to get it next clouding her judgment.
    • The Trio came up with a logical theory: Draco DOES want everyone know that he is the Heir of S, what he doesn't want is others can PROVE it (because he didn't want to be expelled from school). Ron used this to explain Draco's mood when Harry was thought as the Heir of S by almost everyone.
• A will can easily specify an heir based on something other than who's next in the traditional succession rules. "I declare my sole heir to be the person who can beat my time at the 100m / pull this sword from this stone / solve this complex series of puzzles." Slytherin's Heir wasn't whoever was next in the line of succession, it was whoever could find and open the Chamber of Secrets and control the basilisk inside.
  • If Lucius was the heir of Slytherin, he would be have a different status as the eldest of his generation with no predecessors still alive. Draco would still be the heir of Slytherin being his father's heir.

Award for Service to the School

• Why does Tom Riddle still have an award with his name on it on display at Hogwarts? You would think that becoming a mass murderer, probably the most notorious wizard ever, would be enough to have someone reconsider why they are still displaying that award. It may not have been well-known that Tom Riddle became Lord Voldemort, but Dumbledore wasn't the only one who knew. Plus, as headmaster, he certainly would have had the authority to say he wanted it removed.
  • It doesn't have to have been on display — it was just "in the trophy room," and who knows if anyone ever even goes in there. The only reason Ron knew about it was that he'd had it for detention. And maybe Dumbledore thought that getting rid of it entirely would amount to revisionism, or maybe they just haven't gotten around to it — God knows there are institutions all over the world that have yet to apologize for things they really should.
  • Dumbledore seems to be of the school of thought that you should attempt to re-humanize monsters like Voldemort because it weakens the fear they inspire. "Voldemort" sounds like a force of pure evil, "Tom Riddle" is just a man. Also, it helps to remember that evil men can easily come from humble roots, which would have been an important lesson for Dumbledore, since his handsome young boyfriend became an evil tyrant.
  • NOW it should be removed considering that it's now proven that he unleashed the Basilisk fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, it was thought that he caught the person releasing it; him being the Dark Lord later doesn't really matter if it still seemed like he did something to merit the reward.
  • I agree. Once it was discovered that Tom Riddle let the monster free, than his award (reguardless of who he became) for stopping the monster 50 years ago, should be taken down. Then again, maybe it was and we just don't hear about it.
  • Or, more likely, he forgot that Riddle's trophy was there; Dumbledore's an old wizard, so something was bound to slip his mind. Plus, it wouldn't have mattered about re-humanizing Voldermort, since nobody knew he was Tom Riddle in the first place.
  • It's just another plaque among God knows how many others in that trophy room. Ron probably would've forgotten about it the moment it left his field of vision if he hadn't vomited slugs all over it and been forced to clean it extra hard, probably spending the entire time muttering "Goddamn you, Tom Riddle," under his breath. And Harry's own award for Services to the School is never referenced again in the entire series. It's not at all unreasonable to assume that no one knew or cared about Riddle's award.
  • It's mentioned at some point that a lot of people sort of forgot who Voldemort was before he was, well, Voldemort - how many people would know that Tom Riddle, a young, handsome and intelligent student, and Lord Voldemort, a meglomaniac who barely looks human, are the same person, unless they were told?
  • It's also Truth in Television that an old public school that Hogwarts is modelled on wouldn't let the fact of Tom Riddle having become a genocidal terrorist affect the honours he received way back when he was a student. Adolf Hitler was honorary Citizen in his town of Birth "Braunau am Inn" untill a few years ago (as of 2016), as an example.
  • If you found a trophy earned by some Ioseb Besarionis Jughashvili in an old Georgian school would you know it was Stalin's?
  • And Dippet gave Riddle the award. Dumbledore didn't become headmaster until many years later, so he may have forgotten there even was one. I doubt the headmaster bothers himself much with what's in the trophy room when he has a whole school to run, and other jobs at the Ministry.

Mandrakes

• Movie!Neville's passing out upon seeing the mandrakes in herbology class. Isn't he supposed to have an amazing affinity with plants?
  • Not amazing, just good at the subject (compared with failing at everything else until he takes a level in badass in the final book).
  • Besides, mandrakes are hardly ordinary plants. Ordinary plants don't kill you if you screw up when caring for them, and don't look like humans (admittedly, the mandrakes in the class were too young to kill, but that was likely small comfort to Neville's nerves).
  • Ordinary mandrakes do look like humans. It's where myths of their magical counterparts come from...though they don't kill you unless you try to eat them. (The irony of healing mandrake myths is for better or worse Truth in Television)
  • Neville is just interested in plants and so good at herbology, not magically immune to effects, no more than a seismologist is immune to earthquakes.
  • He wasn't knocked unconscious by their cry, he just passed out upon seeing them. Which, for someone fascinated by Herbology, is out of character.
  • He was 12 years old and a total wimp (well, that scene in the first book notwithstanding)! Cut the boy some slack.
  • This was during Neville’s first run with Herbology. Before he had developed his affinity for the subject. Seems to be his first time with a mandrake, anyway. And even if it wasn’t, someone with an affinity for the subject in general may still have parts of it they don’t like.
  • To the troper above me, wrong. He had Herbology the year prior and it mentioned in the book that even in his first year he was exceptionally talented in Herbology and his high Herbology exam scores made up for his poor Potions score.
  • No need to be rude. Neville is a wimp by nature and mandrakes aren't exactly cuddly kittens. Just because he likes Herbology doesn't make him an instant genius on everything single new plant that is introduced.
  • A mandrake's cry will make you pass out (when they're young, it kills when it's an adult) just because Nevile's good at herbology doesn't mean he has super-ears or something. The earmuffs he was wearing were either faulty or not fully covering his ears. It could have been Harry or the teacher just as easily.
  • The main problem with that is Seamus specifically tells the teacher that Neville's fainting had nothing to do with the earmuffs not being on properly. He took one look at a Mandrake and fainted dead away at the sight of it.
  • He was so excited at the prospect of working with mandrakes that he hyperventilated and lost consciousness.
  • It's Adaption Decay, pure and simple. Steve Kloves has proven on several occasions he's not afraid to stomp on the Canon in the name of Rule of Funny.
  • The question is whether or not it is an important enough element to warrant such intense scrutiny. In what way does it detract from either the plot or the characterization of Neville? In fact, given the condensed nature of the films it actually gives the viewer a necessary contextual clue that Neville is not the bravest of the Gryffindor crew (at least initially). As we see in later films Neville becomes more and more of a heroic figure in his own right and when contrasted with these earlier depictions it becomes clear how much he has grown as a character. So instead of Adaptation Decay I posit that it is simply Adaptational License.
  • You're all assuming Neville fainted because of what he was directly experiencing. But Neville's interest in Herbology might actually have meant that he, unlike his classmates, already knew what use these moving, human-like organisms would be put to: that they'd be chopped up, still writhing and wailing, for use as ingredients for potions and medicines. The thought of doing this to such animated plants, for a boy who loves plant life, could've been horrific enough to make him pass out, even if mandrakes can't think or feel pain. It's just like how Harry himself was susceptible to fainting when he faced the dementors, because he had far more basis to be horrorstruck by their presence than his classmates.
  • The thing that bugs me about the Neville fainting incident is Sprout's callous treatment of the affair. She literally tells the class to leave her star pupil lying on the ground. What would she have done if it was a student who was bad at Herbology, use him as fertilizer?
  • Just because Sprout tells the students to leave Neville on the floor doesn't mean that she's not going to tend to him in a scene that we don't see. Maybe she didn't want her class full of twelve year olds getting into a flap over the fact that the creatures they were going to be studying had made one of their fellow students pass out.
  • I think dinosaurs are really cool, but I'd still flee in terror if I ever saw a T. rex in real life.

Myrtle's Glasses

• Why does Myrtle die instead of getting petrified? She doesn't look at the basilisk directly either, she sees the basilisk through glasses. Why does a camera lens provide more protection than glasses lenses?
  • When the teachers open the camera, the film disintegrates, meaning the film took the brunt of the magical instant death glare. Just think about that for a second; if Colin didn't have film in it, he'd be just as dead as Myrtle.
  • Nope, he wouldn't. The camera viewfinder has a mirror inside - that is what saved Colin. Melting of the film, BTW, makes no sense.
  • If Colin had taken a picture of the basilisk, then the film would have gotten the full blast of the death glare.
  • Myrtle had been crying and possibly wasn't wearing her glasses, or her glasses weren't thick enough to provide protection, or she looked over the top of her glasses as she was putting them on after she'd been crying, or they're not really "glasses" glasses and she took a page out of Francine Frensky's book and wears lensless glasses as to appear smarter.
  • Seeing as she was hiding in the bathroom in the first place because Olive Hornby was teasing her about those glasses, the last one seems unlikely.
  • With the camera, the puddle, and the mirror, the basilisk's gaze was reflected off of something (the mirror, water, and glass, respectively). Glasses don't work as reflectors, they work as focusing agents, meaning that Myrtle probably got more dead than usual from a basilisk gaze.
  • Justin Finch-Fletchley saw the basilisk through Nearly-headless Nick. I guess ghosts consist of small reflective areas?
  • No, ghosts are only semi transparent. They glow, and they take up alot more space than the lenses in glasses, a lot more to look through and dilute on the other side.
  • Simplest explanation is Myrtle took off her glasses to dry her eyes after she had been crying, looked up when she heard the basilisk and got fried. Riddle could then have replaced her glasses to make her less like a basilisk victim.
  • Surely if eyeglasses offered protection against a basilisk's gaze, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them would've mentioned this? They'd be standard-issue for every wizard who encounters such a creature if they could help. Heck, Harry himself wears glasses: would Tom have threatened him with his pet's gaze if his eyewear made him less vulnerable to it?
    • I think yes, he would. Even if Harry's not afraid to be petrified, given that the encounter occurs in the Chamber itself where he's extremely unlikely to be found, nothing would save him from being eaten or killed in some other way right after petrification. "His skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever" indeed.
  • J.K. Rowling actually answered this exact same question and said that Harry's glasses would not have protected him, thus why he shut his eyes.
  • And if Myrtle was crying about Olive Hornby, maybe she had her glasses off.

Cabbage-eating slugs

• Why are flesh-eating slugs eating cabbage? When Harry asks Hagrid why he is in Knockturn alley, Hagrid says he is buying repellant for flesh-eating slugs since they're eating the school's cabbages. Why would flesh-eating slugs be eating cabbage? And why is repellant for them a black arts object that can't be bought in Diagon Alley? Is "flesh-eating" a misnomer, or is Hagrid lying?
  • Maybe they are in fact omnivorous. They just call them flesh-eating, so that you know they are dangerous. Another theory is that, yes, he was lying, and was really there as D's eye watching Malfoys.
  • In the Rifftrax, the guys opined that he was really there picking up hookers. On the other hand, maybe he knew a guy who was willing to cut him a deal. Wouldn't be the first time in the series Hagrid made a shady deal with someone.
  • No, he was buying flesh-eating slug repellant. As in, slug repellant that eats flesh. Which, I think, is something that most reputable stores would not sell.
  • Lupin mentions flesh-eating slugs during his boggart lecture in the next book, so they evidently are a genuine life form familiar to wizarding folk.
  • Or slugs that aren't above a little flesh eatin'
  • I realize this is a bit of a stretch, but as I recall, Hagrid doesn't actually use the word "eat" when he talks about the slugs. Maybe flesh-eating slugs do something else in cabbage, like hibernate or produce young, that renders the cabbage inedible.
  • The exact qoute is
    "I was lookin' for a Flesh-Eatin' Slug Repellent," growled Hagrid. "They're ruinin' the school cabbages."
  • How do you think the flesh-eating slugs eat your flesh? They hide in your produce and when you're making dinner that's when they get you!
  • I'll never eat cole slaw again...
  • Maybe the repellant was flesh-eating because nothing else worked on the slugs ...

Well-fed Basilisk

• Judging from what Harry heard of Basilisk's grumbling, the beast was insanely bloodthirsty and craving for warm, succulent human flesh. So, why didn't it eat any of the children it petrified? Ok, maybe Creevey was saved by the timely (of course) intervention from Dumbledore, but I have an impression it took a certain time after the attacks to find the others. On the other hand, how long should it take a huge hungry snake to devour a kid?
  • I always took Petrified in Chamber of Secrets to literally mean turned to stone, so maybe after the Basilisk accidentally stoned them, they became inedible. Though, why didn't the snake eat anyone fifty years earlier, that is a mystery. Apparently, the snake was unleashed, everyone knew about it, but only one person died. Were people petrified back then because the snake kept not doing his killy-eye-thing correctly back then, too?
  • Inedible, fine. Indestructible? Hardly. So, even if it couldn't eat them, surely it could grab them and smash them against the nearest wall, right? I mean, it wasn't just hunting there, Riddle controlled it and he most likely wanted those people dead, one way or another. Why would he suddenly be so lenient?
  • Didn't Diary!Riddle say Ginny was too strong for him to control 100%, so she stopped the Basilisk from killing anyone? Or is that just fanon?
  • He didn't. It is.
  • Riddle wanted the Petrified students to be found, the better to terrify everyone. So, no snacking for the basilisk, else all anyone would know is that somebody disappeared.
  • That makes sense. It was his adult self that learned that - after a few object lessons are made - Nothing Is Scarier.
  • *shrug* Not really. He could've left the heads, or shattered remains, or hell, an explanation in blood on the wall. Also, why would he care if they were terrified or not? His goal was to discredit DD, dead students fulfill that purpose much better then missing ones.
  • It COULDN'T eat the petrified students, but it has no issue eating because it usually doesn't petrify: its gaze kills instantly, as in the case of Myrtle. Petrification was completely accidental in all cases: had the stopgaps like the water (Norris), the camera (Colin) or the mirror (Hermie) not been in place, they most certainly would have been eaten.
  • Fridge Brilliance: So far as I recall, we never see any explicit mention of the basilisk being immune to its own death-gaze. If it's vulnerable to that, it may have an instinct to retreat immediately if its prey gets petrified rather than killed, lest it catch sight of its own reflection and be rendered helpless.
  • Maybe the Basilisk just doesn't eat humans. It's not prowling the castle in search of food, which it seems to have plenty of in the chamber. So maybe it coincidentally wasn't hungry whenever Tom/Ginny summoned it.

The Basilisk attacking in the people in the hallways

• Ok, I get how Mrs. Norris was attacked just outside Myrtle's bathroom since that's where the entrance to the Chamber is, but how exactly did Colin, Justin, Nick, Hermione, and Penelope get attacked in various corridors, presumably nowhere near where pipes could feasibly end? Basically, it seems like we're supposed to believe that in the middle of every corridor there's just a giant hole in the wall where a Basilisk can stick its head out, petrify someone, then disappear before anyone else walks down that corridor. Or, we're meant to believe that Hogwarts is so big that some corridors are frequently almost empty, allowing the Basilisk to slither all over the school completely unseen or heard for a whole year, only encountering one or two people at a time, who are all carrying something reflective...
  • There's more than one bathroom in Hogwarts. Probably at least two (1 boys, 1 girls) on every floor. Probably more (boys, girls, Staff; multiple bathrooms for large floors). We already know Prefects get their own bathroom, too.
  • Not to mention other rooms that are likely to have sinks: kitchens, laundry rooms, laboratory classrooms, the Quidditch teams' locker rooms, the greenhouse...
  • Well, when the Trio comes upon the scene of the first attack, and are standing around wondering what to do, they hear the rest of the school filing out of the Great Hall. Moments later, they're surrounded by students and teachers. The hallway with Moaning Myrtle's bathroom must be in a major thoroughfare, possibly even right next to the Great Hall.
  • Moaning Myrtle's bathroom was on the second floor, just above the Great Hall. Why should it be a major thoroughfare after dinner and why would everyone leave the Great Hall at the same time?

Hermione being Petrified

• If Hermione already knew about the Basilisk, why didn't she just shut her eyes instead of using the mirror? I can't believe she wouldn't have heard it coming, and it would have to be quicker to shut your eyes than to hold a mirror up and find the right angle to keep from getting killed. And if she couldn't hear it because it was lying in wait around some corner instead of slithering around, it still can't have been any more dangerous to walk around with your eyes shut than it would be to look around corners with a mirror, knowing you'd get Petrified if the Basilisk was there. It obviously wasn't going to eat anyone anyway. And for that matter, how would it be possible for Hermione and Penelope to be Petrified at the same time? Why would they have both been looking in the mirror? Wouldn't it have made more sense to take it in turns to look around each corner, so that way if one of them were Petrified, the other wouldn't be, and would know that the Basilisk was around the next corner?
  • I don't know about the rest of it, but as to closing her eyes, remember the Basilisk had poison fangs too. If petrified does mean literally turned to stone, if Hermione were petrified, the snake wouldn't then be able to kill her by poisoning her, whereas if she closed her eyes it could just come up behind her and bite her, so being petrified with the mirror and still having a hope of survival would actually be better than closing her eyes and getting killed.
  • She'd need to be able to see where she was walking, or she'd run into a wall or another person. She was looking out for other people, to warn them as well. No one else heard it coming, and snakes generally don't make much noise when they're moving, unless they're moving over something noisy (eg rustling leaves). Penelope was holding the mirror, and we know Hermione is naturally curious - she probably couldn't resist glancing at the mirror. I do admit taking turns to look would have been better.
  • More than likely, Hermione ran into Penelope in the hallway. Penelope just happened to have her mirror, so they used that to look around corners, assuming that it would be better to be Petrified than killed if they encountered the Basilisk. There's a cure for being Petrified, after all. Dead is a bit more permanent.
  • It's possible to look around a corner and see some part of a snake besides its eyes. And if you do see its eyes - well... then, at least, it wasn't direct.

Ginny's disappearance

• Just a minor headscratcher, but how did the teachers know immediately that it was Ginny who'd been taken into the Chamber? The writing on the wall said "Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever," not "Ginny Weasley's skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever." The teachers should have had to have done a roll call to see who was missing, and as far as we can tell, that didn't happen.
  • Maybe they can do that remotely. With magic.
  • Remember the school is tightly controlled by this point. The students couldn't roam the corridors or go anywhere unaccompanied by a teacher. It would be immediately obvious if someone wasn't accounted for.
  • A lot of people miss that the disappearance actually happens during classtime (Which Ron and Harry have skipped to visit Hermione.), so there's not much question where she's supposed to be anyway. As Riddle was trying to make sure that everyone knew she was gone, it's entirely possible he had her leap up from her seat after class started and run out the door before anyone could stop her, and then no one could find her until they saw the message. (Riddle obviously knowing enough magic to hide her on the way to the Chamber.)
  • It's possible Ginny's name was written on the wall.
  • Perhaps Ginny had already gone missing before the message was discovered? She is supposed to be in class. Whoever was supposed to have her at that point noticed she wasn't there and got McGonagall to help search for her. During the search they discover the message and put two-and-two together.
  • Ginny's name isn't written on the wall in the film at least, but it could be in the book, as Harry and Ron don't see it there.
  • More simply, maybe Ginny's book bag was left under the message. Her name would probably be on it if not her books themselves.

Ginny Stealing The Diary Back

• How did no one notice Ginny sneaking into Harry's dormitory? After Ginny tried to flush the diary away and Harry finds it, she tries to steal it back and does so... from Harry's dormitory. How is that possible? Girls cannot go into the boys dorms and vice versa. If I recall, there is a sort of charm keeping each out of the other's dorms. Someone should've noticed Ginny regardless.
  • There's only a charm keeping boys out of the girls' dormitories, due to the sexism of the people who put it in place way back when. Hermione has been in the boys' room on occasion. And she was presumably smart enough to wait until she saw everyone leave - if anyone caught her, she really does have an ironclad excuse of looking for one of her brothers.
  • In fact, Riddle states outright that "the foolish little brat waited until your dormitory was deserted and stole it back."
    • Ginny has, notable, been 'sick', or at least looking sickly, throughout the year, presumably because of Riddle's possession. It would be easy enough to fake a sick day and go steal it during classes. Which is, quite possibly, how she did some other stuff also, like paint on the walls and kill roosters.

Forgive me if I'm forgetting, but is it ever made clear how Ginny knew Harry had the diary or why she stole it back? Is it just the simplest answer that she didn't want anyone else to be controlled by Riddle?

• It is. Firstly, she finds out he has it during Valentine's Day, when the dwarfs are running around singing valentines. One of them tackles Harry and sings him a valentine from Ginny- accidentally ripping his bag and spilling ink all over his books, including the diary. This also is where Harry notes that the diary is completely dry and realises that it absorbs ink. Memory!Tom Riddle states that Ginny stole it back because she was afraid that Harry would work out how to use it and learn her secrets.
• In fact, on repeat reads, you can see the book even points out Ginny spotting the diary and recognizing it. This is made more confusing for people who have only seen the movie. Kloves seems to find it unimportant to explain how people know things at times, such as how movie!Lupin never explains how he knows what the Marauder's Map is.

First rule: When Busted...Sell Evidence?

• When Harry accidentally teleports into the "Borgin & Burkes", he finds there Lucius selling some illegal potions from his stock in view of Ministery raids. Uhm, why is he selling them? Malfoys are supposed to be filthy rich, and "B&B" is a pawnshop, which means Lucius will definitely not get a good bargain, so does that paltry profit really matters to him so much, that he's prepared to compromise his secrets by involving a greedy unscrupulous profiteer? Why not simply re-hide or even destroy the potions?
  • I'm pretty sure he hadn't been busted yet and that he was selling them in case he would be.
  • Agree. The doesn't negate the question about why would he sell them instead of re-hiding/destroying.
  • Because he thinks it's too dangerous to have them around, and if he has to get rid of them, he'd prefer to make a pretty Knut in the process.
  • Which brings us back to the initial question. Was that Knut, produced by a stingy pawnbroker, really that pretty for the ostensibly rich Malfoy that he risked involving said pawnbroker in his dark secrets? Wasn't it obvious that should Mr. Burke one day be arrested for his shady dealings (you can only bribe so many law enforcers and another Mr. Crouch can always take helm one day) he'd immediately use that information to save his hide, like busted D Es did?
  • The Malfoys are rich, powerful, well-respected and apparently VERY good at covering up how Obviously Evil they are around the right people. If Burke was arrested, it would be the word of a shady pawnbroker against a respected member of the wizarding community. All Lucius has to do is claim that he visited the shop for completely innocuous reasons and Burke is lying to save his own skin.
  • Again, under the current Ministry with the Minister in his pocket, sure. If another Crouch takes the helm? Not so sure at all. Severe or not, Burke would've still been a threat. It just seems to me that the ostensible profit couldn't possibly be worth the risk, however small.
  • Lucius has obviously been doing business with Burke for a long time. Allowing the man to buy some items he needed to get rid of, anyway, might simply have been a means of keeping the pawnbroker on good terms with him. Mr. Malfoy couldn't have gotten all that under-the-table influence just by throwing money at problems; he's probably worked hard to cozy up to a lot of people, both in politics and in the black market of Dark wizardry.
  • In a way, it makes a kind of sense that if Lucius Malfoy had some evidence to hide, his first thought would be "there's gotta be some underling I can foist this on." He'd probably see personally disposing of some potions as beneath him. Also, he probably would consider destroying the potions a last resort, since then he wouldn't be able to retrieve them after the heat dies down. And hiding them could be an iffy proposition, since someone else might find them. By selling them to Borgin, he knows exactly where they are, and doesn't have to worry about the Ministry stumbling upon them while doing any searches.
  • In book 6, it's shown that Draco can intimidate Borgin just by showing his Dark Mark, because Borgin don't wanna screw with Death Eaters. If Draco can pull that off, we can only imagine how much less willing Borgin is to cross the far older and more competent Lucius.
  • It's possible that Borkins was just the last in a list of shady buyers that Lucius was hoisting things on; perhaps he visited the shops that would give him a bit more cash first, and he's delivering whatever he wasn't able to sell there to the less-profitable (but still slightly profitable) pawn shop. Anything that's still leftover he can destroy or leave in the care of some other loyal, dim-witted, dispensable underling.
• Why do people keep referring to Borgin & Burkes as a "pawnshop?" It seemed more like an antique store to me, a place which sells a certain kind of item, and also buys such items to sell.
  • Most likely it's a kind of hybrid: a pawnshop that specializes in antiques.
  • It was an antiques shop so yes, they would buy those antiques for resale, but Borgin also seems to do backalley (literally considering where they are located) buying and selling of dark magic objects on his own. You think he gives out receipts for those transactions?
• I always figured that he wasn't so much 'selling' as 'giving to keep safe until the heat dies down'. Borgin is clearly terrified of Lucius Malfoy, he wouldn't dream of selling something that belonged to him if he had been ordered to keep it safe. The only mention of selling is when Borgin asks if Malfoy is buying, at which point Lucius hesitates, and says he's selling instead. It's possible he was erring on the side of caution, in case someone (like Harry) happened to be listening. This way Malfoy is in the clear, he was simply 'selling' some old junk he had, and once the raids stop, he might come back and pick it up again, knowing full well it'd be safe with someone like Borgin
• Why not just stuff his junk in his bank vault?
  • Lucius knows that someone successfully broke in and out of Gringotts recently from Book 1, as the attempt to steal the Stone was splashed all over the Daily Prophet, so Gringotts is not as secure as it once was. If Dark objects are found in the Malfoy vault, it would be almost as good as a confession. It wouldn't even need to be a thief; if the Ministry decides to get the magical equivalent of a search warrant, they'd find the items. It makes much more sense for him to get rid of them completely, then the Ministry can search just as long and as thoroughly as they please and he doesn't have to worry.

Just how stupid is the wizarding world?

• So Lockhart’s plan is to track down wizards that accomplished amazing tasks, wipe their memories, and then claim he did the tasks himself. However, in order for Lockhart to know about these acts of heroism, he had to have heard about them from someone else which means the story has spread far enough for a large number of people to have already heard it. He does this enough times to write several books and not one person goes “I thought so-and-so killed that thing/saved that village/cured that disease? The number of people that know he’s lying must be staggering, how does he get away with it?
  • While I agree in general, that yes, the wizarding world in HP is very, very stupid, there might be some justifications in this case. Lockhart apparently commited all his "feats" in some distant and secluded backwater settlements (I mean, even more secluded and backwater than the wizarding world in general), whose residents, of course, do not read his books, and those who do read, never bother to go and check anything and stubbornly ignore the obvious nonsense his books must be riddled with (now, why does this sound so familiar...?). Sure, those residents might find out that their savior was stricken with amnesia, but I guess, for an evil-fighter it is an occupational hazard, and since they don't know about other similar cases, it doesn't raise their suspicions. Lockhart risked exposure, of course, but then any scam-artist does. Of course, you'd think that after he wrote how he cured a werevolf even his fangirls would start wondering why isn't there a long line of them standing at his doors, but that must be me being that nagging alien thing again.
  • In other words, the muggle equilavent of Lockhart would be a guy who claimed to have assassinated Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and Adolf Hitler... and on one occasion cured AIDS.
    • No, the muggle equivalent would be someone who claimed to have singlehandedly killed rampaging man-eating tigers, lions, and wolves in rural villages in some other country where his books would never be read and people are unlikely to visit to investigate. The "curing a werewolf" thing is a different story, though, since the news of ANY werewolf cure at all would logically be a huge deal.
  • After Lockhart did the first one, he would have become a famous monster hunter himself. It wouldn't surprise me if other monster hunters sought him out and got their stories stolen for their trouble. Also consider that Hermione showed in Deathly Hallows that you can not only remove a person's memory but edit others in their place. If some wizard said "Hey, I thought Joe Blow killed that dragon" then Joe Blow wouldn't know what he was talking about, and it would just be dismissed as a mistaken rumor.
  • "It wouldn't surprise me if other monster hunters sought him out" - uhm, why? If the monster hunters actively sought each other out, it surely would not be limited to Lockhart - they would've known of each other's exploits and thus would've easily exposed the fraud once he approached them. You'd think that monster-hunters would be suspicious and reclusive if they cared about their well-being.
  • Fun real life example - Anna Leonowens, the protagonist of The King and I, greatly embellished her experiences in Thailand - including the story that concubine Tuptim was tortured and executed (in real life she lived and had several descendants). Her memoirs were banned in Thailand for being inaccurate, but they were best sellers in the UK. Lockhart clearly did the same; enough to establish a reputation as a monster hunter in the UK (it's mentioned one of the wizards he memory wiped was Armenian). Maybe he was denounced in the countries where it happened but we don't know because Harry doesn't hear about it.
  • Thing is, it wasn't foolproof, Dumbledore knew a couple of the people who Gilderoy had obliviated, the whole reason Dumbledore hired him in the first place was because, apart from nobody else taking the job, he was going to expose Gilderoy, but decided the backfire causing him to become completely amnesiac was punishment enough.

Lockhart versus professionals

• Another question is how did a nincompoop like Lockhart manage to Obliviate not one, but a dozen of professional monster-hunters? Oh, sure he's good at the spell, but he'd still need to overpower or take them off guard, which, seeing his abysmal skills in sorcery, seems quite far-fetched.
  • He probably showed up at their houses and tried to ingratiate himself to them as he asked them about what they did. Then he hit them with an Obliviate when they looked away to roll their eyes.
  • They weren't professional monster hunters, they were people who had managed to overcome monsters when the situation arose.
• Does Hogwarts not screen their teachers before employing them or something? I mean, good lord, do they not review them every now again? How the hell did they actually let Lockhart teach there for as long as they did?! Even if they let him in based purely on his fame, surely someone would have complained when they realised how bad a teacher he was?
  • It is explicitly stated that no one competent wants the job because every teacher who has it is fired or dies or something after a year, so they have to hire who they can get. The only other person who wanted it was Snape, and Dumbledore couldn't have given it to him because then Snape would be gone next year and Dumbledore wouldn't have had anyone to spy on Voldemort/help him protect Harry. He only gives him the job in HBP because he knows Snape is going to have to kill him and leave at the end of the year anyway.
  • TOGA. There had been a string of single-term teachers. His immediate predecessor was KILLED on the job. Only a vain, pompous fool devoted to image would want the job.
  • Harry needs to learn that glory-seeking and vanity are bad things. Lockhart is the visual aid.
  • Harry already knew that glory-seeking and vanity were bad things. He always hated the publicity that went with being the Boy-Who-Lived. From book 1:
    Harry: Everyone thinks I'm special. All those people in the Leaky Cauldron, Professor Quirrell, Mr. Ollivander... but I don't know anything about magic at all. How can they expect great things?
  • For that matter, leaving Harry at the Dursleys was supposed to be the educational aid re: keeping Harry from getting a big head via his fame.
  • Yeah, but seriously, imagine you're a seventh year taking their final exam, and you have to put up with HIM as a teacher.
  • All the exams were cancelled that year.
  • But not their NEWT tests.
  • Better an incompetent teacher than no teacher at all. Imagine being a seventh-year and having to take your final exam for a class you haven't had all year, because there was nobody to teach it. At least you could learn a bit of theory from Lockhart, as the techniques that were used to defeat all those monsters were genuine... they just weren't performed by Lockhart.
  • In book five we find out that if Dumbledore cannot hire a professor then the Ministry will appoint one. This is terrible in book five because of the disagreement about Voldemort but what's wrong with the Ministry sending over an Auror back in book two when Fudge hung on to Dumbledore's every word? Is it a matter of pride or something with him?
  • That rule wasn't instituted until Book Five, so at the time Fudge had no authority at all to appoint teachers against Dumbledore's will. Admittedly, this still doesn't explain why Dumbledore doesn't ask Fudge to loan him an Auror; its peacetime, the Auror department doesn't have much to do anyway, Fudge is still sucking up to Dumbledore this year, and he could get someone like Kingsley Shacklebolt over easily.
  • Dumbledore isn't perfect. He didn't know Lockhart was a fake when he hired him.
  • This would imply he hired him without spending so much as five minutes talking to him. Seriously, most job interviews nowadays for skilled positions actually ask you a few questions about said skills, if not asking to see the results of your last certification test.
  • Indeed. Being a complete fraud means you're a complete fraud, which for Lockhart became blatantly obvious to everyone except his willfully blind fangirls the first time he tried to teach a class. What, is DD less able to tell a competent wizard from an incompetent one than the average 2nd-year student? Or was he just fangirling as much as Hermione was?
  • Well from Pottermore it appears that Albus knew some of these 'monster-hunters' that Lockhart charmed. He put Lockhart into DADA position (by bribing him with HP) to 'expose' him as a fraud. The teachers who remembered him at the school did ask Albus what kids could learn from an arrogant person (He was arrogant as a kid too. I mean come on he imagined an entrance to his school like what Harry experienced some years later). Albus said "They can learn what to be and what not to be". From Pottermore's site.
  • The problem with Pottermore is that it breaks one of the cardinal rules of storytelling Show Don't Tell. Its all very well Rowling coming along later and thinking up all of these various things but the fact of the matter is that, as far as the book is concerned, Dumbledore gives no indication whatsoever he knew Lockhart was dangerous. The most we can tell is that he knew Lockhart was some kind of con man and was clearly lying about both his skills and his adventures, but was desperate enough to employ anyone even remotely qualified by this point. All it would have taken is one paragraph revealing all of this to us but it simply does not exist.
  • Also, if we accept this as true then it makes Dumbledore look even worse. He knowingly hired an incompetent fraud and paid him? He knowingly allowed a man who'd proven willing to abuse memory charms to supervise schoolchildren? Why did you feel this kind of thing was necessary to 'expose him'? You're Albus frigging Dumbledore, who among your encyclopedic list of honors and qualifications are also acknowledged as Wizarding Britain's greatest expert in mind magic. You're capable of undoing memory charms cast by Tom Riddle himself (as laid out explicitly in backstory in book 6, re: Morfin Gaunt). If you know some of the monster hunters that Lockhart charmed, why not uncharm them (which would be only the human thing to do anyway, to help medically treat people who have been mind raped) and then they can press charges vs. Lockhart? Or hey, why not just press charges yourself? You're only Chief Warlock of the frigging Wizengamot, and it isn't until several years later and the return of Voldemort that your political influence starts to wane. Instead you waste everyone's time, a year of the students' educations, and the money gone to pay Lockhart's salary — as well as almost getting Ginny Weasley killed by Lockhart's negligence — as a roundabout way of doing something you could have done any number of other quicker, safer, and less wasteful ways. Dear Merlin, Dumbledore, do you ever miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity?
  • Well, it WAS a jinxed position after all, maybe DD only hired him in hope that he wouldn't be a problem to anybody by the end of the year - and that's exactly what happened. He was basically willing to make Hogwarts take one for the team and if Lockhart really abused his priviledges (i.e. went further than flirting with 12.y.o. students), DD and the other teachers WOULD make his life a living hell for that. As long as he's just being a vain asshole, he is no threat. As for being incompetent, as someone noted, all his books were on point about HOW to fight monsters, they just lied about WHO fought monsters in question.
  • If we abandon other invalid versions like "Ministry was sold on his bullshit and forced DD to hire him" this leaves us with two options: either DD indeed hired Lockhart without knowing or realizing that he's a fraud, and hence, DD is an idiot, or that he hired Gilderoy knowingly and planned to use him as a visual aid for Harry as to the dangers of vain-glory, and considered another lost year of education as well as the potential hazard to students from an incompetent twat screwing around with magic in the classroom^note Such as the pixie incident. for the whole school an acceptable trade-off.
  • Hagrid said that Dumbledore's been struggling to find decent Defence Against the Dark Arts teachers for several years now, no doubt because of how long the curse has been in effect, and that nobody other than Lockhart even applied. Dumbledore suspected that Lockhart was a fraud, but since nobody remotely qualified wants the job, he had to settle with making the most of a bad situation.
  • Where you can't expect from a story every single, little detail to be added to a story. This is what it says on Pottermore.
    Albus Dumbledore, the Headmaster during Lockhart's time, happened to have known two of the wizards whose memories Lockhart erased, and had a shrewd and accurate idea what was happening. He correctly believed that dragging Lockhart into a normal, school atmosphere would reveal his fradulence and, a vacancy in Defence Against the Dark Arts having opened up in June 1992, tracked down the author and, slyly hinting that teaching Harry Potter, who was a second-year student there at the time, would boost Lockhart's popularity beyond anything else, convinced Lockhart to return to Hogwarts (something Lockhart had not been too keen to do, as many of his teachers were still there and might have remembered his foolishness and ineptitude).
  • See above, the post beginning. Also, if we accept this as true then it makes Dumbledore look even worse. This does not help.
  • It is not unlikely, that Dumbledore was at first unable to find anyone else and then he figured, that he could as well kill two Birds with one stone and fill his unfillable position and at the same time show the world who Lockhart really is.
  • A. The position wasn't unfillable, he kept filling it for two years after that, and B. again, that this way of exposing Lockhart was criminally irresponsible and needlessly convoluted.
  • Regarding how Dumbledore managed to fill the position in later years, remember that Remus and Moody are Dumbledore's good friends. If you need to hire someone to fill a position that you know has been cursed for over two decades and whose last holder was killed on the job, you'd likely avoid choosing someone you care about and putting them in danger if possible. Moreover, as Hagrid stated, Dumbledore has been having a hard time finding decent Defence Against the Dark Arts teachers for a while, and Lockhart was the only one who even applied that year. Dumbledore killing two birds with one stone by filling the position while also hoping to expose Lockhart via the curse is a fairly logical explanation. As for why Dumbledore later hired Remus and Moody anyway, maybe he finally caved and began hiring his friends because he literally had no other options left. Remember, even after he decided to start recruiting his friends for the teaching post, he still couldn't find someone who'd take the job for Harry's fifth year, which is how Umbridge got the job.
  • I thought Dumbledore explained in the book that he used Harry's presence at Hogwarts to coax Lockhart to take the job, intending to expose him as a fraud early in the year, and then presumably replace him with someone else, but the events concerning the chamber being opened put a big hold on that.
    • Not that I recall.

Harry Potter and the Two Voldemorts?

• Imagine Tom Riddle would have succeeded. What would happen with the bodiless Voldemort? "It would have strengthened the present-day Voldemort considerably", says Rowling. But how? There would be 2 Voldemorts, as two different entities. Does that count as strengthen?
  • Chances are, Diary!Tom didn't fully understand that it meant to be a Horcrux. (Hence why he referred to himself as a memory) This could be for one of two reasons: (1)He had just learnt how to split one's soul and was still trying to grasp the concept.(2)Spending all of that time trapped within an inanimate object warped his understandings. If he succeeded he would probably combine with the bodiless Voldemort, who would be strengthened due to the fact that not only would he have a new body, but part of his soul back as well.
  • Not quite sure about Voldemort "re-fusing" with the diary Horcrux. Wasn't it mentioned somewhere that the only way for a person to "undo" the Horcrux is to feel remorse (and accept the accompanying pain) for the actions that were taken to create the Horcrux? I would think this is the only way possible for a wizard to recombine his/her soul pieces together. Voldemort's soul is to be forever left in pieces because he cannot feel remorse, nor would his egomaniac pride ever let him even if he could.
  • I always presumed Diary!Riddle would've just done the same thing Pettegrew did and ressurected V.
  • So there would be 2 Voldies... Yeah, but I don't think Voldemort, young or old, would share his power with someone, even his "clone"
  • They might have shared the same mind once the big V was resurrected. Voldemort would be inhabiting two bodies at once, teenage Tom and his present-day form, and one of the horcruxes Harry needs to destroy would now be a living, spell-flinging projection of Voldemort himself.
  • Wow, that really would be fucked up...
  • Meh, not really. Think of the Horcruxes is mini-One Rings, sentient, but unquestionably loyal to their master. Hell, maybe Riddle's corporeality wouldn't even be permanent, so once the energy he drained from Ginny was spent, he'd return to the diary.
  • Or the always possible (3)Voldemort lied to Diary Riddle about how the Horcrux worked. Diary Riddle thinks he's gathering energy to give himself a body and start over, but Voldemort can, for instance, instantly siphon all that energy back into himself at any time he chooses, which would probably mean as soon as he thought the diary had gathered enough, which would probably be true as soon as he found out about it.
  • How can you lie to somebody about how they function?
  • More importantly, how can someone that is created solely out of your own memories and knowledge not know something you do?
  • Maybe Voldemort obliviated the soul fragment in the diary in case of such a scenario where his soul fragment might escape the diary and challenge him?
  • On that note, does Diary Tom know about his exploits as Voldemort? He refers to Voldemort as the greatest wizard who ever lived, is that just youthful arrogance or did the soul fragment somehow gain all the new knowledge/memories Voldemort gained after the split? More likely, did he learn from Ginny while he possessed her?
  • Nope. From the sound of his talk to Harry, his memory had already planned his Voldemort identity when it was created, but he had to ask Ginny what his adult self did to know.
  • Voldemort and the diary wouldn't know what was happening to each other. He knew about Nagini because she was another living creature, which apparently means she could communicate long distances with him and he assumed he'd know what the other horcruxes were doing too, but he didn't.

Nearly Headless Nick

• How exactly did they un-petrify him if he's a ghost and can't drink the mandrake juice?
  • Either they transformed it into some ghost-applicable form, or he just eventually got better.
  • How? he's dead, so how was he unpetrif — wait, he wasn't even petrified because he was dead, seeing as he got the full brunt of the basilisk stare. How was that undone?
  • Perhaps they could transform the potion into some form of ectoplasm or some shit like that, that could be applied to a ghost. Or he just gradually got better, because he was, well, dead and couldn't be killed again, and he'd already refused to "move on".
  • Maybe they sprayed it on him.
  • I'm going with the spraying theory. I mean, how did any of the victims drink the potion when they were petrified, including their throat muscles?
  • Or maybe they increased the dosage for Nick's draught so it'll work. It was stated earlier in the book that ghosts require food to be rotten to be able to taste things at all. Increasing the dosage of the mandrake draught and then throwing it through him a few times would probably do the trick.
  • Not quite. The ghosts say they can "almost" taste the food, and Hermione speculates that they let it rot to give it a strong taste.
  • We know that not everything that's called a "potion" necessarily has to be drunk to work: Colin Creevy used a potion to develop his film so his photos would move. Possibly an anti-Petrification potion is applied externally, so spraying would work for Nick and rubbing it on, for everyone else.
  • Did you guys even read the novel/watch the movie? It's quickly, BUT VERY CLEARLY mentioned that Nick got a full blast from the Basilisk, and if he had been alive, he would have died, NOT been petrified. However, as Film!Harry says, "Nick's already dead, so he couldn't die again."
  • That Last one still doesn't explain how Nick managed to 'depetrify'. My personal hypothesis is that his Petrification was bound with that of Justin's. Hence when Justin was cured, so was Nick.
  • He didn't depetrify because he wasn't petrified in the first place. Petrification only happens to those who see the Basilisk through some sort of a filter. Essentially, nothing happened to Nick.
  • So he was floating a few inches above the floor, completely frozen, eyes staring, saying nothing, seeing nothing, responding to nothing, for months at a time, for kicks?
  • Maybe he was hoping that it would make the ghosts taking part in the headless hunt pity him enough to allow him to take part too. Or alternatively he wasn't petrified but needed time to gather his mojo to move. Or maybe he was petrified but it works differently for ghosts ... no idea, I have neither a ghost nor a basilisk so I can't test it.
  • Maybe he was acting like that because he thought he was petrified by the basilisk' sight and then he realize; oh, wait, I'm dead already, and got better. Supernatural Placebo Effect.
  • Why are people suggesting that Nearly-Headless Nick wasn't Petrified when it was explicitly stated he was? While most of the cases of Petrification happened to living people who saw the Basilisk indirectly, it never says that's the only way Petrification can occur or that ghosts can't experience it too. It's possible that since ghosts are already dead and can't die again, they are instead Petrified when they look at a Basilisk's gaze, as that is the closest thing to dying again for a ghost. As for how Nick was cured, as people haved mentioned, it's possible the Mandrake Restorative Draught is applied externally.
  • The potion may have been turned into a vapor and given to him that way. The ghosts are corporeal and there's obviously something there if someone can feel cold when they pass through them - so some part of him might have been able to absorb the potion.
  • The book makes mention of food at the Deathday Party that the ghosts can get a bit of a taste off if they pass through it, so they can absorb something at least.

The Chamber of Secrets

• Why exactly is the entrance to the Chamber placed in a girl's bathroom of all places? I know the basilisk would have needed pipes to get around, but surely there are more convenient rooms available.
  • Because you wouldn't think to look for it there.
  • Forget the girl's bathroom. It's been implied to be there since like...the 9th/10th century. The chamber of secrets' entrance is inside a sink. In the girl's bathroom. It may not be a modern looking bathroom if the film is to be believed, but did Hogwarts somehow have indoor plumbing and bathrooms in the 9th/10th century?! Indoor plumbing wasn't widely available until the last quarter of the 19th century. I'll describe my theory below.
  • The ancient Romans had potable water and ways to remove waste Maybe the wizards just decided to build that shit inside? I imagine the castle's upgraded itself since then, to modern toilets and sinks as opposed to latrines and dug sewers with stone pipes.
  • The original entrance was probably the one with those stone serpent statues, just outside the Chamber itself. Tom Riddle probably found it while exploring under the castle, then backtracked through the adjoining passages to find one that led into the castle's pipework. On finding a navigable route — one that, unfortunately, led to a girls' bathroom; still, he had to work with what was available — he then bewitched a sink to act as a second security-door, and carved the image of a snake into its tap as an activation-assist. All this would've been in the 1940s, so the modern plumbing was already in place when he did this.
  • Explained on Pottermore: The Chamber was originally accessed through a secret trapdoor, but in the eighteenth century when elaborate plumbing was installed, things were changed around a bit — thanks to a Slytherin descendant named Corvinus Gaunt, who took steps to ensure that the trapdoor and chamber would not be found and that the Chamber would be accessible through the plumbing, for the select few who knew how.
  • Heck, maybe Corvinus set up the entrance in the girls' bathroom because he intended his daughter to become the new Heir. Nobody ever said the Heir couldn't be a girl, after all.
  • The girl's bathroom could have been Salazar Slytherin's office a thousand years ago.

Lockhart's dumbest move?

• Why would Lockhart want to duel with Snape? Lockhart knows he's a fraud, why on earth would he demonstrate that in front of the students?
  • You presume that the initiative was his. I guess he was subtly goaded into doing it by DD and/or Snape (Oh, professor, in these dangerous times it'd be nice if our students could stand for themselves. You wouldn't mind sharing your peerless duelling expertise with them, would you? And Severus here would be glad to assist you.) In this case he wouldn't be able to refuse without it looking suspicious.
  • Lockhart also might have thought 'Oh, he's just the Potions professor, I can beat him easily'. Of course, this requires Lockhart to be an ignorant moron to have not heard of Snape's past as an Inner Circle Death Eater, but then again, Lockhart is an ignorant moron.
  • I didn't get any impression whatsoever that Snape being a senior Death Eater was common knowledge by Book 2 only that he was in league with Voldemort which could mean anything from being a hitman to being imperioused against his will to making Voldemort his dinner. Harry certainly wasn't sure about it until book 4 where we learn about the tattoos.
  • Harry doesn't even find out that the Death Eaters were called Death Eaters until book 4 (which is a Headscratchers all its own over on the Goblet of Fire page) — is that proof that the term 'Death Eater' wasn't public knowledge? Of course not. It’s only proof that (Watsonian) Harry's ignorance and lack of curiosity about the Wizarding World is a staggering thing / (Doylist) Rowling doesn't bother creating setting details until she feels like it, even if logically they should have showed up several books before. But since Dumbledore had to testify about Snape's being a spy in open court before the Wizengamot to get him off, Snape's past as a DE is in the public record. Maybe schoolkids who were in diapers at the time wouldn't have read about it, but Lockhart presumably had a Daily Prophet subscription during and immediately after the first war against Voldemort.
    • The movie conflates two courtroom scenes. The first one was Karkaroff naming names, but it was more of a private session. The second one was the public trial of Ludo Bagman, for which he was acquitted.
  • I have to disagree with you on this, and this may not be the place to have this argument, but here it goes. I have a deep suspicion that Harry doesn't do so much research because he grew up with the Dursleys, who likely punished him if he did better than Dudley in school. Harry is clearly very curious, in the summers he reads his school books and does his homework as soon as he can, but he has been "trained," so to speak, not to do well during the school year. Furthermore, the simplest explanation for Harry not knowing what a Death Eater is that people just don't talk about it. While it is probably well known to wizarding children and people like Hermione, the first war was a very traumatizing period and most people likely just didn't want to bring it up. And it's not like Professor Binns taught history properly, so I doubt it ever came up at Hogwarts.
  • IIRC McGonagal outright says in Book 5 that Harry has very good grades, he's not Hermione but is certainly well-versed, although his interests are probably much more narrow than Hermy's. Maybe not knowing about the Death Eaters (aside from the Doylist explanation that Rowling didn't indeed invent the term until that point) is because 1) it is rude for former DE who were pardoned, like Snape and Karkaroff, to bring it up, and 2) it is still a taboo subject.
  • He probably expected Snape to go easy on him, seeing as they were just demonstrating. Plus, the thing about a lie is, if you tell it often enough, you start believing it yourself. Perhaps Lockhart had fooled himself into thinking he really was a dueling master.
  • Believing Their Own Lies is a good explanation. Remember, this is the same Lockhart who volunteered to brew Mandrake Restorative Draught to cure Mrs. Norris and let loose a cageful of rampaging Cornish Pixies before trying to stop them using a spell that's implied to not even be real (Peskipiksi Pesternomi).
  • Snape is one of the most logical choice of an outsider: Dumbledore obviously is an insane choice. McGonagall is a transfiguration master and Flitwick is a charms master (And former dueler), so either could obviously defeat him. Binns, Filch, and Hagrid can't duel for various reasons. This leaves Vector, Trelawney, Snape, Sprout, Sinistra, Burbage, and Hooch. Personality-wise, Trelawney almost certainly wouldn't do it, and Sprout would probably also refuse. Hooch probably only cares about flying. We don't actually know enough about Vector, Sinistra, Burbage, and the unnamed Ancient Runes teacher to say anything about them, but Snape is certainly in the top five 'reasonable' choices an outsider might pick.
    • Is Dumbledore an insane choice though? Losing to the greatest wizard of the age is understandable and justifiable. Lockhart could even claim later that he did it out of immense respect for him.
  • Snape probably was the only one to volunteer. Lockhart's a pompous know-it-all and a glory hound, and we know how Snape feels about such people. He probably had to restrain himself from using something a bit nastier than Expelliarmus.

The Awful Truth told early

• When Harry asks Dumbledore about the similarities between himself and Tom Riddle, Dumbledore tells him that when the killing curse backfired on him, it gave Harry a huge chunk of his powers and possibly some of his personality. In other words, HE TELLS HIM THAT HE'S A HORCRUX. Not in those words, but that's basically what he's saying. Why does the whole Horcrux thing become such an Awful Truth when he basically told him, already?!
  • I guess he was building up to. You know, so he doesn't have to drop it all on Harry in one go and then add "oh, by the way, you also have to die."
  • There's a huge difference between "you got some talents from him when you defeated him as a baby" and "you've got a portion of his soul in you (and you have to die to extract it so he can die for good)".
  • Yeah, but what thing in a person is usually seen to host their personalities and, in the case of magic, their powers? THE SOUL. Seriously, how else would Voldie's personality and powers have transferred to him?
    • The same way the Marauders' personalities got into their Map?
  • That reasoning sounds a lot like what we might call Rose Potter Syndrome, i.e. "the ending is obvious because I read ahead." Seriously, when you first read that passage, did you immediately think "Aha, Voldie must have transferred his soul into Harry and Harry will eventually have to die in order to destroy him"? It's only obvious that Dumbledore is talking about Voldemort's soul if you have 20/20 hindsight.
  • Also, DD did not know it was Horcruxes he was dealing with until Harry retrieved Slughorn's memory in 6. He may have suspected, but we don't know for how long before Harry confirmed it for sure.
  • Except, of course, that he admits he was grooming the kid to die from the very start, so he totally knew, and besides, how many things allow people to survive the way V did? I doubt that many.
  • It was actually Snape who thought so, and while Dumbledore didn't deny it, he didn't confirm it either. There is no conceivable way for Dumbledore to have even suspected about Harry being a Horcrux until this point. Also, Dumbledore had no way of knowing the reason that it happened in the first place - Voldemort having created so many Horcruxes - until well after the events of the Chamber of Secrets.
  • Of course he couldn't say "Yes, Severus, I plan for him to die", but non-denial in this case pretty much equals to concession. As for the diary, if he realised what it was, and I think we can agree he did, then he had to realise that V would only allow it to be used that way if he had several to spare. From there it's a leap of logic, sure, but not an inconceivable one: "V made several Horcruxes -> his soul was unstable -> part of it might've latched to the kid <- kid has some kind of mental connection to V". So he had to at least consider this possibility.
  • He was grooming Harry to prepare him for a conflict in which he might die. The absolute requirement that Harry die wasn't proven until Dumbledore'd tracked down enough of Riddle's memories to be certain.
  • Word of God is that Dumbledore suspected Voldemort had made horcruxes even as far back as 1981 (remember that Dumbledore was always convinced that Voldemort would somehow return), confirmed his suspicion when he examined the diary at the end of book 2, and confirmed that Harry was also a horcrux during the "by essence divided?" scene from book 5. He probably had Harry retrieve Slughorn's untampered memory so as to keep up the charade that he didn't know about the Horcruxes. He could have just said, "I'm pretty sure the diary was a Horcrux. V probably made some more. Get Slughorn's memory so we can find out if he had a specific number in mind," but chose not to. The longer he keeps Harry in the dark, the less likely it is that he'll discover the truth. The answer he gave him in 2 was probably him testing out the idea of coming clean to Harry at some point in the future, which he later decided against.
  • I would love to know how even the OP would've known the truth about Horcruxes four books before they were ever even mentioned. Even in-universe, why would Harry assume that just because he had some of Voldemort's powers, he also had a piece of his soul inside him, let alone that he would have to die for Voldemort to be killed?
  • Dumbledore says to Harry in HBP that he suspects that Voldy makes a horcrux thanks to the diary and began to investigate if there's more of them when is clear that Voldy isn't very worried about losing the diary. Dumbledore knows that Voldy had more than one horcrux, he just needs Slughorn's memory to make sure how many horcruxes Voldy created.

Myrtle's Death

• After Myrtle died, why didn't anyone just ask her how she died then? Think about it: a girl has just been murdered and now her ghost is floating around — how do you not ask her what happened? Sure, she didn't know who the Heir was, but it would be clear enough from her testimony that Aragog wasn't the monster.
  • Yes, it also seems rather unlikely that the identity of the monster wasn't discovered until fifty years later by a 13-year-old girl. I know Hermione's smart, but surely it wouldn't have taken experts long to figure it out. This very significant part of the story was simply a MASSIVE plot hole. There's no other way around it.
  • Well, that part can be explained away easily enough. The teachers couldn't put Harry hearing a voice and being a Parselmouth together and realize the monster was a snake because only the trio knew about Harry hearing the voice. And fifty years ago, there was no Harry hearing voices in the castle.
  • I call foul. Dumbledore knew Tom Riddle was dangerous and had hurt people at the orphanage, and he knew he was a Parselmouth. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is a basic school text and has a detailed entry on basilisks, so asking Myrtle how she died and hearing that it involved hearing someone making hissing noises and then seeing a pair of yellow eyes should have been a pretty big giveaway.
  • Actually, Dumbledore probably did know. The whole deal with Voldemort's fear of Dumbledore was that Dumbledore saw through him the whole way through when no one else did. Problem was, nobody else would have suspected the perfect, Head Boy Tom Riddle who apparently caught the "Heir of Slytherin". Dumbledore may have tried to tell people, although he may not have known about the basilisk, but most likely no one listened to him.
  • Except, of course, Myrtle tells Harry in the book that no one ever asked her how she died. Stupidity aside, no one knew about the strange hissing noises or the yellow eyes which no one would know means a basilisk.
  • I always got the feeling they did ask her, or at least Dumbledore did, which is how he knew that Hagrid was to be trusted. It seemed pretty clear that it was enforced cover-up, with Hagrid taking the fall. Even Fudge alludes to that when he comes to take Hagrid away. Even he doesn't seem to believe that Hagrid was responsible, and he would have been very young when all that went down.
  • Basically this. Someone's been murdered (a little white girl, no less), and the public wants someone to go down. There isn't any real evidence, but out of fear, Hagrid is rushed into a conviction. Later, no-one really holds him to it, and that's why he's allowed to stay at Hogwarts in the first place.
    • Nobody said Myrtle was white.
    • Myrtle died in the 1940s, a time in which the non-white population of England was basically nothing. It is between 90-100% probability that she would be white.
  • Besides which, Myrtle was initially obsessed with punishing and tormenting those who had teased and bullied her. She might not have even been around for anyone to ask. Once she was finally put to task for haunting her former enemy, the issue of Hagrid's expulsion and guilt was already considered closed; why rock the boat?
    • Yes, in Goblet Myrtle mentions that she was haunting Olive Hornby for years and years, until eventually the Ministry of Magic got involved and (somehow) restricted her to haunting Hogwarts. If she hadn't returned until the case was 'closed', it would explain why no one asked.
  • And not to put too fine a point of things, but Myrtle was REALLY annoying and didn't do much besides cry and blubber to herself when she wasn't screaming at people. It probably wasn't until Harry and Hermione came along that anyone bothered to try talking to her and asking how she died. Hermione even said that most of the girls avoided using that bathroom because Myrtle was so disturbing/annoying. That doesn't explain why somebody on the staff at Hogwarts 50 years ago didn't try talking to her then and asking what happened. Perhaps she didn't manifest as a ghost until years after her death?
  • It can depend on how long it took for the staff to realize that Myrtle became a ghost. I mean, she haunts the girls' bathroom, not many teachers are going to be walking in there frequently. And with all the ghosts floating around Hogwarts, I doubt many students would find Myrtle's manifestation into a ghost worth reporting to a teacher, even if she is annoying and chases everyone away from the haunted bathroom with her moaning. Plus, it wasn't as though Myrtle was even aware of what was going on with Hagrid to have thought to leave the bathroom to try to defend him. Unless someone knew of her existence as a ghost at the time and even knew enough of the case to think to ask her to prove that Hagrid was innocent (or to learn of what the real creature was), it wasn't going to happen so shortly after the incident.
  • Would Myrtle have really helped, though? Her memory basically amounted to "I saw eyes, and then I was dead." That only leads to "Basilisk" if the characters are already thinking along those lines, as the Power Trio were. To an administrator 50 years prior, it would have just sounded like she was attacked by a giant spider (who have lots of eyes, obviously) and bitten.
  • Uhm, do the words "homicide investigation" sound completely idle in that wretched world or are all the Ministry investigators imbeciles? Otherwise, it's rather difficult to regard a version of a lethal spider bite seriously, when the victim has no spider bite-marks and no spider poison in her body!!! What, did Riddle manage to feign both?
  • That's exactly the conclusion they came to in the books without Myrtle's story. Why would her bite have changed it?
  • Oh yeah, the truth was uncovered — FIFTY YEARS later, and by a 13-year-old. If Myrtle had been asked about her death at the time, "big yellow eyes" would have been more than enough to determine that the creature was a basilisk. Apparently, though, no teacher past or present could be bothered to actually research the matter. Also, Myrtle manifested as a ghost almost immediately after death, and waited for Olive Hornby in the bathroom. So, anyone at the time would have known she was the victim, and asked her about it. This is just a MASSIVE plot hole.
  • How does big yellow eyes equate to "basilisk"? How would anyone know the color of basilisk eyes? Looking at eyes and then dying wasn't that big of a clue, but it would certainly point you in the right direction. The problem, of course, is you already have a story in place: Hagrid had a monster in the castle, and clearly that could have easily killed Myrtle. As stated, only Dumbledore possibly thought to ask Myrtle about it, and there's no definite time period in which she returned. Perhaps he had no way of overturning it at that point if he even figured out it was a basilisk (even then, if Tom was vague on the monster Hagrid had, the teachers might have suspected Hagrid had a basilisk). The wizarding world does like to settle on the easiest routes of investigation.
  • Re: 'how would anyone know the color of basilisk eyes', the answer is 'basilisk eyes don't change color after the basilisk is dead'.
  • I would argue that Myrtle probably didn't actually manifest as a ghost immediately. Otherwise, we'd have seen a whole lot of new ghosts at the Battle of Hogwarts.
  • Nick confirms that witches/wizards *can* choose to become a ghost, but not many choose to do so.
  • Riddle probably never even mentioned a spider since it escaped. He might have said that Hagrid had a creature of unknown origin and he'd found it and driven it off. Like Riddle said, everyone would believe him over Hagrid anyway.
  • Or Tom had the basilisk bite Myrtle's freshly-dead corpse to further implicate Hagrid. Its venom was so potent that it could've liquified her tissues around the bite-marks, the same as a spider's bite does to its prey. Tom could've also dripped some spider venom on the bite wounds as additional planted evidence: there's bound to have been plenty in the Potions lab.
  • Do we actually know that Myrtle's body was 'found', or if it was mostly intact if it was? It's entirely possible the way it was discovered she was dead is that blood was all over the floor, maybe a spare limb or two, and her stuff was nearby, and, sure enough, she was the person who was missing. There seems to be a lot of assumptions about 'spider bites' vs 'basilisks bites' here, when in reality both of them kill and then eat people, and them leaving a 'bitten' body behind would be kinda weird.
  • It doesn't matter in the slightest when you can realise the wet dream of every homicide investigator ever and actually interrogate the victim. And seing how Myrtle settled to torment her bullies, she couldn't have manifested too long afterwards.
  • It's kind of a running theme in the series that the Wizarding World likes easy explanations and that the Ministry doesn't value deep investigations. They had a dead girl whose story they didn't want spreading, a pre-discredited suspect who was a member of a persecuted minority, and the sterling prefect as an eyewitness. They'd have been more than happy to close the case on that alone.
  • It was mentioned in the book that Myrtle haunted one of her school tormentors for a while.
  • Ok, here's how it goes (this is all a guess, I could be wrong) Myrtle's crying in a stall when she hears a voice, she opens the stall to tell them to get lost, sees the basilisk eyes and dies. She rises from her body and probably takes a moment to go "oh my gosh, I'm dead". By the time she's gotten over the inital shock of having just died Tom Riddle and the Basilisk are long gone. She might have gone right away to haunt the bully or she hid elsewhere in the school to sulk; either way, she would have been too busy/depressed to be interviewed. By the time she was seen again someone probably would have told her that her killer had been caught and she would have been like "good, now leave me alone while I sob in the crapper". At the time of the murder the Ministry and current headmaster (Dumbledore was a teacher back then) have about two things on their mind: 1) get this over with asap so everyone can get on with their lives and 2) try to find an acceptable target to pin the murder to. Hagrid, being half-giant, would have been a candidate for #2. Tom Riddle probably went to the investigators with the info on Hagrid just as their search was getting desperate. Plus Riddle probably didn't mention Aragog because he saw Aragog escape (Riddle's motive was to stay at Hogwarts over the summer and they wouldn't let him if the monster was still on the loose). Hagrid, not wanting to turn Aragog in, wouldn't mention him. I guess that explains most of it.
  • There's one problem with this explanation. Ghosts are common in the HP universe. Everyone knows they exist, likely everyone knows you can choose to become one, everyone knows they retain the memory of their lives and, obviously, their deaths. Which inevitably means one thing: getting away with murder has to be impossible there, because there's always going to be a witness. The best possible witness, in fact. It makes absolutely no sense that noone would bother to question Myrtle, because questioning the victim's ghost should by all means be the standard practice of any homicide investigation.
    • Heck, for that matter, why didn't any of the other ghosts ask her about it? They're mature adult residents of Hogwarts, and several of them have actual responsibilities as House affiliates. Why didn't the Grey Lady check up on the poor Ravenclaw girl, help talk her through her trauma, and make sure Myrtle adjusted to her new ghostly status?
    • Wasn't the Grey Lady established as being very reserved and lonesome in Deathly Hallows? I don't think she'd get along very well with someone as...well, moany as Moaning Myrtle.
  • "Riddle probably didn't mention Aragog" - Uhm, then what did he tell them and what did he accuse Hagrid of? Personally murdering Myrtle? Obviously not. He had to mention the monster, that's the whole point. And then they would realise that "the monster was still on the loose" by the lack of its corpse. And obviously they would wring the details out of Hagrid. And then hunt down Aragog. And the school would still have to be closed until they do. Meaning that Tom's plan makes, surprise, no goddamn sense.
  • It's things like the (presumed) lack of a spider bite that create the impression that the Ministry of Magic is completely and utterly INCOMPETENT. At least in the muggle world, there'd have been an autopsy, revealing the C.O.D. to be a heart attack, or whatever it is the basilisk's gaze makes happen, rather than spider venom. A muggle investigator probably would have sold his own mother for the opportunity to interview the victim. Now let's say it together, everyone: MOM is INCOMPETENT. Now stop laughing, I just realized what I typed.
  • "Which inevitably means one thing: getting away with murder has to be impossible there, because there's always going to be a witness. The best possible witness, in fact. It makes absolutely no sense that noone would bother to question Myrtle, because questioning the victim's ghost should by all mean be the standard practice of any homicide investigation." As mentioned before, it is said in-universe that ghosts are not very common and that only very few wizards who died choose to come back, so no, there's not always a witness in every murder and no, it can't be a standard practice. And even in the few cases a wizard come back as a ghost... where do you find him/her? Has it ever been established that ghosts came out of their dead bodies or just manifested somewhere else? I mean, to ask the supernatural ghostly witness, you need to find him/her first.
  • Any reason why a murder victim wouldn't want to see their murderer brought to justice and prevent further murders, unless they're utterly devoid of sense of justice and empathy to others? And what do you mean "Where to find them"? Ghosts are sentient. If anyone was interested, I think they'd find a way.
  • Myrtle died as a weepy, picked-on adolescent girl, and remained so permanently as a ghost. Someone that prone to histrionic displays of misery would be exactly the sort to say "Nobody ever asked me how I died" - conveniently discounting all the adults who'd questioned her at the time - same as she might've said "Nobody ever liked me!" in life, conveniently neglecting to mention that her family liked her. People wallowing in their own misery tend to be in denial about things that might cheer or comfort them.
  • Uhm, so was she questioned or not? If yes, then how could the Chamber not have been found, Riddle exposed and Hagrid acquitted?
  • There are a lot of speculations about this question. Did Myrtle manifest as a ghost immediately after her death or did she appear after a while once the investigation was over? If she manifested immediately, was she able to even be intelligible? Myrtle was already hard to understand when she was alive and was always crying, and as a ghost, she is very incoherent. If she was intelligible at the time, did she say something useful? All she could say is that she’d seen a monster before she died, or maybe just that she’d seen two big eyes. The authorities did seem to know that some sort of creature caused the death as Hagrid was blamed, so if Myrtle did talk to the investigators, all the information she gave amounted to "a monster did it", but it is still an speculation because we don’t even know if she was floating around near her dead body when they arrived or if she manifested long after.
  • If Myrtle was interviewed, her story was that she heard a boy in the bathroom and then saw a pair of eyes. She doesn't remember the rest. Harry and Ron know she was killed instantly by the Basilisk, because they've got all the clues already - Myrtle's story just confirmed it. What's able to tell them it's a Basilisk is that Harry can understand it when no one else can (he's a Parselmouth, meaning it's a snake) and he's heard it moving around in the pipes. Thinking at it objectively, if Myrtle just says she saw eyes, then how do they know she wasn't stunned first before she was killed? What if the boy she heard used the Avada Kedavra curse (she might remember green light in that case but she could have been stunned first and then AK'd)?

Owning a wand

• Now that I think of it. Since the case was clarified and Hagrid was proven innocent, why didn't they lift the ban for him to own a wand? Now that I think of it further, how come Hagrid could still conjure pretty normally (fire, water, pig tail for Dudley, boat propelling) with only the splinters of his wand hidden in his umbrella, but Harry couldn't conjure at all after his wand had snapped in DH, and Ron's wand started backfiring having only cracked? Now that I think of it even further, how did Hagrid get hold of his broken wand in the first place? What, did the Ministry officials simply gave it to him as a keepsake after they'd broken it? Pretty unlikely, especially since, as we find out, even the splinters can be used for conjuration.
  • Insufficient training, and he's just a half-giant, no need to make reparations for a false accusation decades and decades ago. It's not like there's a Wizard Academics Returning to Their Studies course.
  • While he wasn't guilty of freeing the monster from the Chamber of Secrets, he was still guilty of breaking Wizarding law by hatching an acromantula that went on to populate a decent fraction of the Forbidden Forest. That alone is probably worth a wand snapping.
  • That doesn't answer the questions of how did he get the splinters back and how was he still able to cast spells when Harry and Ron couldn't when their wands snapped.
  • He did have a very large wand. It might have been an extra point of driving the insult home of tossing the splinters of his wand to him. With enough of the pieces, he did somehow fashion his umbrella, but even he says it doesn't work properly all the time (wanting to turn Dudley into a pig for example), so it's not hard to believe that it sometimes works like Ron's broken wand did.
  • I recently came to the conclusion that Dumbledore fixed the wand for Hagrid, using the Elder Wand, the way Harry did in book 7. In this case, Hagrid being not very good at magic and having only studied up 'til his third year, and doing magic sporadically when he thought he could get away with it after that, explains things like Dudley's pigtail. After all, turning him into a pig would have been a difficult spell, well beyond third-year level.
    • It may be possible that Dumbledore arranged tutoring for Hagrid even before he was officially proved innocent. It would explain most of the headscratchers here that involve him, while also adding to Hagrid’s perception of "Great man, Dumbledore".
  • In Philosopher's Stone, Hagrid openly tells Olivander that he still has the pieces of his snapped wand, and though he hurries to deny that he uses them, I doubt even Hagrid would openly admit to owning the pieces of his old wand if that was illegal. Since we know that broken wands are, on the whole, pretty useless and likely to backfire, it's possible that the Ministry simply let Hagrid keep the pieces (possibly viewing it as their version of Throw the Dog a Bone) because he wouldn't be able to use it properly. The above troper might have a point that Dumbledore helped out when it came to fixing the wand or at least encasing it in the umbrella. Dumbledore, after all, knew that Hagrid was innocent, and probably thought that Hagrid should at least be able to do magic in emergency situations.
  • Don't forget that this is the same Ministry of Magic that arrested Stan Shunpike so that they would look like they were capturing Death Eaters. When in doubt, the Ministry prefers to look like they're doing something, rather than admit they're flummoxed. Wizarding society in general seems to be very conservative (they still use quill pens, for crying out loud), and Harry points out that Scrimgeour is guilty of the same mistakes that Fudge made. It's not hard to imagine that this has been their M.O. since time immemorial.
  • Also, Ron is able to use his broken wand for a whole year. It doesn't work properly, but it does do magic. Most likely the difference is that Ron and Hagrid's wands were broken without the use of magic, but Harry's was broken by a cutting spell and so was probably much more damaged, magically, than the other two.
  • Also to some degree the ban over Hagrid was lifted as he is allow to teach in later books, I always felt like him be named a teacher and the Ministry allowing it was basically the "We are sorry for the missunderstanding" from the govenrment. And yes, he does not teach a magical class but I guess nor even the Ministry is that stupid not to assume he would use magic in emergency situations while teaching such a dangerous class. On the issue of why his umbrella works and works better than Ron's broken wand, well besides the possibility of Dumbledore's help fixing it, unlike Ron he has many decades of using the umbrella and that probably gave him some better control over it. And for why he's not given a new fully funcional wand, well, maybe he doesn't really need it as his umbrella works fine for the level of magic he knows (after all he does not end high school).
  • You guys are all assuming that Hagrid's wand was snapped purely because he was an expelled half-giant. Considering the Weasley twins, who were basically dropouts, were allowed to keep their wands and Newt Scamander (who was expelled due to circumstances similar to Hagrid's) got to keep his, it's safe to say that you can keep your wand if you leave school or are expelled, so long as you're already of age to use magic outside of school. Hagrid was only expelled in his second or third year, from what I recall, and the Trace breaks at the start of the seventh, meaning his wand was probably snapped because he wasn't old enough to use it.
  • Wasn't Hagrid mostly expelled because he brought a dangerous dark creature into the castle? I mean, bringing a Giant Spider that's poisonous and vicious into a school is a valid reason to expel someone.

Hiring Lockhart

• Why on earth did Hogwarts hire Lockhart? Yes, he's a celebrity, but surely the most superficial interview would have exposed him as an untalented waste of space who hadn't a clue what he was doing.
• The inclusion of clearly incompetent teachers like Lockhart (and Hagrid) was JKR's Take That! at the British educational system, where, apparently, Lockharts and Hagrids are a dime a dozen.
  • Based on my experience with the educational systems of Peru and America, I would say teachers like Lockhart and Hagrid are a dime a dozen everywhere.
  • Maybe in public schools, but keep in mind that Hogwarts is basically the wizarding elementary school equivalent of Oxford. You don't see many Hagrids and Lockharts at exclusive institutions like Oxford.
    • "Public School" in the UK means nothing like what you think it does
  • He was apparently the only one who would take the cursed job of Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. Dumbledore also doesn't seem to care much for the education at Hogwarts, beyond making sure every class has a teacher, being much more concerned with ensuring student safety and dealing with the day-to-day affairs in the school.
  • As much was said in the book:
    Hermione: Professor Dumbledore obviously thought he was the best man for the job—
    Hagrid: He was the only man for the job. An' I mean the on' one.
  • Aye, he then goes on to comment how people are starting to think the job is jinxed and are wary of taking it. But you know, what makes this a Headscratcher to me is that Dumbledore is so indifferent to the quality of education at Hogwarts and/or so dogmatic in his adherence to traditional educational techniques and structures that he decides to hire Lockhart instead of stopping to think about a better way to deal with the situation. Hermione and Ron, when helping Harry prepare for the third task, demonstrated that a trio of motivated students can make significant educational gains in the practical Defence Against the Dark Arts subject by making use of the resources available to them (empty classrooms, free time, and a library) with no need for a teacher or traditionally structured class. Harry then goes on to show that an experienced and talented student can be a much better teacher than an unqualified adult when he spends the better part of the year instructing his peers in the ways of combat as the leader of Dumbledore's Army, and he does it for free. Hell, even that lame-ass dueling club Lockhart and Snape set up was probably a better way to learn Defence Against the Dark Arts than Lockhart's stupid class; at least students had the chance to spar with each other in a relatively safe environment. Dumbledore should have realized that hiring Lockhart would be a waste of resources and would do more harm than good and should have disbanded the class for the year and should have hired an older student who got Outstanding on his OWL on the subject to give seminars and instructions when possible (kind of like a T.A.), or he should have started his own dueling club at the beginning of the year to replace the class, or he should have left the class empty and let dedicated students use the free time to study the subject by themselves. As things stand, Dumbledore is wasting the school's money on an incompetent teacher and forcing students to lose several hours of their time per week listening to a blowhard who, by the way, forces them to buy his entire collection of works for the year (quite a financial burden on poor people like the Weasleys). The similarities with Real Life schools are depressing, to say the least.
  • It is also unlikely that a Board of Governors, being bureocrats, would accept such a novel idea.
  • "Hell, even that lame-ass dueling club Lockhart and Snape set up..." Snape had nothing to do with setting it up; it was all Lockhart's idea. Personally, I think he only agreed to "duel" Lockhart so that he could (attempt, at least) to bring him down a peg. One of Snape's many dick moves? Yeah, but who's complaining?
  • But in that case, there's a danger of the curse falling upon the T.A. instead, and in any case, it's not initially obvious that Lockhart is as bad as he turns out to be. He's an arrogant blowhard, but as far as most people are aware, he's also brave and quite skilled.
  • As demonstrated by the Trelawney prophecy incident, Dumbledore personally interviews his prospective teachers and assesses their abilities. Therefore, he should have been quite aware that Lockhart was incompetent at what his job required of him.
  • The only problem with Lockhart being the only man for the job, as Hagrid says, is that we know from the first book that Snape has been pushing to become the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher for a while now. And even ignoring what we find out after the fact regarding Snape being a Death Eater double-agent and his own dark past, Snape seems a lot more qualified to be teaching the course than Lockhart. The scene with the dueling club pretty much proves that. Hell, given what Dumbledore suspects is coming, putting someone like Snape in charge of training the next generation of wizards in fighting Dark Arts would seem like a smart idea.
  • Dumbledore knew the job was jinxed, and he didn't want to lose his double agent. Losing Lockhart? Pfft, who cares?
  • The problem other than Snape's checkered past would be finding a replacement Potions professor and really, do you think Dumbledore could have gotten a 12 year old Harry to get Slughorn to come teach like he did in book 6?
  • At that point, Voldemort hadn't come back yet, so it might have been easier to recruit Slughorn since he wouldn't have to worry about antagonizing the Death Eaters by working for Dumbledore (on the other hand, it might have also been harder, since he wouldn't have been tempted by the thought of the powerful protection Hogwarts and Dumbledore offered). Regardless, the Potions replacement would not have had to be Horace - it could have been any number of decent potion makers around. Without the fear of the curse weighing on their shoulders, I am sure a lot more people would like the chance to teach at the internationally famous Hogwarts school. By letting Snape take the DADA post, Dumbledore would have reduced the problem of finding a replacement DADA teacher to the much easier problem of finding a suitable Potions teacher.
  • However, with the above notion, there's still the problem of the curse on the DADA position. I do believe Dumbledore was still using Snape, and therefore, wouldn't want to take the chance of the suspected curse causing him some kind of harm.
  • In Snape's defense, it really wasn't a curse to him. After all he killed Dumbledore without any harm happening to himself, so he was pretty safe himself. The worst would have been that Snape would have just left, much like Lupin did, but he probably would have still been of some use, considering Voldemort hadn't been resurrected yet. The only real significance would be that Harry would hate DADA and begin to excel in Potions instead. Besides, with Snape's past with the Dark Arts, that'd make him a perfect candidate to teach the class to defend themselves against it. Like the saying goes, "to catch a thief, you must think like a thief".
  • Not really a curse to him? He kills the only person who trusts him and knows him to be good, and condemns himself to a year of hatred from his former colleagues and the task of protecting children from sadistic Death Eaters while said children are running a resistance movement! If Nagini hadn't killed him, he might well have had some sort of breakdown once everything was over.
  • That may have been exactly what Dumbledore was afraid of. According to the Harry Potter Wiki: "When J. K. Rowling was asked for the reason Dumbledore would not give Severus Snape the Defence Against the Dark Arts job, the author responded that Dumbledore believed that teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts would bring out Snape's worst side, though Dumbledore finally relented in Harry's sixth year."
  • Not so much relented as had no other choice. After the debacle that was Umbridge the year before and knowing that he was going to die roughly within a year, he *had* to make sure Harry had a competent teacher that last year. He wanted to cram as much knowledge into Harry as possible, both standard education and Horcrux related, before he died.
  • There's also politics to consider; the last thing Dumbledore needs is Cornelius Fudge marching into his office demanding to know why a Death Eater is teaching a Dark Arts class at his school. It's technically Defence Against the Dark Arts, but those are the little details that get lost in political wars.
  • Plenty of "ex"-Death Eaters work in the Ministry, so why wouldn't Fudge trust one to teach DADA?
    • Those Death Eaters are rich, influential, high-class, and generally have Fudge eating out of their hands thanks to the first three attributes; Snape has none of those advantages.
  • Forget Snape: If Dumbledore was that desperate for a competent DADA instructor, why didn't he roll up his sleeves and try teaching the course himself? Surely the wizard who brought down the previous Dark Lord and keeps the current one at bay can teach more than just Transfiguration, and he could go right back to being Headmaster when the curse bumps him out of the job. It can't be that he'd lack the time to do both jobs, because McGonagall repeatedly takes charge in Dumbledore's absence without cutting back on her teaching duties.
  • Because curses are not nice, manageable things, and that "bump" could've been extremely unpleasant or even lethal.
  • I read quite a thorough study that deconstructs the HP books and explains most of the seeming inconsistencies as parts of Dumbledore's grand scheme:the whole study is named "The Big Game of Professor Dumbledore" in order to prepare Harry for his role in the upcoming war. Thus, hiring Lockhart was a mean to ward Harry off vainglory (which could be provoked by the universal adoration) with a demonstrative example.
  • Where did you read this study? It sounds interesting, but when I tried entering The Big Game of Professor Dumbledore in Google, I couldn't find it.
  • It's in Russian.[1]
  • Which would mean Dumbledore screwed up his entire school's chance of learning about a subject for a year, including his 5th and 7th year students who have to take life-determining exams, in order to teach his chosen one an Aesop. Isn't he the greatest?
  • Again, Lockhart was the only person who applied for the job, and even before then, Dumbledore was already scraping the bottom of the barrel to fill the position, as no one who took the teaching post had lasted for more than a year since at least 1970. Remus, Moody, and Snape may have been decent candidates later on, but they were Dumbledore's friends and allies whom he'd be understandably reluctant to endanger by recruiting them for a cursed job.
  • Lockhart is a massive fraud, but chances are he at least has picked up on a few things from sheer osmosis, given the fact that his claimed experiences would have him being scrutinized and generally rubbing shoulders with the elite of the magical community's fighters, so he probably has enough knowledge to credibly teach a class (after all, lectures and celebrity teaching courses are probably a good source of income for him). It's not a GREAT policy for the school, but it's not one that might completely screw everything up irreparably.
  • As for screwing up the entire school's chances of learning about a subject, he also has to provide the one person the prophecy says will be able to stop Voldy with the best education possible or the rest of the students' lives have little to no value. I don't think that Dumbledore is so much sacrificing all for the one as much as trying to get as much good as possible out of what will become a very bad situation. Harry is most important because through Harry, the rest get saved.
  • So "the best education" for Harry means denying him a year's worth of meaningful, productive Defense lessons? When Dumbledore knows Voldemort's shown his face again (har har) and that his return is no longer a matter of doubt? All in the name of a pat moral about the dangers of egotism? Impossible. That's absurd even from a Harrycentric point of view, without taking the rest of the school into account. Harry needed the Defense knowledge more. Look, Dumbledore even mentions during the Snape flashbacks in DH that other teachers have described Harry as "modest". I can't believe Harry's ego was really so big a concern for Dumbledore that he couldn't have just taken the kid aside one day and said "Hey, listen, H.P., make sure not to let the whole Boy Who Lived thing go to your head, huh?".
  • This is probably the reason, but it's still not something a good headmaster should do. Leaders of vigilante counterterrorism organizations shouldn't be in charge of the only school in the country.
  • What? How does being a leader of an organization in war time exclude you from being headmaster of a school?
  • Because it leads to conflicts of interests. If you are the headmaster in the only school in the country and also the leader of a counterterrorism unit, it's only a matter of time before you do something like plant a listening device on the son of a suspected guerrilla, or start indoctrinating your pupils against the ideology preached by the prominent terrorist organization of the time, or something like that.
  • I'm not so sure be leader of a counterterrorism unit precludes you from running a school, but I understand what you're saying; throughout the series, Dumbledore's order of the phoenix activities ended up clashing with his responsibilities as Headmaster on multiple occasions, and almost every time he gave less priority to the students' education, (hiring Trelawney, for example). Dumbledore may be powerful, generally good, and on more than one occasion wise, but I don't think he can handle managing both lives. Just imagine if, when whispers of Voldemort started floating around again, Dumbledore stepped down as Headmaster to focus all his efforts on the order of the phoenix and national defense, and Professor McGonagall took over as Headmistress. (Fanfic, anyone?)
  • Dumbledore wouldn't bug any of the kids, because he believes in second- and third- and fifteenth-chances for everyone. This might be considered a failing by some, but it is understandable after you find out about his relationship with Grindelwald.
  • We also don't exactly hear about a whole wave of OWL and NEWT students failing en masse, or even really complaining about Lockhart beyond 'he likes the sound of his own voice quite a bit.' And he teaches from his books, which despite putting himself into the heroic role, are based upon the exploits of talented witches and wizards who genuinely could do the things they said they could. It's entirely possible that he was an adequate (if not fantastic) teacher.
  • Except we saw that he the exact opposite. He was an inadequate teacher; all he did was talk about himself and give the kids quizzes about his fair color and favorite conditioner.
  • We saw one introductory "test" that was like that, which he probably threw together at the last minute when he realized that, oh crap, he's supposed to be teaching in the morning, isn't he? No reason to assume they were all as frivolous as that; even Lockhart would've surely run out of questions to ask about himself, eventually.
  • With regards to the failing exams: the way grades are calculated for A-levels/GCSE's (which OW Ls and NEW Ts are pretty much copies of), around the same number of people would pass as usual, they'd just do so while knowing less. So they'd be screwed if they had to actually use the stuff in the future, but their actual grades would be fine.

• God knows if anyone's gonna read this, since this article is already so long, but lemme offer up a suggestion I didn't see in here. Remember that while Dumbledore is in charge of hiring, there's also a Board of Governors he has to answer too. The Board see the school from an outsider's perspective, and don't see problems like hiring incompetent teachers the same way Dumbledore would. They have the power to fire Dumbledore, so they must have some kind of policy-making power. Dumbledore might have had a ton of ideas for alternate methods of teaching students DADA, but the Governors were like "No, we want a traditional teacher. Get someone, we don't care who."
  • Perhaps the Board of Governors got a list of candidates from Dumbledore, but shot them all down in favor of Lockhart.
  • "Let's see...Mad-Eye Moody?! He's insane! And what's this..a fucking werewolf?! Dumbledore, are you out of your mind?!?! Hey, why don't we get that awesome wizard who's always defeating dark creatures and see if he'd be interested. What's his name? Lockhart, that's it!"
  • Or maybe Dumbledore had already tried every method he could think of to beg, bribe, or con people into taking the job, well before Harry began his studies. The DADA position's been cursed for a very long time; Lockhart may have been hired simply because there's literally nobody left who hasn't caught wise to the jinx. What's Dumbledore supposed to do, force people to teach for him?
  • Well from Pottermore it appears that Albus knew some of these 'monster-hunters' that Lockhart charmed. He put Lockhart into DADA position (by bribing him with HP) to 'expose' him as a fraud. The teachers who remembered him at the school did ask Albus what kids could learn from an arrogant person (He's was arrogant as a kid too. I mean come on he imagined a entrance to his school like what Harry experienced some years later). Albus said "They can learn what to be and what not to be". From Pottermore's site.
    Albus Dumbledore, the Headmaster during Lockhart's time, happened to have known two of the wizards whose memories Lockhart erased, and had a shrewd and accurate idea what was happening. He correctly believed that dragging Lockhart into a normal, school atmosphere would reveal his fradulence and, a vacancy in Defence Against the Dark Arts having opened up in June 1992, tracked down the author and, slyly hinting that teaching Harry Potter, who was a second-year student there at the time, would boost Lockhart's popularity beyond anything else, convinced Lockhart to return to Hogwarts (something Lockhart had not been too keen to do, as many of his teachers were still there and might have remembered his foolishness and ineptitude).
    When Lockhart had erased the memories of two wizards, Dumbledore eventually found out and decided to track him down and make him pay for his crimes. Dumbledore offered Lockhart a position as the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, under the correct belief that school is the best location to expose the fraud for what he is. Lockhart was reluctant at first, as he was aware that his former educators remain vigilant of his incompetence, but was instantly swayed when Dumbledore mentioned Harry Potter's fame, which Lockhart would believe as a boost to his own.[1] Whether the other professors knew of Dumbledore's ploy against Lockhart is unknown, but according to Hagrid, the main reason for Lockhart's appointment was that he was the only applicant for the cursed position.
  • From the previous Headscratcher on this topic: "Also, if we accept this as true then it makes Dumbledore look even worse. He knowingly hired an incompetent fraud and paid him? He knowingly allowed a man who'd proven willing to abuse memory charms to supervise schoolchildren? Why did you feel this kind of thing was necessary to 'expose him'? You're Albus frigging Dumbledore, who among your encyclopedic list of honors and qualifications are also acknowledged as Wizarding Britain's greatest expert in mind magic. You're capable of undoing memory charms cast by Tom Riddle himself (as laid out explicitly in backstory in book 6, re: Morfin Gaunt). If you know some of the monster hunters that Lockhart charmed, why not uncharm them (which would be only the human thing to do anyway, to help medically treat people who have been mind raped) and then they can press charges vs. Lockhart? Or hey, why not just press charges yourself? You're only Chief Warlock of the frigging Wizengamot, and it isn't until several years later and the return of Voldemort that your political influence starts to wane. Instead you waste everyone's time, a year of the students' educations, and the money gone to pay Lockhart's salary — as well as almost getting Ginny Weasley killed by Lockhart's negligence — as a roundabout way of doing something you could have done any number of other quicker, safer, and less wasteful ways. Dear Merlin, Dumbledore, do you ever miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity?"
  • Yeah, Deathofthe Author!
  • Dumbledore most likely simply killed two birds with one stone. He had already exhausted every way to find a teacher but without sucess as he in this tropers eyes wouldn't have employed Lockhardt otherwise. And as he only had the useless one left he decided to punish Lockhard for what he had done and hoped that Lockhardt would know at least a bit about what he pretended to do.

Identity Theft

• The thing that bugs me about Lockhart is that it's directly implied that all the methods in his books (the werewolf, the tea-strainer incident, etc.) were all legitimate actions albeit performed by other people. What.
  • Yes, this bothered me too. If the Homorphus Charm was a real thing someone used to turn a werewolf into a human, why wasn't it used on Lupin/Greyback/etc? Wild mass guess: Maybe only one wizard in history ever knew how to do it, and when Lockhart modified their memory, the art of de-werewolfing was lost.
  • The Charm probably only turns a werewolf back into human form for that particular transformation, not permanently. It's the same deal as the potions Lupin had been taking, a suppressor rather than a cure. If Lockhart implied the fix would last, that was just him showing his ignorance.
    • In practical terms though, it would really be no different from having to drink a potion before every full moon. If such a charm had been available in 1970s, there would have been no need for the whole Shrieking Shack arrangement for Lupin.
  • Could be that, as well as a combination of other factors (the one about Fudge demanding to know why a former Death Eater is teaching a Dark Arts class is an excellent suggestion), Dumbledore was already seeing the hammer of the Ministry coming down on him. Sure, they didn't install Umbridge until they were getting nervous about Dumbledore, but that doesn't mean they weren't already peering over his shoulder, making sure he wasn't attempting any wild changes in the school curriculum. If he had tried doing something innovative, it could well be that the Ministry would say "No, sorry, Dumbledore, that simply won't do," and forced him to hire Lockhart anyway.
  • WMG: Dumbledore thought the Ministry would be against Lockhart, so then he would be able to install someone else (Lupin, Moody or Snape or someone else with not much public approval but actual skills) as "not quite as good replacement, but you leave me no choice". He just didn't predict the Ministry actually liking the obviously incompetent Blabbermouth.
  • Hold on a second: who's to say DD didn't try to get someone else for the job but was forced to bow to the pressure of the Ministry because they thought Lockhart better than anyone else?
  • There's a theory that the stuff Lockhart were told... like the "Pixie" charm he tried... was misinformation given to him by other wizards.
  • It could also have been an Animagus that was terrorizing the people as if he was a werewolf for kicks. The homorphus charm is the one used to force animagi back to human form, I think, so this would make sense. A real wolf and a werewolf look different, but if someone has never come across a real werewolf before they may not realize this and believe that this wolf, acting like a werewolf, was the real thing.

Just Kill Him Already

• Why doesn't Riddle try to kill Harry outright? I mean, it'd been shown that at this age, Riddle was quite capable of mastering Avada Kedavra. Why did he not simply finish Harry off that way — you know, after he was done monologuing? Yes, I know the snake was hungry and Riddle felt more compassion towards snakes than perhaps any other living creature, but still, Voldemort's compassion is rather limited... Not to mention the way he freaks out when his plan goes awry — the guy, memory or not, had Harry's wand: why didn't he just finish it then and forget about the damn snake?
  • Is it ever even stated that Memory/Horcrux riddle can use magic until he has fully absorbed Ginny? I can't remember a single moment where he does any magic using Harry's wand. And even if he could, he probably didn't have true control over the wand to begin with, as he just picked it up off the ground, not actually defeating Harry to get it.
  • He spelled his name and rearranged the letters to form "I am Lord Voldemort". Obviously not high level magic, which is why it's stated below that he might not be able to do higher level magic. Harry's wand is also very similar to his own wand, and compatible enough since he did steal it from Harry.
  • That "true control" thing only seems to be a property of the Elder Wand.
  • No, the "true control" thing is a property of all wands, as explicitly stated and shown in Deathly Hallows. The Elder Wand is actually the most fickle wand, that most readily changes masters at the drop of a hat, of all.
  • I'd always thought he wasn't complete enough to use higher level magic at that point; after all, he hasn't completely drained Ginny, and we know the Unforgivables take a bit more magic than the others. Rather than risking complications with Avada Kedavra, he takes the safer route by having a rather large basilisk that can kill Harry in multiple ways do it for him. Harry is, of course, unarmed and completely defenseless save for a phoenix and the Sorting Hat, so there was no rush, and if the basilisk failed, by that point, he would probably be solid enough to finish Harry off. It was a win-win, except he was caught off-guard when Harry stabbed the diary. Voldemort has always been known to have a flair for enjoying his enemy's fear and weakness, so it's not too much of a surprise he chose this route.
  • Still, he probably could've just Wingardium leviosa'd (or something) Harry to a great height (the Chamber is shown to have a pretty high ceiling in the movies at least, can't recall the exact description from the books), dropped him, at which point Harry would be pretty badly injured, and the snake could just eat him. It's cruel, bit humiliating maybe, and gets the job done. Or Tom could've just restrained Harry and either had the snake eat him or waited until he had finished draining Ginny. I assume that he was probably capable of that level of magic by this point. Plenty of ways to kill someone without Avada Kedavra, as I'm sure someone of Tom Riddle's supposed intellect could discern.
  • Remember, Neville got thrown down three stories when he was only a kid, and he bounced. I assume it's quite hard to kill wizards except with fancy spells.
  • But that's a whole different Headscratcher... Let's just assume that even if Tom can't throw him down a flight of stairs to finish him off, he can stab him in the chest, drown him, etc.
  • What series have you been reading? Voldemort can't just kill people like Harry. Oh no, he has to make a huge show out of it.
  • Tom Riddle also knows what happened the last time Voldemort tried to just kill Harry and how his future self was all but killed. Maybe Power of Love, but who knows what would happen if he tried the spell again.
  • Then what was stopping Riddle from using Pertrificus Totalus? If Hermione can use that spell when she was just a first year, then it shouldn't require so much magic that Tom Riddle's memory couldn't use it. That way, with his sadistic nature, he could order the Basilisk to kill Harry slowly while Harry was frozen and unable to move or defend himself. It'd be satisfying because Harry would still have enough control of his consciousness to feel pain AND he'd be rid of Harry once and for all without allowing a chance for him to use a Deus ex Machina.
  • Why would he think he had to? His thought process was probably something like, "Hey, this kid is unarmed, I have his wand, and I have a huge fucking snake. How could this possibly go wrong?" Think of it this way: you have a stun gun and you have a bunch of well-trained, ferocious attack dogs that have killed or injured everyone you've ever sent them up against in the past. Are you going to bother running up to this guy to shock him, or are you going to say, "Chopper, sic balls?"
  • I thought Riddle was hedging his bets. Memory!Riddle is actually an imprint of a 17(?) year old pre-Dark-Lord who has no idea of the circumstances of his own death or what's happened in the magical world in the past 50 years. All he knows is what Harry's 11-year old fangirl told him: Voldemort tried to kill a baby, but the baby killed him back. In other words, Riddle's more experienced, better trained, better prepared, and fully alive future self was destroyed in an unexplained and mysterious way. If Harry did have some kind of innate death-reflecting characteristic, it would be better to test it out on the snake.
  • Which is why Riddle asked Harry how he survived. Harry told him it was The Power of Love and then Riddle basically said "I see, so there's nothing special about you after all. Now you die!"
  • Is there any indication that Riddle could use any proper magic at all at that point? The locket was able to make illusions without any access to a wand in DH. It's reasonable to assume that the diary could do the same. The wand waving might have just been for effect.
  • There is. After Fawkes saved Harry's life from the basilisk venom, Riddle realized what the phoenix was doing and casted spells at it, forcing it to fly off.
  • Why are people assuming Riddle is a moron? He knows Harry survived a killing curse that rebounded and killed Voldemort. It would be epically stupid for him to attempt to kill Harry with magic unless he understands exactly what the rules are. Luckily, he has a giant snake that he controls without any magic at all. He is thinking 'Hmm, if strange and mysterious old magic means I can't kill him with my magic, and attempting to do so almost killed me, so maybe I'll just forgo all the magic, and kill him with my death-gaze snake instead.'. This is the opposite of a Headscratcher. It's the only time Voldemort behaves sanely towards Harry!
  • Maybe Tom legitimately didn't WANT to kill Harry personally. Think about his long term plans: he kills Ginny and Harry, regains his physical form, and then... presumedly returns to his previous plans of world domination, which if book 5 is anything to go off of, Voldemort is willing to remain low-key for a while in order to gather support and power. If it looked like Harry was killed by the same monster that killed Myrtle 50 years ago, it's tantamount to labelling it 'natural causes'. He AK's him, or uses magic on him, it's not so natural, and might turn up in investigation. Perhaps he's already trying to hide the evidence of his return?
  • I'm not so sure about that - at no other point has Voldemort ever hesitated to throw an AK or other Unforgivable at Harry.
  • Which is another reason why the story should've ended with "Prisoner", before it went and ruined Voldemort forefer, by making him a complete idiot.
  • As pointed out somewhere else, Horcrux creation might have intelligence-related side effects, and Volemort created his last Horcrux right at beginning of the Goblet of Fire.
  • I would just like to point out that everyone referring to the Diary Riddle as a memory is forgetting that this was just the way it was explained to everyone else. Diary Riddle is not a memory, he is a Horcrux.
  • He's more than a Horcrux, considering that none of the others behaved that way. A Horcrux by itself might make people jerkasses, but it alone wouldn't write to them or fully possess them. It's an enchanted Horcrux, a Horcrux plus some sort of spell.
  • Could be, though it seems just as likely that the locket Horcrux was trying to do the same to Harry, Ron, and Hermione in DH. It obviously couldn't get them to spill their darkest secrets the way a diary could, so it was doing it its own way.
  • I suspect Voldemort put different, special spells on each Horcrux that was out of his sight. We had one that had a deathly curse on it, one that wouldn't open until spoken to in Parseltongue, and one that had memories of how to open the Chamber of Secrets. We don't know about the others, but didn't see them for long, and no one did the obvious by drinking out of the cup (poison?) or wearing the diadem (outright mind control?).
  • The diary was years older than any of the other Horcruxes (except maybe the ring) and Voldemort charmed it specifically to have a copy of himself to lead another heir to the chamber. I'm not sure why Riddle didn't try to kill Harry directly, but I know why he couldn't: Riddle is still Voldemort and so Harry still has protection from his attacks. Avada Kedavra would have bounced off him and Petrificus Totalus wouldn't have lasted (see Neville in DH for an example). That's why Quirrell tried to strangle Harry in Book 1, magic wouldn't have worked.
  • What Riddle did was smart, he wanted to meet Harry specifically to ask him how he survived, and how Voldemort lost his powers. It would be silly to Avada Kedavra him at that specific moment.
  • Diary-Riddle was only able to manifest because he'd drawn the energy to do so from Ginny; presumably, any spells he cast would tap into that same reservoir of power. He probably wanted to direct all of the energy he had towards completing that process and coming fully to life, not tossing high-powered magic to do a job his pet monster is apparently capable of handling. Only when the basilisk was blinded and Fawkes threatened to undo all his plans did he resort to such spells, when it was that or lose his chance entirely.
  • And there's the issue of Avada Kedavra being a rather unique magic requiring you to really mean it.The only reason Riddle was walking around is that he was borrowing Ginny's life at the time, so perhaps Avada Kedavra wouldn't have worked because it would have required that Ginny also 'really mean it', and obviously she wouldn't have. Or perhaps that's not true, but Riddle thought it might be.
  • So you're confronted with the child that somehow destroyed your future self with no effort, and you have him at your mercy when he's unarmed and you have a giant snake that can kill just by looking anyone in the eye at your disposal. I'd love to see him squirm. You're hardly expecting a phoenix to show up with a sword that appears out of nowhere.

No Exams

• Dumbledore's cancellation of all of the end of year exams. You would think that the O.W.L. and N.E.W.T. students would need them to qualify for their N.E.W.T. course and get a job in the real world, respectively.
  • Always assumed that was exams that were capable of being canceled (professor-given exams). In hindsight, though, the whole school was about to be closed down before Harry saved the day, so I doubt many people were studying that didn't need it for job related tests.
  • Could be O.W.L. and N.E.W.T. exams were already over with for the year.
    • In Order of the Phoenix, the O.W.Ls were given starting the second full week of June and went for two weeks. In Chamber, Dumbledore cancelled all exams June 1.
  • In British schools, end-of-year exams are different from GCSEs or A-levels (the equivalent to O.W.Ls and N.E.W.Ts); they're just big tests used to gauge ability, not anything that would lead to a qualification, and students in their GCSE years don't tend to sit them anyway.
  • They would presumably be able to provide proof that the exams were canceled that year and rely on coursework, written reports from their teachers, etc. to cover for grades. (In real life, GCSEs and A levels you receive predicted grades from teachers and can apply for jobs/courses based on these - they're usually quite accurate.)
  • What about students like Colin who spent most of the year unconscious? Ron even partially Lampshaded this when he suggested that it might be kinder to wake Hermione after the exams were over since she hadn't studied. How can they get a free pass after missing out on most of that year's education? And they can't even spend the summer getting caught up because they're all Muggle-born. And Ginny's grades can't have been spectacular (unless Riddle was doing all her work for her or something).
  • Simply put, Hogwarts does the only thing it or any other school possibly CAN do in such a situation and passes them automatically. It's not like you can punish them for falling victim to a supernatural creature commanded by a bigoted madman being reborn and having the bad taste to survive, no more than a real life school could without it getting picketed to absolute HELL. In all due probability, they either send them home with reading assignments (a common way to make up lost ground in subjects you are behind in) or have them take extra courses, or maybe even go on the assumption that they will recover quickly enough while learning the 3rd year curriculum and do next to nothing at all save for some tutoring.
  • This might be the reason why Hermione was allowed to use a time-turner to take extra classes in Prisoner of Azkaban. Presumably, she would be the only student to care about her studies enough to ask for such a drastic way to catch up.
  • Fridge Brilliance??
  • My High School automatically cancelled and passed everyone on their exams during her Junior year just because we had a rain storm that knocked out power for the last week of school, and the School Board declared it an 'Act of God', so I don't find it hard to believe that Dumbledore would cancel exams, either.
  • Harry does say at the start of the third book that the teachers had given him a lot of work over the holidays. The school could have assigned them summer homework to help them catch up on anything they wouldn't have covered due to all the fear going on at Hogwarts. As for the fifth and seventh years, they could be given a continuous assessment of all the work they had done throughout the year. For seventh years, they could have given the option of repeating to those who wanted. Harry and Ron didn't repeat their seventh year while Hermione did.
  • As the O.W.L. and N.E.W.T tests are given by an outside agency, Dumbledore can't cancel those. Given when in the year Harry takes his, it is likely that hey occurred long before the finale. As Headmaster of Hogwarts, he is within his rights to adjust or even cancel the testing schedule, provided he can justify it to the governors.
  • It is also indicated through Word of God that many students don't take N.E.W.T exams and that a pass from the professor is enough to get students the jobs. But some students may be required to take the N.E.W.T exams and it is indicated that some students will take the exams over the summer or even come back at the start of the next year to take the exam if their desired job requires it. O.W.L.S take place around April.
  • During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, they ruled for end of year exams that the students would be given predicted grades based off their performances throughout the year. Either that's what the Hogwarts teachers did or they passed all the students out of respect for the fact that some children might not do too well at homework when they're living in fear of being petrified by a monster.

Harry Finding the Chamber

• How did Riddle know Harry would find the Chamber? Riddle's stated plan at the end was to lure Harry into the Chamber of Secrets using Ginny as bait, but it's not like Harry wasn't plenty motivated to find the Chamber before Ginny was taken. What was Riddle thinking? "Well, I hope Harry just happens to stumble upon the hidden chamber no one but me has found for a thousand years sometime within the next twenty-four hours or my whole plan won't work?"
  • This is pure speculation, but Riddle might have thought Harry knew more than he actually did. He knew (at least in a roundabout way, thanks to Ginny's attempted diary flushing) that Harry had been in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, he knew that Harry was looking for the Chamber of Secrets... and with Riddle being Riddle, there's no way he would have brushed that off as a coincidence. To him, there would be only one logical reason for Harry being in a girl's bathroom — he knows, or at least suspects, where the entrance to the Chamber is. All right, all Riddle has to do then is to wait for Harry to make the first move... but then Harry doesn't make the first move. Months pass, and Harry does nothing. Finally, Riddle gets tired of waiting and decides that all right, if this Potter kid is too stubborn or cautious to do anything, then he needs a bit of extra motivation. And if this doesn't work — well, no matter, because he's almost drained Ginny by now anyway and will soon be strong enough to take on a corporeal form.
  • But he didn't know that the diary had been in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. Harry just said that the diary had been flushed down a toilet, he never said which one, and it's not like Ginny would have written in the diary where she was going to chuck it.
  • It's possible he found out when Ginny overheard Percy talking about Ron being found in the girl's bathroom and Ginny, panicking, wrote in the diary. Alternately, Possessed!Ginny had walked in on them once and jumped to that conclusion, but left to avoid being seen.
  • Have we all forgotten that Ginny got the diary back? He could have just asked her then where she got rid of it and how Harry ended up with it.
  • And it's possible that Riddle already knew, because it's possible he was possessing her (And in the bathroom doing something with the Chamber of Secrets) when Ginny got up enough willpower to overcome him and try to ditch the diary. It's even possible she'd done that before, but had been forced to go back and get it, except this time Harry recovered it first.
  • A more pressing question than why did Voldy think Harry would be able to find the chamber, is how did he ever get the idea that he would be able to open it? He seemed to have already come up with his plan to lure Harry before Ginny could have informed him (if she even would) that Harry could speak Parseltongue.
  • Well, as stated above, it's not like he loses much if Harry doesn't find or open the Chamber.
  • Most likely Ginny would have told Riddle about Harry being a Parselmouth as soon as the school found out. She wrote to him a lot, and she was completely smitten with Harry.
  • If Harry fails to find it or get in, Riddle could always just wait until he was finished with Ginny and come find Harry himself. He wanted to have a private conversation, so probably wouldn't have attacked him in Hogwarts... but he could just wait until the school was closed and Harry left. (Remember, he has no idea about the blood wards around Harry's house.)
  • Doesn't the entire school know Harry speaks Parseltongue? I can image Ginny writing that: "Dear Diary, today I learned my crush Harry Potter can talk to snakes."
  • This is stated outright in the book, actually: "Ginny had told me the whole school was buzzing because you could speak Parseltongue."
  • Of course, all this is assuming that Tom Riddle was telling the truth. Perhaps the message on the wall was just a boast to scare the Muggle-born, and Tom had no intent for Harry to find it. And when Harry shows up Tom was like, oh, crap, how the hell did Harry find the chamber? And so fast? It took me five years! And I'm not done being made corporeal yet. And have no wand. Stall! 'Ha, I have tricked you. I wanted you to find me. It was all part of my clever plan...' As was pointed out, he has no idea of the blood wards around Harry's house, so forcing Hogwarts to close, walking out a secret passage, and visiting Harry at home (Or even at the train platform) is an entirely reasonable plan.
  • Yeah, Riddle wanted answers from Harry, but nothing in his plan was truly dependent on Harry's presence: he'd sap the life out of Ginny either way.
  • Or if Ginny had gone to visit Hermione's bedside and noticed the piece of paper in her hand, she might have left it there hoping Harry would find it or Riddle might have compelled her to leave it there.
  • In response to whether Riddle knew Harry had been in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, in his Info Dump in the film he says Ginny "tried to dispose of it in the girls' bathroom" - maybe Ginny told him that when she stole the diary back. As for whether he knew Harry would come down to the Chamber, we have two scenarios - a) he hoped he would, as he knew Harry was investigating the case and his best friend's sister being kidnapped might lure him down, b) Ginny being taken down to the chamber was merely a pragmatic move to prevent anyone from helping her while he took control of her, and also a ceremonial thing (he does love grandeur) and he would have found Harry later.

Dobby's Apparation

• How is it that Dobby can apparate in and out of Hogwarts? He probably jinxed the bludger when Lucius came to the match to watch Draco, but then he suddenly appears in the hospital room to Harry, then magically snaps and vanishes. How can he just apparate in and out of the school? In the sixth book that's a huge plot point!
  • It's mentioned that house elf magic is different than wizard magic and can thus pass through the wards. It also makes more sense once you find out house elves are secretly cleaning the whole castle that they'd need to be able to apparate around easily.
  • In that case, why aren't there more House Elf Assasins?
  • Because Rowling never thought of it.
  • Laws, with a capital "L"?
  • We don't see any elves that operate under their own free will; even Dobby and Kreacher had to seize on loopholes to escape long enough to sabotage their masters' plans. Presumably, there are rules that govern how elves work, given that they're obligated to punish themselves even with the loophole in place.
  • That doesn't explain why people don't order their elves to kill. Maybe it's the one spell they can't do.
  • Probably one of the House Elf laws: Don't kill wizards. They don't seem to mind hurting wizards, but that's probably the most they can do.
  • Hogwarts was specifically enchanted against apparating. In tome 7, the Burrow is protected against any direct magic transportation. Sounds really different.
  • Partially agree with the troper above with the House-elf law thing. Think about how all magical creatures are considered in the wizarding world, though. With the Pure-bloods (using the Malfoy family as an example), they are considered the lowest of low and treated worse than animals. They're nothing more than servants, not assassins. And no one thinks about house elves. One would have to be freaking brilliant, AND think outside the box when it comes to social norms on how to put them to use. Honestly, who pays attention to house elves? If you think about it though, if the Golden Trio had used the house-elves effectively, about 80% of the plot would be gone. How much dirt does Winky have on all politicians besides her Master? Dobby would know every dark secret, etc., etc. It's Truth in Television that servants are considered the greatest sources of information because they're always overlooked. They hear and see everything. A lot of problems with house elves is their sense of duty/loyalty to the family they're bound to. We just don't know how powerful house elves are (it's sorta hinted at, though,) and I'm pretty sure all those creature rights laws keep them from in check.
  • Hogwarts can't be warded against House Elf Apparition because how else would the elves who work at the school efficiently and discretely get around while working.
  • And let's remind ourselves that the Wizarding World is in a state of peace (relatively) at the time the book takes place. So with no Death Eaters at large, there's no immediate precautions because no one's expecting dark wizards to be sending their House Elves into the school to assassinate people. For all we know, by the time of the fifth book, there are extra protection enchantments to prevent House Elves from apparating into the school, while still allowing those at Hogwarts to do their work. Just because some ignorant Death Eaters don't make use of anti House Elf enchantments, it doesn't mean there aren't any.
  • As has been stated, Elf magic was different than Wizard magic (though somehow wizards couldn't always tell them apart) and house elves could apparate through anti-apparation jinxes. Not only did it happen a number of times in Hogwarts, but it also happened in the cave when Voldemort brought Kreacher to the cave to hide the horcrux. Voldemort put an anti-apparation jinx in the cave, but Kreacher easily apparated out of it twice.

Dealing with the Attacks

• What was Dumbledore's plan to deal with the attacks besides "close the school down and I'm sure Harry Potter will solve this before anyone gets seriously hurt."? As he was "the greatest wizard of all", you'd think Hogwarts was in good hands, but really, what was his game plan? The trio are the ones who figure out everything about the attacks; Hermione figures out the monster and Harry nails the culprit. Seriously; your students are dying and your pet pupil is getting blamed at every turn. Why wasn't Dumbledore the slightest bit involved in any sort of routine investigation into the attacks?
  • Just because Dumbledore is The Chessmaster doesn't mean he always has everything under control.
  • Yeah! It's not like he claims that he keeps everything under control despite the obvious... oh wait, that's exactly what he does in "Half-Blood Prince", right before the Death Eaters storm the school!
  • In addition, the same events happened 50 years ago, and no one was able to stop it then. What could Dumbledore do differently, even knowing the likely culprit? Also, no one died, they were only petrified, though the danger was present.
  • Again, it must be stated: Dumbledore is the greatest wizard of all and headmaster of the school. He does absolutely nothing to uncover the mystery behind the attacks. Hermione, Harry, & Ron are a trio of 2nd-year students who, at great personal risk to themselves, investigate the attacks, figure out everything about the identity of the monster, and then kill it, along with the Horcrux behind it all. Q: What could Dumbledore have done? A: Everything the trio did, only faster and earlier, before the next Basilisk victim wasn't so lucky to see it through a medium so they would only be petrified instead of dead.
  • The books aren't told from his point of view, so we can't say he did absolutely nothing. Hermione, Harry, and Ron... what exactly did they investigate again? Oh, that's right, they suspected Malfoy and used Polyjuice to sneak into the Slytherin Dorms only to find out what Dumbledore already knew, that the chamber was opened 50 years ago and someone died. The only reason they found out was because Hermione is a genius and had knowledge that Harry understood the monster, something Dumbledore wasn't told. I'm under the impression if Dumbledore was told Harry was hearing it he might have put two and two together like Hermione to get a Basilisk, but even then he'd be stuck on where or how to open the chamber, something Harry only finds because of asking Myrtle, and even then only because he's a parslemouth.
  • There was nothing stopping Dumbledore asking Myrtle, which he could have done as soon as he knew the Chamber was open! She'd have told him she heard a boy speaking a hissing language, looked into a pair of eyes, and died; Dumbledore would have remembered that he was suspicious of Tom Riddle at the time and that Tom was a parselmouth; put two and two together, and by keeping some sort of magical watch over the entrance (he's the headmaster and the greatest wizard in the world, this is totally within his power) he would have seen Ginny enter the next time Tom wanted an attack, solved the problem, and realized Voldemort had multiple Horcruxes far earlier than he did in canon!
  • Yet he never did ask Myrtle the past 50 years she's been a ghost (barring, of course, the time she haunted her bully). He knew Tom was a parselmouth and could make an educated guess that the monster was a snake of some sort, but he couldn't confirm it. Just because Tom was a parselmouth didn't mean Salazar didn't leave behind a completely new magical beast that could instantly petrify or (if lucky) kill on command. He also never knew where the opening of the chamber was or even if there was only one opening to the chamber. After all, in the books themselves, the Basilisk got around through the pipes and it was entirely possible for there to be multiple entrances as well.
  • It's clear that Dumbledore knows what the monster is and where it is, but does not yet know that Harry speaks the language that can get him in. Even so, I don't think Dumbledore was willing to risk Harry's life facing the Basilisk. His problem was figuring out how Voldemort was controlling the creature so he could stop it. His comments during the book seem to point this out:
    Dumbledore: The question is not "Who?". The question is "how?" (after the second attack)
    Dumbledore: What interests me is how Lord Voldemort managed to enchant Ginny, as he's in hiding in Albania. (After learning Ginny was behind it all)
  • Yes. I'm unsure as to why people assume Dumbledore doesn't know it's a basilisk. Where does he indicate this? He could easily already know it, it makes no difference to the plot. I know the Trio had their 'great mystery' of 'What is the monster?', but that was utterly irrelevant in actually finding where the Chamber was and who was opening it, the actual important question. Although, as above says, technically Dumbledore already knew 'who', but was baffled as to how he was managing it. (I'm imagining Dumbledore checking the back of everyone's head for Voldemort, and looking for secret passages that Voldemort could be using to sneak in.)
  • My guess is with Ginny's capture, Dumbledore would've had to risk Harry to stop the Basilisk. But by the time he got back, probably off looking for clues to solve the mystery, Harry had already gone. So we can assume he was working on the problem, but like Harry he didn't have all the pieces to solve it.
  • Exactly. Even if Dumbledore knew many of these details, heck even if he had an idea of where the Chamber's entrance was, he would not have been able to get in. He didn't speak Parseltongue. He couldn't have opened the Chamber even if he wanted to. Ron only opened it later after listening to Harry say "open" in Parseltongue several times over and only after seeing Harry open it the first time. If Dumbledore found out that Harry spoke Parseltongue (he probably knew, since half the school knew), he might have been trying to find another way to do it while sparing Harry any more pain, since he cared too much about Harry. For all we know, Dumbledore knew that there was a basilisk in the school, could hear him in the pipes, and was spending his spare time trying to teach himself how to speak Parseltongue! Kidding, sort of...
  • What pain? "Harry, I know where the entrance to the Chamber is. It can only be opened by a Parselmouth. Come on, you'll open it, I'll go down and kill that thing." Done.
    • And then Harry follows him in?? What he knows about Harry by now is that the kid doesn't trust adults to solve crime and is curious about any hints adults give him. If Dumbledore dragged Harry to the chamber to speak parseltongue at the entrance— which, to be fair, while a somewhat logical guess, is still a guess and not guaranteed to work— there is a guarantee Harry won't stay behind quietly. If he's trying to protect Harry, even bringing him along this far is a bad idea.
  • If Ron can open the chamber by imitating the sound of Parseltongue, how come Dumbledore can't? We're talking about a guy so brilliant that he could actually teach himself how to understand Parseltongue and Mermish phonetically, after all. And Dumbledore certainly knew that Harry could speak Parseltongue (in addition to it being public knowledge to the entire school, Dumbledore specifically references it in their convo at the end of year 2)... nothing stops him from just asking Harry "Could you please say 'Open' in Parseltongue? Do it again... again... there, got it. Thanks.", and then nip off to Myrtle's washroom after strapping on his basilisk-killin' boots. But no.
    • Keep in mind though that in book two, Parseltongue is still just a magical skill. A very rare magical skill that you either have or don’t have, that is associated with dark wizards because Voldemort was the only known wizard since Slytherin himself to be able to speak it. It wasn't a learnable language/obtainable skill. The terrible writing of book seven that let Ron repeat some hissing he had heard Harry say years ago and open the Chamber would never have worked in book two, it would have been no different to the Friends episode where Joey thinks he's speaking French but is actually just talking nonsense. But book seven's terrible writing should not retroactively affect the plot of book two. In that book, only someone who could speak Parseltongue could open the Chamber and the only person who could do that is Harry.
  • Given how, despite the alleged lethality of its gaze, nobody was actually killed by the basilisk on Dumbledore's watch, I suspect that he did do something: he invoked some kind of subtle warding magic that would ensure nobody in the castle would ever meet the creature's gaze directly. Having characters be shielded by a camera and a ghost seems like too wild a coincidence for it to actually be one; rather, Dumbledore might've used some sort of luck-based magic to protect everyone from lasting harm, then kept quiet about it because having everyone walk around the school using mirrors to peer around corners, ready to blast away at the creature with their eyes shut, would've caused more accidents than there were attacks.
  • I've heard one theory that the Basilisk was "missing" on purpose, that Salazar Slytherin hadn't meant for the Basilisk to be used to attack students, just to defend the castle from invading muggles. The reason it killed Myrtle was because Riddle finally forced it to.
  • I think someone already pointed it out but this is ridiculous. DD was clearly worried that this odd luck they had been having would run out. I do have another theory though.
  • Do they know the attacks could be fatal, though? Mrs Norris is the first victim, and a cat isn't going to cause much panic. By the time Colin is attacked, they're already working on a cure. The sad thing is they can't prepare for something they don't know about; the precautions they end up taking are that teachers have to escort students to and from class, and the children have to stay in the common rooms at all other times. It reminds me a bit of how the COVID-19 precautions evolved based off the information first given. Workplaces were told no hugging, kissing or unnecessary contact - while also washing hands regularly. Some work places stopped and had their employees working from home. Then when things suddenly got worse, big precautions such as no unnecessary journeys, social distancing everywhere, quarantine indefinitely etc sprang up.

Lucius's Plan Worked!

• Is it me, or did Lucius's plan actually work like a wonder? Ok, so in the end, after Harry returns from the Chamber with Ginny, he tells the story, but is reluctant to mention her involvement, as with Riddle's diary destroyed she becomes the prime suspect, and then Dumbledore is all perceptive, and he blames Voldemort, and everyone is happy, and Lucius Malfoy is put to shame, since his plan to frame a Weasley for the attacks is failed...wait, what exactly do they have to back their case and expose him? All they've got is a burned empty diary and words of a 12-year old wizard. They have no proof that it was Lucius who gave the diary to Ginny, or that it had ever been anything but a humble diary, or that it had even belonged to Riddle in the first place! So why does Lucius behave like he was caught with his pants down and doesn't even try to question D's allegations?
  • A few possible explanations. One, Lucius isn't scared that he got caught (as he knows Dumbledore can't prove it), but is scared of Voldemort's vengeance on him for getting the Diary destroyed. The reason Lucius doesn't press the "I'm innocent, you've got no proof" thing is that nothing but more investigations and spotlight on his character will come of it. He doesn't need to say anything, and people will assume that it wasn't really his fault, and he was made a patsy so that Dumbledore could cover for those loyal to him. Besides, if he does protest and they do find evidence (for example where the Basilisk Fang/Venom stuck in the Diary came from, how could Ginny have opened the chamber, Pensieve Memories from Harry, etc.), then he's doubly screwed.
  • Actually, I think he was sacked purely for threatening to curse the board and that his involvement with the Chamber was considered unproven, hence why he got off so easily. Lucius did demand proof and Dumbledore casually responded that "Oh, no one will be able to do that. Not now that Riddle has vanished from the book. On the other hand, I would advise you, Lucius, not to go giving out any more of Lord Voldemort's old school things. If any more of them find their way into innocent hands, I think Arthur Weasley, for one, will make sure they are traced back to you..."
  • OP: That's not exactly my point. My point is that as far as I can see, Lucius won. His plan was to arrange it so that Ginny gets the blame for the attacks against Muggleborns, thus compromising Arthur Weasley and his pro-Muggle agenda. Well, isn't that exactly what happened? Without the working diary, the good guys are left with precisely zero proofs that Ginny was anything but a voluntary agent, and Dumbledore's accusations against Voldemort end up being completely ungrounded. Sure, they are good enough for the school staff who all eat out of D's hand, but why the hell does Lucius back off? All he needs to do is shout "tally-ho!", and Reeta Skeeter will tear both the Weasleys and Dumbledore apart.
  • Likewise, they have no proof that Ginny did anything but get kidnapped. After all, you don't suspect a female first year of being the heir of Slytherin when the message on the wall clearly says "her skeleton will remain in the chamber forever." If Lucius started to call for her to be arrested, what are the grounds? That she was secretly leading the monster around? Where's the proof in that?
  • Not necessarily arrested. A brand of a psychotic mass murderer in mass media would probably suffice. Remember, his main goal was to ruin Arthur. As for proofs, it's easy. If she wasn't the Heir, then surely she must've seen the real one, right? Well, who's he? A ghost of Tom Riddle rising from this so-obviously-ordinary diary? Riiiiiiight. Besides, why is she alive at all? Why would the monster or the Heir kidnap her instead of killing her like they "killed" the others? As for the message, gimme a break. What could be a better way to shake off suspicions than playing a victim?
  • The problem with all of that is then they'd get Harry involved in Ginny's defense, as he has answers for all of those questions. "Yes, there was a being controlling her through the diary and sucking the life out of her. That's why I stabbed it with a basilisk fang after I killed it. Don't believe me? I'll show you the Chamber of Secrets and the diary." All logical answers to his questions and brings up further questions of where the diary even came from. Which leads them back to Lucius who shoved her books into her cauldron way back in the summer. Ultimately, Lucius deemed it not worth the risk of pushing for his plan when it could easily backfire spectacularly on him.
  • Except that a) since the Horcrux is gone from it, the diary would prove nothing; b) a whole year later, it will be said by none other than D that "the words of two 13-year old wizards will not convince anybody" (mind you, the case it will be said about will not have Lucius pressing it); and c) D himself admitted they can't prove Lucius was behind the diary (as for D's threats that "next time I'll make sure blahblahblah", well, as one petty crook from The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed aptly put it: "drop the bluff and scare, fuzz").
  • They can't prove Lucius was behind what diary? That ruined book they're holding? That's no proof of anything at all! The actual facts: Ginny didn't confess to anything, she doesn't even remember. And Harry doesn't know she did it, he's just relating what Tom said. Either the courts disbelieve Harry, in which case they literally have no evidence Ginny was ever near the chamber of secrets, or they believe Harry, but disbelief what Tom Riddle said, in which case the obviously conclusion is a demented mad-man thought he was Voldemort and kidnapped her, or they believe Harry and Tom and it's clear she was possessed. There's no plausible way to believe Tom Riddle when he said Ginny opened the chamber, but to not believe him when he said he had possessed her to do so. That's just a crazy conclusion. (In fact, strictly speaking, asking Harry to relate what Tom said happened is hearsay anyway, and wouldn't be allowed in normal court. If 'Tom Riddle' claims to know who opened the chamber of secrets, 'Tom Riddle' needs be put on the stand to state that. People are not allowed to relate what someone else knows. Although who knows what stupid rules Wizards have..)
  • Now that I think of it further, the final scene in DD's office is even more baffling. To qoute DD: ""Because if Harry here and his friend Ron hadn't discovered this book, why — Ginny Weasley might have taken all the blame. No one would ever have been able to prove she hadn't acted of her own free will." Uhm, what? If Harry and his friend Ron hadn't discovered this book, Ginny Weasley would've been dead. Her skeleton would've lied in the Chamber forever, as Mr. Riddle'd astutely observed. And, unless I'm wrong, it's pretty hard to accuse a person of a crime if they'd become a victim of that very crime (aka "suspect elimination rule"). Hell, Ginny's death might've worked in favor of Arthur's agenda (please, don't get me wrong here) as she'd become a symbol of wanton cruelty pureblood supremacist's display. And the only way Lucius' cheme could work was if Ginny was still alive by the end to present the investigation with a prime suspect. Which, accidentally, means that in his heroics the Scarhead had played into the hands of the villains (again), who only lost because of that peculiar "sudden-fit-of-idiocy-on-the-verge-of-victory" syndrom they all apparently suffer from.
  • There's still no real evidence that Ginny ever did anything wrong. You might be able to brush aside evidence that she was innocent, but only if you had any evidence she'd done anything wrong to begin with.
  • Unfortunately, there is. She did remember some things, like being covered in rooster blood or having blackouts. She even confessed to Riddle that she suspected herself. It doesn't matter whom she did or didn't tell that. She knew she was guilty, meaning she would've cracked at an interrogation (it's hard to imagine a distressed 12-year old girl sucessfully lying her way out or staying in denial, especially with things like Veritaserum, isn't it). And she was a prime suspect, because her culpability was the only possible explanation for two otherwise nonsensical events: why the hell would the Heir bother to kidnap her instead of killing her and how the hell did she manage to survive. The only way it makes sense is if it was a cover-up, and she staged her own kidnapping to throw off suspicions. Then, after Harry discovered the Chamber and found out who the "Heir" was, DD decided to write the blame off on the most obvious and convinient scapegoat - Voldemort - to protect his friend Arthur Weasely. Thus he invented the story with the mind-controlling diary. Since they have no "demented mad-man who thought he was Voldemort" to present, they would have nothing to counter with, if Lucius had laid forth the aforementioned explanation. And seing how the judicial system in this wretched verse is two bits shy of a Kangaroo Court, I'd say, that, yeah, the girl is screwed.
  • If a serial killer is wandering around and stabbing people in certain way, and no one knows who it is, and then some random note is found stating he's kidnapped someone, and that person is later found half-conscious in a secret room without the killer nearby, the logical conclusion is not that the person who was kidnapped is the serial killer. Simply because the criminal did changed what they were doing does not, in any logical way, lead to the conclusion that the new victim is actually the criminal. Especially not in a world with magic, where Ginny's 'inability to remember who did it' could be explained by a trivial spell.
  • But the timing was not random at all. "Kidnapping" happened right after MG declared that they were about to revive the victims, some of whom might identify the culprit. Of course, she couldn't know that, and it was obviously a ruse to provoke the Heir. And whaddyouknow! The "Heir" suddenly and without any conceivable reason broke his MO, by a) attacking a pureblood and b) going all theatrical with the note and taking her to the Chamber. While, I admit, it could be explained otherwise (her father was a blood traitor, and Heir's record with killing people on spot was sub-par so far), it could also be seen as a cover-up attempt. Probably not enough to accuse Ginny outright, but quite enough to warrant an interrogation. And then, she's screwed - she all but confessed in the attacks, the part about Riddle would be easy to dismiss as shifting the blame on the usual scapegoat, and Harry would be dismissed as biased and a kid. As for memory spells - if they were really taken into account, then the whole approach to wintess testimony would've been completely different, and that pathetic excuse for a witness DD dragged before the court in "Order" would've been rejected even faster then she should've been otherwise.
  • Except that, as demonstrated last time (And would be demonstrated yet again.), the unpertrified people have no idea who did it or remember anything more than yellow eyes. So someone trying to 'cover their tracks' makes no sense...no one needs to cover any tracks. (Not that pretending to be kidnapped and showing back up would have actually helped with that.) And Ginny confess to what she did solely to Harry. And in front of her parents and DD, she confess to...writing in a diary. The conversations with her parents is a weird conversation, and at no point does Dumbledore or Harry state that it was Ginny who did anything. Now, people seem to think that DD spilled the beans at the end, but Lucius already knew all that, and that scene is actually DD threatening Lucius. (I.e, if you take this in front of the courts and insist on an investigation...you'll will indeed get a investigation, because I already know every single detail of this entire thing.)
  • Well, yes, that "cover up" was stupid and sloppy... something you would expect from a crazed 12-year old rather then the brilliant mastermind like Riddle, don't you think? BTW it wouldn't be "pretend to be kidnapped and show back up" as much as "stage her own death and then abscond from the castle". Again, she's crazy, she doesn't have to make sense. As for whom she confessed what, it hardly matters. The immediate evidence might not have been enough to accuse her outright, but they would warrant a questioning, which she obviously would not have withstanded. Everything about Riddle could've been dismissed as scapegoating or being crazy, Harry's testimony could've been dismissed as coming from an interested party (and hey, a whole year later DD himself would say, that nobody was going to believe children), and Fudge would definitely choose a crazy girl appropriating some random Dark artefact from her scatterbrained daddy, who'd aquired it from a random Death Eater in a raid, over the Dark Lord Voldemort still being at large and influencing people through notebooks. And DD was full of shit as usual. He admitted that they couldn't prove Lucius' connection to the diary, so they had nothing on him. Hell, Lucius'd betrayed Voldemort, who in their right mind would believe that he would let (basically) Voldemort with a deadly monster into the school where his own son is?
  • Although if Harry wasn't the Boy-Who-Lived, it's worth pointing out that some serious questions could be asked of him. He sure found that 'hidden for a thousand years' room fast, didn't he? And wasn't it lucky he could speak Parseltongue? And then he rescued that girl who is known to have a crush on him, so could have easily been convinced to go somewhere private with him? And didn't Harry skip classes 'to visit Hermoine' while Ginny was being kidnapped, a time when every single person in the school was under escort or in class? And one of the few people who could back up his story has complete memory loss right near the signs of a struggle. The sort of memory loss that you could get if, for example, a child screwed up an Obliviate. Harry's just really lucky that Ron can back up his story.
  • The Sorting Hat (a sentient hat that can obviously observe its surroundings, as evidenced when it talked to Harry while sitting on the shelf in Dumbledore's office) was in the chamber with Harry as well. Granted, it wasn't there for the whole "I am Lord Voldemort" thing but it did see a 17 year old kid (and the Hat could probably recognise the kid as being Tom Riddle) sending a Basilisk after Harry and it would have also seen Harry stabbing the diary and "killing" 17 year old Tom Riddle. The Sorting Hat was the one who gave Harry the sword to help him kill the basilisk after all, so it had to have some idea what was going on. Even if the Hat was face down and only heard everything that went on, it could still corroborate the fact that some kid sent a Basilisk after Harry based on what it heard. Besides, doesn't Tom even say something like "I'm the only one who can control it" AFTER he sends it to kill Harry? The Sorting Hat would have heard that too. Unless the Hat can't legally testify. Then my explanation is useless.
  • Wait, now I'm confused. I thought Lucius didn't know anything about the diary. That he was just trying to get rid of it and that "if he knew how important it really he was he probably woulnd't have given it away to begin with" or something like that (didn't DD say something along those lines?) I was under the impression that he just thought it was a piece of dark magic that Voldy gave to him and that he was tired of having around the house and gave it to Ginny just to be done with it and the thought that "if it turns out to be dangerous, it'll be the blood-traitor's daughter who gets hurt so no loss there." I don't think Lucius had any idea that it would open the Chamber (did he even know of the Chamber's existance? That was a bit before his time and even Draco had no idea what it was, you'd think he'd give his son the heads up or something.) or bring back Riddle/Voldemort, otherwise, he probably would have given it to someone else, someone who knew of it's importance and actually wanted to see it come to fruition. I know Dobby knew he was up to something, but I was under the impression that even Dobby hadn't completely realized the Chamber was going to be opened. Pretty sure he just knew that something bad was going to happen and was trying to protect Harry Potter because his master was all excited about something bad happening at Hogwarts.
  • If you look in the book when Harry and Ron, disguised as Crabbe and Goyle, go into the Slytherin common room to interrogate Draco, Draco says something along the lines of that his dad told him to just let the Heir of Slytherin do his thing and stay out of the way. That suggests Lucius did know it would open the Chamber and that Voldemort was the Heir of Slytherin. Now, when he was still known as Tom Riddle, Voldemort couldn't have afforded to be known as the Heir of Slytherin, but after he reemerged in his late 20s or 30s or so he did declare himself Heir of Slytherin as part of his campaign to recruit pure-blood supremacists. Also, DD states in the 6th book that part of Lucius's plan was to use the diary to discredit Arthur Weasley and his pro-Muggle legislation.
  • A couple of things that implicate Lucius - Harry and Ginny confess to using a diary that communicated with them, and even showed Harry a memory of the past (with information that would be very difficult to get otherwise). Lucius owned this diary before this year - which Dobby could probably testify to. "The children must be lying" is a very weak defence, even without Veritaserum to back it up. Lucius had an altercation with Ginny's father shortly before the school year started (in the book, they physically get into a fist fight). Lucius also threatened several governors' families unless they had Dumbledore removed from office. So the evidence points to Lucius giving a dangerous dark object to a child, putting an entire school in danger in the process - either to get back at a rival or discredit the headmaster. The matter was a Hogwarts one, so it presumably falls under Dumbledore's jurisdiction (if there were deaths involved, maybe the Wizengamot would have to step in) as he is a registered court official too. Lucius probably could take the matter to court if he wanted, but he probably figures it's not worth the hassle, given the amount of evidence against him.

The School Board's inexplicable behavior

• School boards are often crazy, but not this much. I'm trying to reenact the train of thoughts of the boardsmen who voted Dumbledore back and... I just can't. "So, there've been a number of attacks that Dumbledore completely failed to prevent and that fell slightly short of being lethal thanks only to a bizzare sequence of extremely implausible lucky coincidences. Naturaly, we sacked Dumbledore, but we forgot to actually place someone competent in his place, so there was another attack. So what do we do now? I know! Let's call Dumbledore back!" Whaaaaa? It gets even better when you take into account that the terrible threat that left THE Dumbledore beaten cold, was neutralised... by a 12-year old boy and a bird. Seriously, the whole situation was just sprawling there before Lucius, waiting for him to gut it, he could've taken down Dumbledore, Weasley, AND the school board, and he just stepped down. What the hell?!
  • I can only assume they were acting out of fear because they were apparently claiming that Lucius threatened them to agree to sack him in the first place. They were then acting out of desperation in bringing him back.
  • And they didn't run to Dumbledore immediately after Lucius threatened them because...?
  • Either they're too afraid or Lucius's threats implied if they did that their families were in danger. That, or they're lying and they really are dumb enough to believe sacking Dumbledore and not replacing him until the crisis is over would be the best plan. Thus, they are just covering their incompetent backs by claiming Lucius threatened them.
  • Personally, I share the last assumption, yet it brings us back to the beginning. It all turns out so utterly ridiculous ("Let's sack Dumbledore! Crap, that didn't work - let's bring Dumbledore back!"), that I can't believe Lucius wouldn't grab at the chance to expose them all as the senile scatterbrains they are and bring them down together with DD (who, I'll reiterate, failed to deal with a problem that a twelve-year old dealt with). Hell, he could've probably even accused Dumbledore of bribing (or threatening, if he's in for some sweet irony) the board, and it wouldn't have looked too far-fetched at that point!
  • I would've thought that everyone at this point realized that wizards in general are senile scatterbrains.
  • Actually, it's made pretty clear that Lucius did threaten the school board to make them get rid of Dumbledor to begin with. They wanted Dumbledor to take care of the problem, and expected him to, but Lucius wanted the monster to continue running unchecked. He threatened the school board into getting rid of Dumbledore. When they heard a student had been kidnapped, they realized that things were worse than they thought, and decided the school's safety was more important than their own, and thus, brought Dumbledore back, regardless of what Lucius would have done to them. It wasn't until Dumbledore was already back that Harry defeated the basilisk and got rid of Riddle.
  • Made pretty clear when? DD had proven unable to deal with the problem and hadn't shown any kind of progress by the time he was removed. Hell, less attacks happened after his removal than before it! And how did Ginny's kidnapping make things worse? It would make them more confusing, sure, leading to thoughts of "Why the hell would the monster or the Heir kidnap a girl instead of killing her", which leads to the previous headscratcher.
  • They stated it verbatim in the book. or close enough when Lucius shows up at Hogwarts and ask why DD is back when he was suppose to be suspended.
  • Nope, DD stated it verbatim. And he's an interested party, and as such, his testimony is invalid.
    Harry: Dobby! So this is your master! The family you serve is the Malfoys.
    Dobby: Um-humm...
    Lucius: I'll deal with you later. Out of my way, Potter! So, it's true— you have returned!
    Dumbledore: When the governors learned that Arthur Weasley’s daughter was taken into the Chamber, they saw fit to summon me back.
    Lucius: Ridiculous!
    Dumbledore: Curiously, Lucius, several of them were under the impression that you would curse their families, if they did not agree to suspend me in the first place
  • So? All that was stated was that DD claimed it happened. And just because DD said something, doesn't mean it makes sense. In this case it doesn't. I'm totally behind Lucius' assessment of the situation - it is indeed ridiculous. He had no need to threaten anybody, and the school board had no reason to call DD back, since he had been unable to deal with the prior attacks.
  • You're being deliberately obtuse. "Just because a character said it, doesn't mean it happened!" He obviously did threaten people, or they wouldn't have sacked him as the governor. He had every reason to threaten them — to get rid of Dumbledore so there'd be more attacks. There's no reason in the book to disbelieve Dumbledore unless you have a major crush on Lucius Malfoy for some reason. In which case it's just total and complete denial.
  • Correlation does not imply causation. I can just as easily claim that they sacked him because DD convinced/bribed/threatened them, and it will sound more plausible, unless of course, someone has a major crush on DD. Again (and again, and again), DD had failed to stop the attacks. Sacking him was a natural decision, and didn't require any additional incentive, and inviting him back didn't make any sense.
  • So basically, the question isn't "why did they bring DD back after suspending him?" The real question is, "why do they keep DD around at all when crap is going down and he's not getting anything done?"
  • To the tropers claiming that DD needed to be sacked because nothing was being done by him; please, give a suggestion for a preferable replacement. Someone who would have dealt with the situation at the time better than DD.
  • McGonagall, Flitwick, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Amelia Bones, maybe Snape, or any other reasonable authority figure. There are a handful that still exist in the Wizarding World.
  • McGonagall was DD's temporary replacement when Ginny was presumed kidnapped. DD or not, it didn't change the situation at all. Besides, DD is considered by pretty much everyone in the wizarding world as the most powerful wizard and Fudge - the Minister of Magic - asks Malfoy if DD hasn't managed to stop the attacks who can? The only sensible course of action would have been to simply close the school.
  • "please, give a suggestion for a preferable replacement" - suggesting the replacement should've been the natural second stage of Lucius' plan. Replace DD with his stooge, have him promptly solve the case and expose the culprit, present it like Arthur is somehow involved (for instance, Ginny stole some artifact she used to control Basie with from him, after he stupidly left it lying around), done. He controls the school, DD and Arhtur are are discraded

Flaws in Lucius's Plan

• What sort of crazy plan is Lucius trying to pull? What really gets me about Lucius's plan is that either he has no idea what the Diary does (in which case he's an idiot for making it the linchpin of a plan) or else he does have some idea (in which case he's a stupendous idiot for letting it out of safekeeping; the Dark Lord is gonna be annoyed when he returns, and if you know he has Horcruxes, it's "when", not "if".) Especially when simply using the Imperius Curse on Ginny to do something illegal would have fulfilled the objective just as well! (Yes, the 'Imperius Curse defense' is a precedent that Lucius himself has set, but I think you need to pay for that particular service.)
  • "Has some idea" doesn't transcribe into "knows about horcruxes". Lucius knew that the diary contained... something, that could possess people and make them open the Chamber, that's it. As for Imperius, apparently using it in the long term is not that simple, not to mention where and when the hell Lucius was supposed to cast it on her without being exposed (you do remember that using it on people gets you a life term in Azkaban, don't you)? Besides, as I'm trying to reason above, his plan worked perfectly - he just backed off inexplicably at the last moment.
  • He's not much of a dark wizard if he can't figure out that it's a Horcrux simply from knowing what it does; after all, everybody else who'd ever heard the word "Horcrux" before did. Also, Draco showed in book 6 that it's actually pretty easy to get away with Imperius'ing people if you know what you're doing; Lucius is ten times the wizard his son is.
  • Draco had way more opportunities to find a sneaky way to Imperius someone. Lucius couldn't exactly curse Ginny in the middle of a crowded bookshop without someone noticing. And there's a cameraman from the local newspaper running around taking pictures of everything. The only way for the situation to be less suited for Imperiusing someone would be if he were on live television at the moment. As for the Horcrux bit, "everybody else who'd ever heard the word 'Horcrux'" is a very small number of people. It's entirely possible that Lucius had never even heard of one, let alone know what it is and how it works. All he knew was he had this diary with some weird powers, given to him by a guy he probably assumed was long dead (remember how he fled in terror when he saw the Dark Mark in Goblet of Fire). Why not try it out on some girl he cared nothing for anyway?
  • "All he knew was he had this diary with some weird powers, given to him by a guy he probably assumed was long dead. Why not try it out on some girl he cared nothing for anyway?" This! That's what I got from it. I don't think Lucius a)had much of a plan to begin with (maybe something along the lines of "get rid of strange piece of dark majic. Oh look, there's the daughter of that guy I hate, I'll give it to her.") and b) knew of the diary's importance. Pretty sure they've even mentioned before that he didn't really want the Dark Lord to come back. His life is in a great place, and the return of the man who will bring back a war (a war they LOST the first time around and Lucius barely managed to get away clean from) is not high on his want list. That's not to say he didn't jump on the DE band-wagon when it pulled up, but that doesn't mean it's an outcome he really wanted.
  • Exactly. The Horcruxes were among the most obscure and well hidden pieces of Dark Lore, and V'd certainly make sure they'd be even more so. As for Lucius's alleged mastery of Dark Arts, we're talking about the guy who was pwned by his own house-elf (yes, I know about the special magic, still pathetic), and then managed to completely screw up the easiest and most well-laid out operation in the history of covert ops and failed to overcome five barely trained kids. So yeah, "not much of a dark wizard" indeed.

Voldemort vs. Horcrux!Riddle

• A fully empowered diary Riddle? Let's say that Riddle drains all the power from Ginny. And Then What?? Does he merge with Voldemort, work with him as an ally, as a subordinate, or do they go to war with each other? Rowling's FAQ says she can't answer this until all seven books are out, but "it would have strengthened the present-day Voldemort considerably." Well, all seven books have been out for some time now...
  • Strife is pretty senseless here, 'cause V cannot be killed untill all the horcruces are destroyed. On the other hand, if we follow the One Ring analogy, the Horcruxes should regard themselves as integral parts of Voldemort and be loyal to him. I like to think Riddle'd go to Albania and ressurect Voldemort.
  • I read a fanfic where diary Riddle succeeds, and Voldemort's disembodied spirit enters his body and they willingly merge into one consciousness. It could be something like that.
  • I figured Horcrux!Riddle would strike out on his own. Voldemort is not one to ignore weakness (such as being defeated by a baby), and the fact that it was himself it happened to would probably disgust him all the more.
  • Uh, Voldemort's the one who designed the diary Horcrux. Obviously, he wouldn't allow for such a rebellion to happen. I mean, he's not that stupid... right?
  • Presumably Vapormort flies over from Albania and kicks the Diary-soul-fragment right back into the diary.
  • The diary wasn't SUPPOSED to be used until after or during Voldy's take over. He wanted to have the diary Riddle rid the school of muggleborns and then possibly teach or govern the school while the main Voldy worried about keeping adult wizards in line.
  • Per the seventh book, the soul fragments can't reform unless the person feels remorse for their murders. So the diary Riddle wouldn't be able to merge with the real Voldemort. Maybe Voldemort would be able to possess the diary Riddle once his body was fully formed.

The Dead Tell No Tales

• Why was the chamber never found? Ok, you can only open the chamber with Parseltongue. But there are hundreds of freakin' ghosts in the castle! As in: intangible creatures who don't need any chamber to be opened. So, many, many through-wall-walking creatures roam around Hogwarts aimlessly for more than 1000 years. Seriously, how small is the chance that none of them ever accidentally landed in the Chamber of Secrets? How improbable is that?
  • Perhaps Slytherin sealed it off from ghosts with some sort of magic.
  • Maybe some ghost did; remember that the Basilisk stare petrifies ghosts, so they probably assume Mortimer the Clumsy Wanderer just left the castle when the Basilisk actually got him.
  • Plus the chamber is deep deep underground, over perhaps Slytherin made it so that only a Parselmouth can literally find the chamber. Are there any anti-ghost hexes and jinxs? jinxii? jinxes?
  • Fanon has basilisk being a Fidelus secret-keeper. It told Riddle where the Chamber was, and he directed it to show Harry where the opening was. (Which also, by accident, showed Ron and Lockhart.) This explains the lack of ghosts and or teachers to locate it for 1000 years. No one can find it until the basilisk tells them where it is, and the first person it told was Riddle. And after it dies, no one can find it unless Ron or Harry or Lockhart or Voldemort tells them, as they're now the secret keepers, which neatly allows Ron to let Hermione in later. (How this applies with non-possessed Ginny is unknown. Technically, Ron or Harry may have 'showed' her the secret entrance as they flew out.)
  • Except that it didn't. They deduced where it should be. And how could it tell Riddle where the Chamber was before he opened the Chamber?
  • The idea is that basilisk judges students, and if they are the Heir and track down where the Chamber is, it makes the snake appear on the faucet so they can open it, and seeing that snake is akin to the person reading a piece of paper stating where the Order of the Phoenix is. And they can't tell others, until the basilisk died and they became the secret keeper. (What would people in the bathroom who hadn't see the snake faucet seen? Whatever people who watched people walk into 12 Grimwald place would have seen.)
  • There's no light in the long chute that connects Myrtle's bathroom to the Chamber. A ghost would see... a sewer pipe. You'd have to be one bored ghost to decide you wanted to find out where a sewer pipe (even an unusually large one) goes.

Mandrake scarcity

• So... why did they wait until the end of the year to cure the students? Are Mandrakes just that rare? Do the Hogwarts greenhouses have the entire world's supply of mandrakes? St. Mungo's doesn't carry any for, you know, emergencies? Or is Hogwarts so broke that it was considered acceptable for Colin to lose 7 months of education instead of buying some medical potions for him right away?
  • Maybe Mandrakes are only "in season" during June, and if you tried to stock them past that month, they would just "spoil" and become useless.
  • It's a reasonable possibility, but if muggles can buy strawberries in the winter, I expect that wizards could have worked out something with magic. I mean, they're grown in greenhouses anyways. Wizards love making their own lives more convenient via magic, don't they?
  • Yeah! With quills and candles and bulky robes!
  • A fanfic explanation I read was that the mandrakes need to be added in the potion during certain periods of the year (in this case during the summer) which didn't happen until near the end of the school year. It also stated that the potion loses its effectiveness after a few days making stockpiling impossible.
  • Prof. Sprout explains to Harry that they need to grow into adulthood before they can be used in the potion, and as they're very rare they can't just go and buy others.
  • This still does not address the fact that major hospitals like St. Mungo's would have no method of treating anyone in the country for petrification accidents. For months. Is that honestly the state of healthcare in the Wizarding world?
  • It's even worse than that: we know from one of Snape's lessons that there are potions that can instantly turn a toad back into a tadpole. Why aren't there also potions that could artificially grow the Mandrakes to maturity in minutes? Granted, it could be that such forced growth would ruin their curative properties, but it would've been nice to see the idea mentioned and shot down at least.
  • Who is to say the teachers didn't try to get Mandrakes from elsewhere? It's mentioned that the things have to grow and mature before they can be used. If Hogwarts is the only wizarding school in the UK, it's possible that they were the only place that had them. Hermione tells us that Mandrakes are mainly used to cure people that have been cursed or petrified. We never hear of anyone else being petrified in the series, implying that it's a very rare thing. Maybe St Mungo's doesn't have a stock because the condition they're used to cure is so rare.
  • Since the people petrified are basically in suspended animation, and wizarding society on the whole isn't exactly full of what you might call person centred caring, they probably just grow to demand because it is easier and call "no harm, no foul" when someone gets reanimated months later but still physically intact. If there is one thing we learn in this series it is that wizards tend to be both lazy and thoughtless when it comes to health and safety concerns; chalk this up to yet another sign of the wizarding world's stagnation and corruption.
  • Fridge Brilliance - maybe Hogwarts themselves are meant to supply St Mungo's with mandrakes if they're needed. It would explain why Professor Sprout was growing them in the first place.
  • A potential answer I came up with comes from Snakes on a Plane. No idea how accurate it is, but in the film, the people on the ground worry that they won't be able to get the proper antivenom by the time the plane lands, since many of the snakes are from foreign continents, and very few American hospitals carry foreign antivenom. Maybe the same logic applies here - the only creatures capable of causing petrification are Gorgons and (in certain circumstances) the basilisk. If neither of these creatures were native to Britain, it would make sense that no one would think to keep cures for petrification in stock, since it happens so infrequently.

No leads, no suspect, no danger!

• Why didn't Dumbledore shut down the school to hunt down the monster? Let's start with a few facts. As of Colin Creevy's petrification, sometime between Halloween and Christmas:
  • 50 years ago, one student died.
  • One animal and one student has been petrified.
  • There is a written threat that claims that the same threat that killed the student 50 years ago is the cause of the current attacks.
  • What is at stake if Dumbledore doesn't close down the school? Further petrifications or deaths. What is at stake if Dumbledore does close the school? ...His reputation? Every student is equally set back a few months (or a year)?
  • The exact opposite could be argued. What can shutting the school down solve? As you've said he's had 50 years to figure out where the monster came from and has come up with nothing. Shutting it down would just be giving into the demands of the instigator. Besides even though he's headmaster I don't believe he has the authority to shut down the school on the fly like that. He'd need the Governors' approval and they'd much rather think him being Headmaster would protect everyone until Lucius Malfoy says otherwise.
  • The demands of the instigator are "Enemies of the Heir, Beware." That's it. Presumably they meant muggleborns, but shutting down the whole school is not the same as just sending Muggleborns home. Trying to take the moral high ground like "that would be giving into their demands!" is the kind of speech you give to soldiers and their funerals, not to schoolchildren or when making safety policies. He knew the culprit was Tom Riddle last time, and he presumed that as long as Riddle never returned, the monster wouldn't return. This time he doesn't know and he needs to clear the school to search for the beast. I'm going to pull a case of Muggles Do It Better here: when a school receives a bomb threat (or any other kind of threat) the schools IMMEDIATELY go into lockdown, police are called, and a thorough search and investigation is performed to ensure safety before classes resume. And yes, he does have the authority to shut down the school: McGonagall, even as acting Headmistress, could shut down the school within a day of Ginny's disappearance.
  • I'm still under the opinion that even if Dumbledore knew for certain the beast was let out by Tom Riddle that he'd have made a search of the school when he was made Headmaster at some point. There's no reason that another Tom Riddle couldn't come along or a descendant of his couldn't come back and cause trouble again so he'd want to find out where the beast resided in the castle. I believe he had plenty of summers and endless possibilities to search and simply gave up at some point that he wouldn't be able to find it. Besides shutting down the school at that point would have stalled the plot because as stated no one (but a parselmouth) had ever found the Chamber of Secrets after many searches of the school.
  • The last time the school was almost closed, an innocent person was framed and the killer got off with a medal for his efforts. Dumbledore really couldn't risk that happening again, especially when it suggests that a nearly-dead Voldemort is somehow trying to kill people from hundreds of miles away. Given that Voldemort himself was in the school just months ago, there would be far too much at stake if he slipped away again (in Ginny Weasley's schoolbag, for example). Even if he somehow found the Chamber and the monster (which he must have been at least keeping an eye out for all these years, to no avail), what then? It tells him nothing about how Voldemort is doing what he's doing, or whether or not he can keep doing it.
  • And the attack is likely being caused by a student at the school. Shut it down and all your suspects scatter. It's also worth noting that since Hogwarts is a magic school, some things are expected to happen. None of the students are actually killed, and they already have a cure being prepared. Their way of thinking is that once the students are cured, they'll get the identity of the attacker. And the gap between the attacks is long enough to justify keeping the school open. If someone had been killed then it'd be a different story. What's more is that no one knows if whatever or whoever is attacking is even capable of killing. Sure someone was killed fifty years ago, but they don't know if it's the same thing.
  • There's also the possibility that some parents were given the option of taking their children out of school if they wanted - like in the sixth book.

Time Turners

• Ok, I know I kinda abuse this idea, but it's not my fault JR introduced that kind of Game-Breaker and then never bothered to set any constraints on its use beyond some vague, pointless, scary tales. I'm refering, of course, to the Time Turners. There was no need to lock down the school, and there should never have been more than one attack. Because after it'd happened somebody should've travelled back to before it happened, turned themself imperceptible, gone the site of the attack, witnessed it, exposed the culprit and then acted accordingly - maybe killed/detained it on spot, maybe followed it to its lair - that's details. Any ideas why that wasn't done (and no, the default answer is not valid)?
  • The possibility of getting petrified on accident in this case. The rules of time wouldn't be happy if you wind up running into your invisible petrified self. This is of course assuming that this didn't end up happening and the person with the time turner ended up dead causing a coverup of that incident.
  • Technicalities. Once you really start Thinking with Time-Turners, such things shouldn't deter you. Have the first Time Traveller set up some hidden magic survelliance camera at the site of the attack, so that people in the future could see the whole event and prepare accordingly. Like take Fawkes with them and have him pluck Basie's eyes out like exactly he did. Or use some spell that grants you echo-location and thus allows you to fight blind-folded. We're talking professionals here, who, thanks to the TT, have all the time in the world to prepare. Again, they already had Colin Creevy's body to study, so in conjunction with the information about the attacks 50 years ago, I think they had a pretty good idea of what they were against (Just how many magical creatures can petrify their victims anyway?).
  • Although it would be interesting if Omnioculours (the binoculars that they use to record the World Cup in Book 4) would work on a Basilisk or petrify anyone that views it, it could be a good idea. Again they have a good idea what the creature is but they don't know it's a basilisk otherwise they just have roosters patrolling the hallway ready to crow at a second's notice and kill it. Also either I'm underestimating time travel in HP-verse or you're overestimating it. I still think that it has to have some sort of cause and effect otherwise there would be no need to use it in the first place. So say they found a dead basilisk... why would they go back in time to kill it? It has to be done well enough that the person that goes back in time decides to go back in time in the first place.
  • Vanish the corpse, or make it invisible, or transfigure into something untill the time is right, or put a note on it saying "DD, go to the past and kill this thing. Sincerely yours, DD", or do I need to spell everything out? Of course it has to be done well, but we are talking experienced adults here, who are expected to actually plan their actions instead of throwing themselves into the thicket without the slightest idea about what they are doing. But even if they do find the Basie's corpse, so what? It would just be the "Harry saved by the stranger's Patronus in PoA" again (or before). DD would either figure out that it was him who'd killed the beast, because who else could it be, or go back to witness the attack at Colin and reveal the culprit and its slayer and then realise that it should be him.
  • At what point do you draw the line at fixing everything with time travel? Why not just jump back a thousand years and kill Salazar Slytherin as a baby while you're at it?
  • Because it's overly complicated, probably to the point of unfeasibility, it's, to put it mildly, overkill, and it's downright unethical.
  • So on the sliding scale between stopping the first attack and killing Salazar Slytherin, at what point does fixing everything with time travel become wrong? How about stopping Tom Riddle from creating the diary in the first place? Is there a time limit to how far you can go back before it's wrong?
  • What I know for sure is that what I suggest is far less drastic and time-ingressive than what the "heroes" actually pulled off in PoA. So here's your precious limit, if that's what it all about - established by none other than His Infallible Eminence Albus Percival Wulfric Brian DeeDee himself.

  • Like it or not, Stable Time Loop is the reason why, again using Po A for example. Everything Harry and Hermione did when they went back had already happened, because they'd already gone back and done it. That's the definition of a Stable Time Loop! You also have to live through however much time you went back for. That's why Harry and Hermione had to be back in the hospital wing at nearly the same time as they went back in the first place, or they would have broken the time loop. There's no way to go back thousands of years anyway, you'd be dead before you got back and that would break the time loop.
  • "You also have to live through however much time you went back for." BTW, this is just plain not true. Kids had to be back in the hospital because that's where they were expected to be at that moment, and if they were found missing, the sharade would've been exposed. Remember, group2 returns to the ward after group1 already departs from it to the past. Their safe return didn't mean a thing - they could've died on the way back and nothing would've changed for the time travel. So if the TT technically allows for a thousand-year back trip, then it's possible, even though the travellers wouldn't live through to the departure point.

  • ... ... ... and? How does any of this prevent DD from going back and killing Basie after it petrifies Collin (or maybe even before, in which case the events would've gone differently and would've always gone differently so again, no loop-breaking)? As for the second part, I wasn't the one who came up with the whole "go back a thousand years and kill Slytherin/Riddle/whoever as a baby" nonsense because they've apparently run out of valid arguments. I'm fine with a several-hour limit - in all the cases in question it would've been quite enough.

  • ....Because they know they didn't go back in time to begin with, otherwise the problem would have already been solved. I love how quick you are to finger others as being unable to counteract arguments.
  • Well, they kinda are, sorry. What you typed is yet another piece of circular logic and it's not valid with billateral cause and effect. Time-Travel shapes the past. If they didn't go back, there has to be a reason why they wouldn't want to go back other than "they didn't go" because that fact by itself is dependable. It's like you have a genie who can see the future and grants your wish that you're going to make in a few hours. By the moment of the wish-making you already experience its effect, but that's because you're going to make it. If you don't then you shouldn't have experienced it, but genie already knew back then if you were going to. Hence the choice in the present is the cause for the past (and the present). And even if the past doesn't look like it was interfered with, that still doesn't mean anything. As I wrote above it would be easy for a wizard to disguise the results of their interferance, so that their future self could act "from a clean slate", especially if they agree in advance to proceed this way. After all, they always have an option to go back and not interfere, just witness the events.
  • Time Turners probably have a limit on how long they can take you back, even if that limit is just human exhaustion. One turn of the hourglass = one hour back in time. That's an awful lot of turns to go back a decent amount of time. I'm fairly sure it would have taken even Dumbledore more than a day to get his hands on rare, powerful magical devices which are usually kept in the Department of Mysteries. Even if he just happened to have one on his person at the exact moment he realised Colin had been petrified, it would take a few hours more to work out a foolproof plan - because you cannot let anyone else see you, touch you, suspect you are there or you break the time loop.
  • Taking more than a day just explains why it's not usable on the first victim. It doesn't explain why it's not usable on the second. A time turner used to set up the wizarding equivalent of a disillusioned video camera would have revealed what was doing it. Of course, this pretends the big mystery was what was doing it, whereas I am convinced that DD already knew it was a basilisk..he just didn't know how Voldemort was letting it out or where the Chamber was. However, recording the attack might still revealed something relevant, either Ginny giving orders or the direction the basilisk came from. And there's always the option of killing it after it after the attack, and running off with the dead body to keep from causing a paradox.
  • Who. Who in the name of fuck was supposed to see or touch him in the middle of the night in his own school that he wouldn't be able to conceal himself from and how exactly was that supposed to break anything. No, seriously, I'd really like to see at least some semblance of a plausible scenario. As for the first part, yeah, maybe, that is why my chief point was that using T Ts to establish the circumstances of important events should've by all means been an adopted and widespread practice, and I still see no reason why it wasn't. And before somebody winds up that worn out "Time Travel is dangerous because Stable Time Loop" song again, please bother to answer my first question.
  • The point of a stable time loop is that, if you change it at all, it means bad things. Exactly what bad things this would mean depends on who's telling the story, but, like it or not, if Dumbledore or anyone else had gone back in time to stop these events from occuring, it would have broken the stable time loop. There is no "creating another loop," because doing so would entail the breaking of the old one, which means bad things. Sorry if I seem a bit repetitive, but that's basically what it boils down to. Whether or not the Stable Time Loop explanation is worn out or not is irrelevant, just because you keep insisting it's not a valid answer doesn't make it so.
  • It is not a valid answer because it doesn't mean what you think it means. The STL can only occur after you go back in time, hence the TIME LOOP. Before you go back, there's no loop to break or change. The point of STL is that the altered timeline should still contain an incentive for the time travel that had led to alteration to happen. That's it. As I've already stated above, that's not a problem for competent adults who know what they are doing.
  • The fundamental problem here is that a stable time loop is, itself, a paradox. Because there is no meta time - you can not have a timeline "before" the loop existed. Thus the loop always exists. Later, harry only survives the dementor attack because a future version of himself casts his patronus. But that version was only there because he had survived the event that he is not taking part in. That loop exists as a fact of the timeline. Attempting to alter it in any way would end very very badly. You can no more "create" a time loop than you can destroy one. In settings with this form of time travel, they simply exist. So, back to the argument at hand: how could a time Turner be used to help out with this case? I would argue that, a person taking a completely passive role - simply observing - the attack (but never moving to prevent it) could certainly go back and watch the event. They would then wait, until their past self travels back, then revel what they had learned. It would not prevent the attack, or save the first victim. But it would let everyone know what really happened. The risk though, is that if something happened to them (such as being killed by the creature they are going to back to observe) they could cause an unstable paradox.
  • The risk to the observer can be easily circumvented with remote survelliance. They do have magical cameras (and even videocameras, Harry uses one during the Quiddich Championat in "Goblet", and they can animate things, make them levitate, turn invisible etc. After learning about the specifics, you're just set an ambush and kill Basie. If you don't want to complicate things, then you do it after the attack, so yes, poor Corvin would still have to get stoned.
  • OP of the ninth post in this folder, please don't be condescending while having a discussion with others.
  • And what's wrong with vague, scary tales. This is like the Headscratchers page on Doctor Who. People don't seem satisfied unless everything is totally spelled out in stone. Time is a very powerful, mysterious, and sometimes scary force. I doubt Time Turners are used much at all in the Wizarding World. McGonagall had to practically beg the Ministry to issue one to Hermione and that was just for studies. Even then she had to be very careful. I think it's actually more interesting if certain things about magic are left unexplained. It lets us use our imaginations and gives the books a sense of wonder.
  • Didn't one of the later installments (or Cursed Child, or Pottermore) reveal that the standard Time-Turners in use back then could only take you back about five hours? Colin Creevey was discovered sometime in the dead of night, at which point the Ministry would presumably be closed. By the time someone made it there to request the use of a Time-Turner the next morning, it would've been too late for them to go back and catch a glimpse of Colin's attacker.
  • The Ministry - sure, but we're talking about a crime. Our vulgar muggle police is on stand-by 24/7 but the Aurorat isn't?
  • Aurors, maybe, but I doubt the Unspeakables who work in the Department of Mysteries are. Order of the Phoenix implies that they don't have any sort of a night shift, since the Department was deserted when Harry and the DA went there. As mentioned above, too, whoever or whatever attacked Colin Creevey also reduced the film in his camera to ash when he tried to photograph it. The teachers may've been afraid of trying to catch even a glimpse of something capable of that, especially when the consequences for failure are being trapped and petrified in a time you aren't supposed to be.

Moaning Myrtle's ghost

• Why did Myrtle become a ghost in the first place? Doesn't Nearly-Headless Nick mention at some point that you need to prepare some kind of spell ahead of time to become a ghost after death?
  • No. Have you been reading too much fan fiction? Here's what he says:
    "Wizards can leave an imprint of themselves upon the earth, to walk palely where their living selves once trod," said Nick miserably. "But very few wizards choose that path."
    "Why not?" said Harry. "Anyway - it doesn't matter - Sirius won't care if it's unusual, he'll come back, I know he will!"
    And so strong was his belief, Harry actually turned his head to check the door, sure, for a split second, that he was going to see Sirius, pearly-white and transparent but beaming, walking through it towards him.
    "He will not come back," repeated Nick. "He will have... gone on."
    "What d'you mean, 'gone on'?" said Harry quickly "Gone on where? Listen - what happens when you die, anyway? Where do you go? Why doesn't everyone come back? Why isn't this place full of ghosts? Why -?"
    "I cannot answer," said Nick.
    "You're dead, aren't you?" said Harry exasperatedly. "Who can answer better than you?"
    "I was afraid of death," said Nick softly. "I chose to remain behind. I sometimes wonder whether I oughtn't to have… well, that is neither here nor there… in fact, I am neither here nor there..."
  • Also, didn't Myrtle say she wanted to haunt that girl, Olive or something, who made her cry and make Olive's remaining years at school horrible? Basically she became a ghost out of spite.

Dobby's motivation

• How did Dobby know at the beginning that Harry was in danger? It seems that Lucius's whole plan was just to dump the diary on Ginny, without knowing much about what it was or what it could do. Did Dobby somehow figure out that the diary was a horcrux of Voldemort and that it would specifically target Harry?
  • Dobby just saw Harry as a symbol of the Light and didn't want him to be in the middle of a danger zone. That's it, basically.
  • Lucius talks in his sleep? "Mmm...zzz...kill Potter....zzz...haunted diary...zzz...more marmalade, please..."
  • Or alternatively, he knew one of Harry's best friends was a Muggle-born, and thought that if she got attacked he would go off on some half-baked plan to rescue or avenge her. Which, with Harry Potter, is a pretty reasonable assumption.
  • Or he overheard Draco whining about Potter again, and Lucius saying that Potter wouldn't be a problem anymore soon.
  • Dobby must've known a fair bit about what the diary could do, else he wouldn't have dropped his spectacularly-ineffective hint that it was not He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named who was involved. Presumably, Lucius was so indifferent to Dobby's presence or welfare that he didn't care whether the house-elf was eavesdropping when he discussed his plan with his wife, or looking over his shoulder when he wrote it into the diary, letting it know his intentions.
  • It's still not making sense unless Dobby somehow knows the diary is intelligent. Lucius knows that Voldemort opened the Chamber of Secrets a long time, and somehow the diary can open it again. And he also knows that the diary, being created decades before Harry Potter was born, can have no malice towards or even knowledge of Harry. The only way that anyone could conclude the diary might make things dangerous for Harry is if they know it can communicate with people. (Just knowing he could communicate with it doesn't mean he'd know it was a Horcrux. Wizard paintings, for example, have memories but not souls.) But Lucius did not know that, because he failed to communicate with it. So how did Dobby know that?
  • What gave you an impression he didn't communicate with it? Most likely he did, and Dobby indeed snooped on him.
  • You can put this down mainly onto Lucius's arrogance and mistreatment of Dobby. Dobby probably hated living under Voldemort's tyrannical rule, and saw Harry Potter as the hero who saved his kind from that sort of persecution. Lucius clearly had a plan with the diary, meaning he probably worked with some other Death Eaters to get his hands on it and orchestrate getting it into Hogwarts somehow. Dobby probably overheard, Malfoy have even let him listen in believing he wasn't intelligent enough to actually know what they were talking about. Thus Dobby knew that Hogwarts wouldn't be safe, and went to warn Harry about it

Why not just tell McGonagall?

• When Harry managed to open the Chamber, why didn't he immediately go inform McGonagall or some other trustworthy authority figure, instead of going and trying to kill the basilisk and rescue Ginny himself? It would have been a much smarter and more responsible thing to do.
  • If Harry always did the smart, responsible thing, he would be a different character. That character would be named "Hermione".
  • Except that he was going to tell McGonagall about the Chamber, and they even went to the teachers' room to do so and then, for some inexplicable reason, they didn't. They had both time and opportunity, the idea itself occured to them, since they went to Lockhart, so...what went wrong, why did they go to him of all people, or didn't go to MG after they exposed him as a total fraud?
  • They didn't have time to go to McGonagall after they realised Lockhart was a fraud.
  • Right. Because after they'd spend an entire effing day doing absolutly nothing, those twenty minutes would've been downright crucial! Mind you I'm not talking about how it turned out, but about what they could surmise from their POV.
  • Snape was in the teacher's lounge. It's possible that if they had revealed their presence, he'd have pounced on the opportunity to have them both expelled on the spot for breaking school rules again, even in the middle of a crisis. He'd only have to remind the other faculty that Dumbledore'd laid down a one-strike stricture on the pair of them after the flying-car incident, and McGonagall would've had no choice but to suspend them both — probably without stopping to listen to their story first; that's how Harry's luck always runs — pending Dumbledore's return and co-signing of their expulsion order.
  • *Sigh* Suspend them from what? They were talking about closing the school. Even if I concede the Snape actually wanted to get Harry expelled (which I normally don't believe for a second), at that moment all he would've got would be some incredulous looks and an advise to get his priorities straight. Not that it matters in the slightest. After the lounge the boys had an entire day to approach MG legitimately.
  • My best guess is the same reason he chucks away his wand when he finds Ginny. Kidding aside, he probably was too shocked after hearing that Ginny was kidnapped that he didn't think of anything else. That still doesn't explain why he didn't call for any teacher after they went to find Lockhart. He probably thought it was a good idea to go and fight a gigantic serpent that can kill with only looking at you with a useless professor WITHOUT a wand and Ron.
  • Had it happened in a span of moments, like with the wand, then sure. The problem is, just as in the previous book, they spend an entire day after they hear the shocking news, sitting around their living room, doing absolutely nothing. Sure, there'd be initial shock, but they'd have to be in a fucking trance not to think at some point in all that time: "Hey, weren't we going to tell McGonagall about the Chamber and everything?"
  • Please remember in the previous book they DID tell Minvera but she didn't believe them. And then Ron&Harry tried to stand guard outside the third-floor cooridor and that didn't work since Minvera showed up again and said "You think you're harder to get past than a pack of protections" and Hermione was supposed to be trailing Snape..but that didn't work either.
  • Yes, but, again, they were going to tell her, apparently having realised that the last year events would've bought them some credibility. And besides, MG didn't disbelieve them - she dismissed them on the claim that the Stone was perfectly safe^note which, by the way, it totally was. This time was different, she had no reasons to dismiss them.
  • And last year they were meddling in something they had no business to be meddling in. This year they were meddling in Ron's missing sister. At the very least McGonagall has to politely stand there and listen to Ron's theory about what happened to her.
  • Which is still no guarantee that she'd actually do it. And given her past history of almost never taking time to actually hear a student's story before handing out a snap judgement (just check out all the other Headscratchers along that vein), I can entirely understand why neither Harry nor Ron thought she'd listen. After all, at this point in the timeline their two main experiences with McGonagall are her refusing to let them finish saying why they think someone is going after the Philosopher's Stone before she adamantly insists on having her own way, and her handing them a 150 point deduction based on a 'You tried to set up Draco!' theory that was all made up in her own mind, didn't even make any sense given the circumstances, and most importantly, was handed down by her before they could even finish their first sentence re: what they were actually doing. Its not about whether she's right or wrong in those cases, its about whether she actually lets a student finish talking before already making up her mind — and she never does.
  • *sigh*. They were going to tell her. What, did they suddenly remember in the middle of it: "Oh yeah, it's McGonagall, she's a bitch and probably won't listen to us!" Even if so, how that excuses not even trying, when Giny's life is at stake?! Besides, this occurence was nothing like the previous ones. With the stone, MG (seemingly) dismissed them because she believed that there was no danger^note On the surface. She actually did it because they were supposed to go after the stone themselves. Also explains her harshness - she's distraught and afraid for them, but cannot show it.. On the other hand, this time it's a (seemingly) legitimate emergency, and MG loudly aknowledged that she's out of ideas, and they'd have to close the school. There's no reason why the kids would think she wouldn't grasp at the straw and listen to them.
  • You're probably forgetting that they get shocked out of their plan when they discover it's Ginny who has been taken. They spend ages in the common room - then Harry remembers that Lockhart is meant to be trying to get down into the Chamber. They're intending to go to a teacher about it, one they don't like but is still meant to be a famous monster hunter. When they go to him, they discover he's a fraud and he attacks them sort of. It'd be perfectly in character for Harry not to think of telling McGonagall until after they'd already gone down into the Chamber. Hell they might have meant to go and tell McGonagall after telling Lockhart what they knew - but forgot because Lockhart was exposed and they wanted to save Ginny straight away.
  • I highly doubt shock can lock you out of reality for an enitre day, especially if you're a twelve year old boy. Especially if you're Harry, for whom it is not even a personal tradegy. Also, they knew Lockheart was a fraud. They've had tons of evidence of that throughout the year. They've said it themselves tons of times throughout the year. Going to Snape would've been more plausible than to him at that point.
  • What makes you think that they'll ask for help from a teacher who showed them no sign of support for the entirety of first and second year?
  • They didn't tell her because they had Lockhart to take with him, who was already given the mission of finding the chamber and monster, and thought that was good enough because they were in a rush, not knowing how much time Ginny had left.

real life example-I learned just before the holidays (Christmas) of 2018 that one of my same-age school friends was dead I was in shock for not just that day but the entire next day and I was a full fledged Muggle adult at the time.

Let's Crash at Borgin and Burkes!

• Harry accidentally floos into said shop and then quitely leaves with none the wiser. Wait, so a shady shop that deals in Dark artifacts has no security against such intrusions and possible eavesdroppers that could crash in, accidentally or not, while the owner is conducting sensible business? Like a separate antechamber, or an alarm, or some magical lock on the fireplace? Nothing? Really?
  • Since Lucius is trying to uphold his image as a 'fine upstanding citizen', odds are that he Floo'd in and Borgin and/or Burke simply forgot to relock the Floo afterwards, or else left it open so as not to convince the unrepentant Death Eater (arriving with a Dark Object so unholy that Grindelwald is never once mentioned as considering their use) that they are trying to delay his departure.
  • Or maybe it's the emergency Floo for when the Ministry raids the place and they didn't think about someone arriving via their emergency exit.

Myrtle's Name

• What is Moaning Myrtle's first name? (Or surname, if Myrtle is her first?) It seems absurd to me that the mythos is simply missing this piece of information, but I can't seem to find it anywhere...
  • If Moaning was her first name, that would explain the bullying. Although the same would be if it were her nickname.
  • There's actually quite a lot of bits of information we don't know. For example, the first names of Hermione's parents have never been mentioned.
  • Myrtle would be her first name. A lot of the other ghosts are only known by their nicknames. She must have just forgotten it over the years.
• Confirmed by Word of God: Her full name is (was) Myrtle Elizabeth Warren.

Nobody will know about my past unless I personally tell everybody about it!

• In regard of the hidding place for the Ring Horcrux in the Gaunts' shack. V rationalizes that nobody would look there because nobody was supposed to know about his heritage. Except, of course, that the Diary!Riddle identified himself as both the Heir of Slytherin and as Voldemort, which DD was kind enough to relay to Lucius, meaning V couldn't not know that his heritage was known to the enemy. And knowing Gaunts, they most likely flaunted their lineage on every corner. So how could V be still assured that the Shack was safe and why the hell didn't he re-hide the Ring?
  • I don't get the impression that the Gaunts were exactly well-known. Yes, they were vocal about their lineage, but they were also just a few unlikable freaks living out in the middle of nowhere, and they didn't exactly associate with visitors if the one we see in Half-Blood Prince is any indication at all.
  • They are still the last descendants of noble house, and the one of Slytherin at that. You'd think that their backstory would be recorded somewhere in the archives, and all the wizards apparently have to record their whereabouth with the Ministery as well.
  • They talk about in through out the books, V is arrogant and maybe he thought that DD didn't know who his mother was that would have made it harder to track down the Gaunts. Or even more plausibly it may have been nearly impossible to track down records of the Gaunts house since they rarely interacted with anyone.
  • Voldemort was the first dark wizard ever to try using multiple horcruxes, so he probably wouldn't have expected Dumbledore to go looking for more than one of them. Indeed, the fact that the headmaster had heard about the diary's properties from Ginny and Harry, and knew that it had already been destroyed, means that he might well have assumed it was Voldemort's only Horcrux.
    • Dumbledore might have assumed that until Voldemort resurrected himself, at which point Voldemort should have expected D to think "How did he survive the destruction of his only Horcrux? Oh shit, there's more than one." True, Voldemort is canonically extremely hubristic and might not have thought Dumbledore would track down the Gaunts' shack, but the amount of times we have to patch over plot holes with "oh, Voldemort's just that hubristic" gets kind of tiring.
  • In DH, Voldemort is revealed to think something along the lines of "surely I would've known if something happened to my horcruxes", so he definitely is under the impression he would feel it or something if they died. Perhaps if his soul was only in two pieces, he would've, and that assumption came from the existing information on what having one horcrux is like or perhaps it's just egotism and speculation or denial, who knows... but he really doesn't appear to know what his horcruxes are doing. Voldemort made the ring horcrux and hid it in the Gaunt shack after he made the Diary horcrux, so I don't think Diary!Tom was aware that he was supposed to be keeping that info on the downlow, and afterwards, Voldemort has no way of knowing that Diary!Tom told anyone anything of the sort. Heck, his only knowledge of the incident comes from what non-Harry, non-Dumbledore people know so beyond what the pair of them revealed to Lucius in the office afterwards, Voldemort has no idea what occurred down there. And heck, he has more backup horcruxes, if he thought, "Hey, maybe the horcrux that opened the CoS might've revealed to Harry exactly why he was able to do that. I'll go reinforce the protections: one of these things has got to get Dumbledore when he comes looking." And then when he never "felt" the horcrux destroyed as he was certain he would, he assumed that the secret stayed safe.

Closing the Chamber

• Why is it seen as such a problem that the Chamber of Secrets is open? When it was last open c.50 years previously (when Tom was a student) it was presumably closed later and many of the teachers were there then (we know DD was). So how come nobody knows where the Chamber is or how to close it? It wasn't open the whole time (Possessed!Ginny opened it this time) so somebody must have shut it 50 years ago (unless it shuts itself after a while, but that seems highly unlikely).
  • Um, Riddle closed it to frame Hagrid.
  • But how would closing it frame Hagrid? Although that may be supported by the text (or Word of God) it makes more sense for Tom to go "Who unleashed the monster? How about that Halfbreed kid who seems to have an unhealthy fascination with dangerous creatures?" Shutting the Chamber doesn't really help unless he does it publicly ("Look, it obviously isn't me that caused this problem because here's me solving it!") and he's psycho enough to not care that it randomly kills people (it won't kill him as he's Slytherin's heir).
  • Okay, perhaps I wasn't clear. Riddle closed the Chamber after Hagrid was caught so that it would look like catching Hagrid had stopped the attacks.
  • Riddle knew Hogwarts would be shut down if the attacks continued, which meant he'd go back to the orphanage. That's why he decided to frame Hagrid in the first place: so no one get curious why the attacks stopped.
  • Thanks and having re-read Chamber of Secrets, you are correct — though it really highlights just how much Wizard justice sucks. "It was Hagrid! Let's expel him! And even though he's still living on castle grounds we're sure the Monster will stop attacking!"
  • Um doesn't anyone realize that the ONLY reason Hagrid is a gameskeeper is because DD KNOWS that Hagrid didn't open the Chamber?
  • It seems to me that the "official story" used to rationalise the first opening of the Chamber was that the Chamber was never opened in the first place, and might not even exist. Riddle's frame-up story was that Hagrid, an oaf who "raises werewolf cubs under his bed", accidentally released his illegal pet acromantula into the school, leading it to kill Myrtle and attack several other students. That's why the Chamber is still considered a myth fifty years later — the first attack is believed to have been a mere case of Hagrid's monster hobby going horribly wrong. That's also probably why Hagrid's punishment was a fairly lenient one for someone who caused a death: He's not viewed as a murderer, just someone who accidentally caused someone's death by stupidly purchasing an illegal, dangerous pet.
  • But then how does his exposure and expulsion prevent the school from being closed? His pet was still on the loose! And all Riddle prooved was that its murderous intent was its own, not Hagrid's. What was the rationale then? That Riddle scared the beast away and it would most definitely not return because he said so? Someone above says "Riddle closed the Chamber after Hagrid was caught so that it would look like catching Hagrid had stopped the attacks." I'm sorry, but that makes no sense. No attacks for the moment doesn't mean no more attacks ever again. Unless they find the beast and kill it, the school is in the same danger as before.
  • Presumably, they did find an acromantula (after Aragog bred) and killed it. Case closed! (Except for the dozens of other acromantulas that escaped into the forest). But hey, no one goes in there except centaurs, so who cares!

Why wasn't the other horcrux destroyed?

• You know, the one inside Harry. Basilisk fang + venom kills horcruxes, demonstrated twice in the series. Harry is one of the horcruxes, and he was stabbed by the fang. So why isn't the horcrux gone?
  • Because Fawkes saved him? Maybe if Fawkes had let him die, the horcrux in Harry would have been destroyed.
  • And since Voldemort hadn't used Harry's blood to resurrect yet, Harry would have just stayed dead. Killing one more horcrux for the price of Voldemort winning.
  • Also, that horcrux was in his forehead, not his arm. I assume the vemon didn't have time to reach there before Fawkes neutralised it with his tears.
  • if the horcrux was specific to his forehead, why couldn't he have just amputated the part of forehead that was affected? And before you say that's impossible, muggle surgery has already figured out how to do things like that.
  • Because it is a piece of soul, not just a kind of tattoo that you could simply cut off. It likely was connected to Harry's mind/soul in some way. And this is not exactly known territory for wizards.
  • The horcrux inside Harry likely wasn't destroyed because Harry didn't die. Remember that a horcrux can only be destroyed by damaging its container beyond magical repair. Harry could still be healed, so the horcrux survived. But when he died, he was beyond healing or any sort of normal wizard magic. He only survives because of some kind of higher magic that seems to govern how souls, ghosts and death work, and by extension, horcruxes.
  • The thing inside Harry might not technically be a 'horcrux' at all. Horcruxes are souls stuck inside non-living things, and when you destroy the thing they're in, they are destroyed. Aka, the 'opposite of souls'. The part of Voldemort's soul inside Harry is notably not destroyed when his body 'dies'. Not 'his body is destroyed', it just dies, or not even that. And yet that soul piece goes to limbo along with Harry, just like a normal soul. (Well, except it can't function because it's not enough like a person.) It doesn't follow the stated horcrux rules at all, ever! Which seems like a mistake until you remember it wasn't created as a horcrux either, and it's probably our mistake to assume it works like one.
  • Whether or not Nagini followed the horcrux rules is an interesting question. Was it purely the horcrux prep, in which case yes, she should follow the rules, or was it something in 'living thing', in which case she shouldn't, or was it something to do with the piece attaching to Harry’s soul, in which case...do snakes have souls?
  • Another fun question is: Did Harry, and even Nagini, work as tethers at all? Maybe if you put your soul inside living things, those souls now count as part of those things, and don't tether you at all? Maybe half the end of the battle was pointless and someone should have tried killing Voldemort after the Diadem was destroyed.

Powered By a Forsaken Mandrake?

• So, the Mandrakes can become "moody and secretive", they throw parties and even demonstrate romantic interest in each other. That pretty much speaks of intelligence to me. And then the good doctor Pomphrey hacks them all into pieces and makes them into a potion. And nobody has any problems with this... why?
  • Mandrakes might just be a plant equivalent to a higher intelligence animal, like a monkey or pig. Sometimes those get chopped up.
  • I don't know. Have you ever seen even a monkey or a dolphin described as secretive or doing something that might be interpreted as a party?
  • Yes, for a certain definition of party...
  • Dogs are able to decide whether some treat is worth getting scolded, and look suitably guilty if caught. Young wolves can leave their parents/pack if they decide to start their own family - And may even come back home if for some reason that doesn't work out. Humans don't necessarily have the monopoly on things like that, so the mandrakes going through some sort of puberty etc doesn't necessarily mean they're sapient.
  • Wizards are notorious for treating non-wizards very poorly, even if they have some sort of "intelligence" (goblins, house-elves, Muggles, etc.), with no qualms. So their treatment of Mandrakes, something they could easily say is just a plant is not surprising in the least (especially since they use Mandrakes in various potions/antidotes and don't just slaughter them for no reason).
  • Yes, but I got an impression that treating non-wizards poorly was supposed to be a bad thing. That it was the central message of the entire story. It was, after all, the point of clash between good and evil in this story.
  • Yet another failing of the Harry Potter books- that J.K. brings up moral and ethical issues like the treatment of non-wizards, yet never gives it a serious analysis. It exists, and we're just supposed to be OK with it.
  • I always had the impression that they just used the leaves. Does it ever say what part of the Mandrake is needed for the potion? I mean, Mandrakes are rare, right? We don't want to be slaughtering them, we want to be able to grow more. And seeing as Mandrakes behave in ways very similar to humans, one would presume that allowing them to...erm...move into each other's pots is the best way of getting more Mandrakes. So, maybe they just use the leaves, and maybe having their leaves cut off is like having a haircut.
  • Yeah, they basically do say that they will "hack them". It doesn't sound like the leaves would suffice.
    • Doesn't say what part they'll be hacking, though. . .
  • Well plants are considered living things as well, if not human. Mandrakes aren't listed in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them so we can assume they're classed as plants rather than beings or beasts. The definition of being is "any creature who can understand the laws of the Wizarding World", so Mandrakes don't appear to qualify. Goblins and dementors are considered beings, while merpeople and centaurs aren't. Mandrakes we can assume are just plants that imitate a vagueness of human life but aren't really human. Hell, maybe the lifelike characteristics vanish as soon as they're ready to be cut up.

Ginny Weasley Feels Pretty Good Now, Thank You Very Much

• Honestly, I'm amazed that no one else brought this up until now. Because after rereading Chamber (which I feel is a terribly underrated installment in the series), I began to wonder: why is Ginny Weasley, age twelve, totally fine at the end of the book? This is her first year of school, and she spent it being demonically possessed and having her emotions devoured by an Evil Overlord who made her into his own personal tool for ethnic cleansing at Hogwarts. And she's totally fine by the end of the book. Uh, no. No, that's not how people work. All that I've seen this year while rereading the books is Ginny conveniently being around in Order of the Phoenix to tell Harry that he probably isn't possessed by Voldemort.
  So let's review:
  • Her very first year at school, gets possessed by the spirit of Wizard Hitler.
  • It makes her try to help the Basilisk kill people.
  • She is eleven years old.
  • She suffers no psychological consequences for any of this.
  • I don't care how strong or brave you are, and I'm not asking that Ginny be a mess for the rest of her life. But she sure as hell wouldn't recover that quickly after being made into Tom Riddle's Apocalypse Maiden for the better part of a year.
  • This is partially explained in Book 5. Ginny didn't suffer any psychological trauma because she didn't remember much about her time under Riddle's control. There were just blank spaces in her memory during those times, which is why it took her several months to figure out what was going on with the book in the first place. So while she might have had a bit of a My God, What Have I Done? moment after finding out what happened, it's not really the same as watching someone else controlling your body.
  • It also helps that nobody was actually killed, aside from some roosters.
  • What made you think she didn't suffer consequences in the first place? In the end of "Chamber" she's clearly shocked and dismayed, but the full realisation probably hasn't hit her yet, and the next time she plays a prominent role is in "Order", which is two years later. Plenty of time to both have a breakdown and get herself together off-screen with help of her family and/or professionals (provided that wretched verse has them).
  • At the start of POA, when the Dementors boarded the train, it was mentioned that Ginny was badly affected by them as well, second worst to Harry himself. I think that shows that she wasn't OK and was still very traumatized by what happened the year before.
  • Cursed Child does include a bit of dialogue in which she and Harry reminisce about the aftermath of the events in the Chamber. Basically, Ginny was sitting alone in the corner of the common room, being ignored by everyone, until a certain messy-haired boy with glasses came over and invited her to play a game of Exploding Snap. So, the reason she isn't shown to be in a funk or anything is because the books are told from the POV of the person who helped pull her out of it.
  • One point worth considering is that when the book says Ginny is, "perfectly happy again," this is from Harry's POV. Harry and Ginny barely know each other at this point, so this really just means that Ginny seems superficially happier from the perspective of someone who doesn't know her very well. And presumably, she is happier than she was when she was under Riddle's control. If in the midst of that, she's still having nightmares, would Harry know? It's not exactly information that she'd be eager to share with her crush. Note also that, for all intents and purposes, Harry never knew pre-diary Ginny, so what is even his baseline for normal Ginny behavior? If he's relying on Ron's judgement... well, Ron does tend to be pretty oblivious about this sort of thing.

Draco's Exam Scores

• When Harry sees Malfoy Senior and Malfoy Junior, the former is berating the latter for not scoring higher than Hermione on the first year exams. Is this an indicator that while Hermione was the top student of her year, Draco was in second place? I suppose it could mean that Lucius Malfoy is so obsessed with blood purity that he only cares that a Muggleborn beat Draco, and excuses Draco for coming in behind kids from wizarding families, but the wording implies Hermione was the only one to beat Draco. Any ideas?
  • Pure conjecture here, but I have always thought that Draco was smart and did well on his exams. Probably he did exceptionally well in Potions, considering that Snape plays favorites, but still, he couldn't give Draco good marks unless the work was there to back it up. That said, I doubt that exam scores were published or that Lucius knew exactly where Draco fell on the class list, but Hermione has already made a name for herself as "the cleverest witch of our year" as Harry says later in HBP. That is probably what Lucius has heard, and like you said, he is frustrated that a Muggle-born has that title and not his son or another pureblood (who are probably all his nephews or second cousins or something anyway). So I don't think that Draco is necessarily second, but I do think that he is academically successful. Again, just theories.
  • Draco comes from a family which is obsessed with status and prestige, given that he is their only son, and possibly the only male Malfoy heir in existence, he probably has a lot riding on his shoulders. It's reasonable to assume that the Malfoy's invested a lot of time and money into Draco's education before Hogwarts, including private tuition. Draco's parents are probably the pushiest parents in the wizarding world, and so Lucius would be understandably livid when he learnt that a muggle-born student with no prior magical education was beating his son academically. He would consider Draco to be wasting his potential, and un-confirming the Malfoy's thinly veiled prejudice against muggle-born wizards. So it actually makes a lot of sense that Draco was the second best in the year, since he had lots of prior education, and constantly had his parents pushing him to meet their incredibly high standards.
  • From the scene in Borgin & Burkes I got the impression that Draco's grades were bad. His dad's first complaint is that if Draco doesn't do better then he may not be suited for any decent job in the future. Draco then tries to make excuses for his grades, claiming all the teachers have favorites, which is when he specifically brings up Hermione. Mr. Malfoy's response struck me as "you should be embarrassed to talk about a muggle-born girl doing so much better than you. stop making excuses". To me, Draco seems like the kind of kid who is arrogant and thinks studying and homework are beneath him and who wouldn't put in much actual effort.
  • As someone who also grew up in an academically overachieving family, I can tell you that a parent telling their kid "you won't be suited for any decent job with these marks" doesn't have to indicate bad grades. It reflects more on the parent's temperament than on the student's actual level of success. Maybe Draco is getting 90s and Lucius is asking why they aren't 95s or 100s; there's no way of knowing.

What on earth possessed Lockhart to teach?

• The series has demonstrated that if it is nothing else, Hogwarts is an extremely hands-on school. So why would a professional fraud put himself in a situation where he would be repeatedly called on to perform acts he is fully aware he can't do? He can't even handle a second-year class on pixie management, one shudders to think how some of the higher-year classes went. For that matter Lockhart probably went to Hogwarts as a boy, which means the school would have some memory of his actual wizarding talent, unless his career as a liar started early.
  • Regardless of his actual skill level, Lockhart is an arrogant dick. Much of the time, narcissists like him can't actually see their own flaws despite mounting evidence like what he has to do to keep his charade going. So he assumes he's competent while he's really anything but. If anyone else wanted the job, he probably would have been out the door long before the Basilisk even started attacking people.
  • Besides, some of the HR choices Hogwarts had made strongly clash with its definition as "hands-on". Lockhart apparently decided, that if Snape, Trelawney and Binns were kept on payroll, bamboozling his way in would be a breeze.
  • How could a narcissist like him resist getting paid to be the center of attention for several young, impressionable wizards and witches?
  • Moreover, impressionable wizards and witches who might just be young and naive enough to actually believe his BS.
  • Let's not forget the most obvious motivation - every single student he taught was required to buy all of his crappy books as required reading.
  • Well what would you do if you were in DD's shoes. Cancel DA for the entire year or choose the only willing person to do the job no matter how incompent they were?
  • Its another title for him. One that he can not gain any other way, carries an incredible amount of prestige and probably would net him another book; one where he more than likely becomes the mentor to the Boy Who Lived, spends the entire year doing one heroic thing after another and where every teacher (and one suspects Dumbledore and Snape in particular) was in awe of him. Its actually a pretty sweet deal from his perspective, pity Voldemort has to choose that exact year to open the Chamber.
  • From Pottermore:
    Albus Dumbledore, the Headmaster during Lockhart's time, happened to have known two of the wizards whose memories Lockhart erased, and had a shrewd and accurate idea what was happening.[1] He correctly believed that dragging Lockhart into a normal, school atmosphere would reveal his fradulence and, a vacancy in Defence Against the Dark Arts having opened up in June 1992, tracked down the author and, slyly hinting that teaching Harry Potter, who was a second-year student there at the time, would boost Lockhart's popularity beyond anything else, convinced Lockhart to return to Hogwarts (something Lockhart had not been too keen to do, as many of his teachers were still there and might have remembered his foolishness and ineptitude)
    When Lockhart had erased the memories of two wizards, Dumbledore eventually found out and decided to track him down and make him pay for his crimes. Dumbledore offered Lockhart a position as the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, under the correct belief that school is the best location to expose the fraud for what he is. Lockhart was reluctant at first, as he was aware that his former educators remain vigilant of his incompetence, but was instantly swayed when Dumbledore mentioned Harry Potter's fame, which Lockhart would believe as a boost to his own.[1] Whether the other professors knew of Dumbledore's ploy against Lockhart is unknown, but according to Hagrid, the main reason for Lockhart's appointment was that he was the only applicant for the cursed position.
  • You know the saying "those who can't do, teach"? It's sort of Truth in Television. Lockhart appears to be relying on his books to make money, but there's only so many monster hunters you can track down, memory wipe and take credit for. Perhaps he liked the idea of a steady paycheck. A lot of people in certain professions (dancing, acting, filmmaking for example) teach those subjects to supplement their income.

So, who did send Harry that singing Valentine?

• Draco assumes it was Ginny because of how upset she looks, but we know that's actually because she just saw Riddle's diary fall out of Harry's bag. So, if it wasn't Ginny, who was it? How many secret admirers does 12-year-old Harry have at this point?
  • No idea. Apparently there's a theory that Fred and George sent it to him, just to wind him up.
  • Who says she didn't send it? Just because she was alarmed by the presence of the diary doesn't mean that she didn't send the card. After all, she might've thought that flushing it was the end of the problem, and returned to other pressing matters, like "Famous Harry Potter is so dreamy, but he doesn't even know I exist". It wasn't until after the card was sent that she realized that it was still around.
  • In 2005, Word of God confirmed that Ginny sent it:
    Melissa Anelli: Did Ginny send Harry the valentine?
    J. K. Rowling: Yeah, bless her.
    Melissa Anelli: Was it a Tom Riddle thing, or Ginny Weasley?
    J.K. Rowling: No, Ginny Weasley.

The Perilous Polyjuice Potion Plan

• The book itself lampshades the Power Trio's scheme to get info out of Malfoy by having Ron ask, "Have you ever heard of a plan where so many things could go wrong?" But one potential pitfall could've easily been avoided — finding the location of the Slytherin common room. Did they really have to wait until the last minute, when they were already transformed into Crabbe and Goyle? They had at least a month to learn its location, and while Harry and Ron might procrastinate that much, Hermione would not. Surely they could've asked somebody knowledgeable like Percy the Prefect in a way that would've aroused less suspicion than two Slytherins asking where their own common room was.
  • I don't think it'd be all that surprising. It's made clear in the first book that the layout of the castle can change significantly from day to day. In a place like that, it'd probably be more surprising if you didn't get lost from time to time. Especially if you're Crabbe or Goyle.
  • They aren't master tacticians, they are twelve year old children. Realising at the last gasp that a major part of their masterplan is missing a bit of crucial info, especially when they have been feeling all cool and mature about coming up with a masterplan and doing something as complicated as brewing polyjuice, is well within character for twelve year olds. Arguably even moreso in character for Hermione who does overlook details when she gets carried away with big plans.
  • It's always possible Hermione did figure out they needed to know the location, and learned it herself, and then just forgot to tell them when she couldn't go. Or she did tell them, a month prior, and they just didn't listen.
• The entire plan to interrogate Draco is IMO one of the dumbest things the Golden Trio ever did, and perfectly illustrates their arrogance, recklessness, and disrespect for authority.
  • Item: Any and all evidence against the defendant, Draco Malfoy, included, (A) he's a racist, and (B) he's a jerk. Enough to warrant a close eye, but nowhere near the top of the suspect list, especially considering he's (A) an idiot, and (B) a second year.
  • Item: They had very little business investigating the Chamber of Secrets. That kind of nosiness almost got them killed in the first book, (note that if Harry had not entered the chamber, Quirrelmort would have been trapped at the end of the gauntlet with a mirror and no stone, waiting to be taken into custody).
  • Item: What little (incredibly relevant) information the Golden Trio did gather, they did not turn it over to the proper authorities; information including: (A) Harry hears voices in the pipes, (B) Myrtles saw a big yellow eye and heard hissing in the bathroom before she died, (C) there is a freaky diary that is talking back to Harry, which cannot be considered normal by any means, (D) The flipping location to the Chamber of Secrets!!!
  • Item: The unfounded Polyjuice Plan required the Golden Trio to break into a professor's private store room, which can be considered a breach of security and privacy (in a situation where security is a bit of an issue,) a felony, and in most circumstances would probably require financial restitution. Granted, Snape is a jerk, but that does not excuse anything.
• The golden dunderheads made no money from the Polyjuice, so a compensation charge would be more likely, what with one of them being the child of medical professionals and the other being an inheritor to a fortune.
• If you read the passage where they hatch out their plan, you'd see that Hermione was deeply afraid of getting killed by the monster. See how she interrupts Binns, something others would never bother doing.
• Regarding Draco's involvement, Ron in the movie gave the theory that Lucius figured it out and taught Draco how to do so. As for the information they figured out, Harry was told that it was not a good thing to admit to hearing voices like that, so he kept it to himself and his friends. A diary talking back to Harry would not have been that big of a surprise for a boy new to the wizarding world and all sorts of wonders. The location of the Chamber of Secrets they turned over to the man they heard was preparting to go into the Chamber of Secrets to save Ginny.

Squibs

• Why is it Muggles can give birth to Wizards, but Wizards can't give birth to Muggles, only squibs?
  • The definition of the term "squib" is "a non-magical person born to magical parents", hence why they're included in the trope page for Muggle Born of Mages.
  • It's probably just a wizarding pride thing. No self-respecting pure-blood would admit to having a Muggle in their family, so they invented a term to make it sound different than it is.
  • It's also useful disambiguation from the term "muggle-born", which in the absence of the term 'squib' might be confused for 'born as a muggle' instead of 'born as the child of muggles'.
  • Though, there must still be a difference between Muggles and Squibs, since it's mentioned in the sixth book that Muggles can't see dementors, while the fifth book tells us that Squibs can.
  • Squibs can't see dementors, Mrs Figg lied.
  • Where does it say that she lied?
  • Not in the text itself; JKR explained this on her site.
    • The text does give some context clues that hint at her lying: as a kid, I remember reading it and noticing these and thinking that she's lying.
  • I see...If that's really the case, though, then why did Mrs. Figg's testimony hold any weight at all? Someone had to have told her what the dementors looked like - how does the Ministry know she wasn't also told what they felt like?
  • Unlike Muggles (except Muggles that have Wizard kids) Squibs are aware of the existence of magical creatures, so Figg probably knows about the existence of Dementors and how they feel like since she's a little girl and most probably the people in Court knows that she knows that.
  • Why would she? I bet the majority of ordinary wizards thankfuly spend their entire life without ever encountering a Dementor, and I doubt the Ministery would advertise their dealings with them much, if at all. This is a moot point of course, because if Fudge was even a tiny bit serious about winning that stupid trial, he would've arranged for a simple experiment - like placing a Dementor far enough to not affect Mrs Figg, and then asking her to point it out.
  • Because, to anyone who actually read the books, is clearly establish in-universe that the entire British wizard population knows about the existence of Azkaban and that is guarded by Dementors, therefore that all the wizards (and squibs) know what a Dementor is and what it does.
  • Ok, let's assume that, but the above question still stands. If everyone knows what the Dementors feel like, then her describing her sensations means nothing. They should've been asking her about precise details, like how and where they were moving, and then compare her testimony against that of Harry's which would've immediately exposed her lie.
  • Probably, but is a fantasy book about wizards, not a legal drama, and I doubt most of the readers (which are children) are going to care for those details.
  • You're forgetting Fudge is a bit of an idiot. He has to be competent at something, but all the evidence that lord thingy is around has been building up for the last four years and he's more interested in persecuting the ones giving it to him than investigating further. So why would he handle the trial any better? He's got evidence magic was performed and figured that was enough, the rest of the wizengamot was various degrees of eager or unwilling to actually expel Potter and Umbridge was unable to get too involved without revealing it's all her fault.
• The fact they had to ask about whether squibs can see Dementors or not renders what they logically should have done moot. They logically should have researched such information before, say, opting to go into business with Dementors. As for it, Harry Potter doesn't have the power to significantly lower the temperature, reduce the perception of light of all humans in his general vicinity to a narrow tunnel and force all happy thoughts from their heads in one spell, or really with any spell. Those are tell tell signs of a Dementor attack and even muggles can perceive them all, even if they can't see the source. Yes, they could have still gotten her for perjury, given that even if she was telling the truth about the signs of Dementor activity she lied to them about squib vision but given muggles can see such things and there was a muggle witness that the defense would be able to call in, his story matching with hers would force them to conclude the Patronus charm was most likely justified. But it doesn't even get that far because they had to ask if squibs could see the fiend fungus in the first place.
  • This blood purity parallels the British class system in a lot of ways. Pure bloods are a lot like the upper classes - where you were simply born into privilege and had an impressive lineage. Money had something to do with it, but when people became rich through trade or other means, there was still a differentiation because they weren't born into that privilege. A squib born to an elite pure blood family would probably still have more privilege than a normal Muggle with no magical lineage (perhaps the term was even started by proud pure bloods wanting to be considered at least better than Muggles). Muggles have no magical heritage at all, and even descendants of wizards born to Muggles are still considered 'half-blood'. I assume a child born to a pure blood wizard married to a pure blood squib could still consider themselves pure blood - because they have the lineage.

Why not ask Snape to whip up a Love Potion! The kind very explicitly banned at this school!

• In the Valentine's Day scene, Lockhart suggests that the students ask Snape for help in making Love Potions (much to Snape's displeasure). Love Potions are banned at Hogwarts. Now, I know Lockhart's the kind of moron who thinks they know everything, but you'd think a newly-hired Hogwarts professor would have been debriefed on what was banned and what wasn't.
  • He probably forgot after being briefed at the beginning of the year.
  • More likely that he didn't even pay attention. He also didn't listen to the bit about where teachers actually had to teach.
  • Or maybe Lockhart was more ticked off about how Snape creamed him in the dueling-club demonstration than he was willing to openly admit, and he told the students that just so they'd pester the Potions Master with obnoxious requests.

Trace is selective?

• If the Ministry detected when Dobby levitated the cake, then how could they not detect Dobby apparating away and thus realise that it clearly wasn't Harry who was using magic? Did they just ignore that event?
  • House-Elf apparation works differently from human apparation, since they can apparate in places where humans can't like Hogwarts. Perhaps being indetectable is part of that unique apparation property.
  • So, part of their magic is detectable, but another part isn't?
  • Considering Dobby was quite deliberately trying to get Harry into trouble, I would think he just made the spell detectable to whatever system the Ministry uses.
  • To me, the way the trace works that is most consistent with canon is that it's simply set up near muggleborn homes and detects any magic cast, then just assumes the magic came from the muggleborn kid. They set it up for Harry because he was being raised by muggles. It can't actually differentiate between Harry's magic and house-elf magic, nor is it very accurate at guessing the type of magic used. There were lots of other instances of underage magic mentioned, but all of those would have happened far from a muggleborn household (like Riddle murdering the Gaunts, Harry duelling Voldemort in a graveyard, the Weasley household in general) or when there's adults nearby who could have informed the Ministry that there would be false alarms.
  • Actually they identified both the levitation spell here and the Patronus spell in "Order" accurately.
  • We have no evidence that real human apparation is detectable in the first place. The Trace appears to detect named spells. Apparation might technically be something besides a spell, considering it has no incantation or wand movements, and not detected at all.
  • Alternately, magic without incantation or wand movements might still be detected, just unlabeled. And non-incantation wandless magic with a kid looks like accidental magic. So in these circumstances, the Ministry would have detected Harry doing a standard levitation spell, and then some unnamed, probably accidental, magic a bit later. (In fact, Harry has actually accidental-magic apparated before, to the roof of his school when he was young. So even if they knew it was apparation, it would still look like accidental magic.)
  • That wasn't apparition, he jumped twelve feet. Harry, though better than Ron, doesn't cope well with apparition.[[Spoiler: It's the same jump he uses to get on the nine foot troll's back later, the same jump his mother used to do before him]]. This presumably justifies why most of the Harry Potter video games are platform games.
  • Awesome. In this case they bothered with the whole doppelgangers charade in "Hallows" rather then just apparating away... because? And the Death Eaters bothered prohibiting apparition in Harry's house, which they wouldn't be able to enforce anyway... because?
  • Presumably, Thickness cast an anti-apparation and anti-portkey spell on the area (We know such spells exist.) and redirected people to prison if they try, which we've never actually seen a spell do but there's no logical reason it couldn't. Mad-Eye didn't mean it was an 'imprisonable offense' as in 'they would track you down and arrest you', which is a pretty silly interpretation anyway (Surely at least one of Order would be willing to go on the run), he meant it was an imprisonable offense as in, if you did it, you end up in prison, directly (This isn't to justify the dumbness of the exit plan, but the dumbness is in other parts).
  • Except that Elves were shown to be capable of apparating even from places it's supposed to be impossible to do it from. So even that part is still not justified.
  • The Hover Charm is a specific spell that could betaught to a first year student. Apparation is a far more difficult spell that is only taught in sixth year. It is possible they detected both spells but figured the apparation was just an act of underage magic. Also, Harry only posited how he got to the roof of the school building as he was diving behind some dumpsters and thought maybe the wind got him. The achool staff assumed he climbed up. It is likely it was a form of apparation.

Aragog's Children

• If Aragog was the only Acromantula that Hagrid had, where'd his children come from? Spiders cannot reproduce asexually, and it's highly doubtful that Acromantulas can cross-breed with more mundane spiders to produce more Acromantulas. So how did Aragog breed?
  • Hagrid later procured a bride for him.
  • Who the hell keeps selling the dangerous horse-sized man-eating magical spiders via owl post, already?
  • Voldemort, of course. It's brilliant, actually. How do you smuggle a swarm of horse-sized man-eating magical spiders into the school grounds? Simple - find one female and then feist it to the quirky, charming braindead moron who had already bred and set loose the male there. Thus, by they time you're ready to storm the school, you'll have the reinforcements already waiting for you! In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Riddle was behind Hagrid's aquisition of Aragog as well, as part of a ploy to get him framed for opening the Chamber of Secrets.
  • Aragog was much smaller when he was younger, so presumably his wife Mosag was as well when Hagrid got her.

Hagrid's mindboggling misadventures

• Regarding Hagrid's expulsion 50 years prior to the events of the books and his incarceration during the 2nd year. So, Riddle blamed him for Myrtle's death. Ok, what exactly did he tell then? That Hagrid was the Heir of Slytherin, opened the Chamber of Secrets and conspired to murder the non-wizborns with the Slytherin's Monster? But surely the authorities would've questioned Hagrid about the location of the Chamber, and the identity of the monster and such, which he, of course, wouldn't be able to give them? Riddle could be as charming and popular as he wanted, that doesn't mean squat when the accused doesn't posses the knowledge he would need to commit the crime he's accused of. And if they believed Riddle nonetheless, then how in the hell could Hagrid get away with a mere expulsion rather than landing in Azkaban right away?
  • On the other hand, let's say Riddle only told them that Hagrid had a pet monster, it got away and killed Myrtle. Ok, then what about that monster? Why wasn't it found and killed, and if it wasn't then what difference did Hargid's "exposure" make? The monster was still on the loose, students were still in danger, school still should've been closed. How come no one seems to know about the acromantula in the forest, and if they do, why weren't the damned things exterminated? Moreover, if Hagrid wasn't tied in with the Chamber back then, then what sense does it make to put him in Azhaban now, when the attacks are clearly associated with the Chamber?
  • Riddle passed off Hagrid and Aragog as being responsible for Myrtle's death, as an accident. Aragog ran into the forest where the Ministry couldn't find him and stayed there, eventually breeding until there were too many giant spiders for the Ministry to do anything about. They just became another dangerous thing in the forest. Hagrid was allowed to stick around after his stint in Azkaban because the death was ruled as an accident. He still got punished because he shouldn't have had Aragog in the first place. Illegal pet plus accidental death equals short term in prison, expulsion and a broken wand but no lingering stigma.
  • A) If they couldn't find the beast, then what does it matter if they punished Hagrid? The school is still in exactly the same danger as before. B) What do you mean "too many giant spiders for the Ministry to do anything"? It's spiders. All they have is mandibles. These people can fly, teleport, turn invisible and kill things from distance in a variety of ways. C) What do you mean "just another dangerous thing"? ONE of them was enough to warrant the closure of the school. Now there's a whole nest of them, and everyone's fine with it?
  • Hell, what sense does it make to put him there at all? Yeah, sure, Fudge is stupid and wants to make an appearance of being in control and taking actions, yadda, yadda, but even stupidity must have some reason to it, even if flawed. They are putting Hagrid away "as a precaution". Uhm, what? He's either guilty or not. If he's guilty, then he should be put away for good, if not, then he shouldn't. So, again, are they going to question him to find out one way or another? And how's his incarceration supposed to assure anyone? A monster is attacking people. And it will still be there. Hell, for all they know Hagrid was all that kept it in check and now it's going to rampage through the school killing everyone, mudblood or not.
  • On top of that, if they think someone might be guilty of releasing the monster, and have some slight vague circumstantial evidence that he might have done it last time, wouldn't a more reasonable precaution be to simply remove him from the school? Heck, Fudge or someone else should have said to DD 'You know, you have a groundskeeper that was under suspicion there the last time this happened, and considering that he is one of the few people who were here both then and now, perhaps you should send him home with paid leave until this blows over, just in case.' and he would had nodded sadly and asked Hagrid to take a vacation for a few months, if only for his own protection from accusations. Or, failing that, Fudge could just order him to leave.
  • The wizards have a very screwy legal system, but it completely boggles the mind that Hagrid can get locked up for something with absolutely no evidence at all as a 'precaution', when there is a perfectly good precaution that doesn't involve prison. It seems roughly akin to a local store thinking someone is constantly shoplifting from them but, unable to catch them, somehow get the police to imprison that person as a 'precaution'. That's...not how any reasonable legal system works, and there was a rather more obvious solution of just barring them from the store.
  • The Ministry wanted to look like they'd been doing something. Hagrid was convicted in the past of Myrtle's murder (but NOT opening the Chamber of Secrets) by way of the monster he'd been raising in the castle. So they boost everyone's morale by taking in someone who might be connected to the attacks. If someone else is caught then they say "no harm done" and let him go. Which they did.
  • Again, a monster is attacking people. Simply taking Hagrid away obviously is not going to eliminate it or stop it from doing what it does. So the only boost to morale could come from the prospect of interrogating him and to learn something that would help to find and kill it. Which shouldn't take long. So like the next day after Fudge cheerfully announces that they took in someone who might be connected to the attacks, the people would just as cheerfully ask: "Well, did you make him tell where the monster is and what it is?" And what is he going to tell them then?
  • No to mention that "If someone else is caught then they say "no harm done" and let him go" is an atrociously flawed logic even notwithsdanging the fact Azkaban is Hell on Earth, so "no harm done" is invalid by default. What if they don't catch the real Heir? Hagrid will just rot there even though he's clearly innocent?
  • Some tropers are confused here. Hagrid wasn't convicted of Murtle's murder during the first opening of the Chamber, nor did he do time for it. He was expelled and forbidden from using his wand.
  • Exactly. His expulsion was for bringing a dangerous dark creature into the school, which he was guilty of. Riddle merely busted Hagrid for hiding Aragog, who runs off when he gets busted. Riddle doesn't have to know what the monster was, but he also closes the chamber and does not open it again for the remainder of his school time. So Hagrid is found having kept a monster illegally in his room for a while at the same time a number of students are attacked. A girl is killed, Hagrid is found and in the following months there are no more attacks. So normal logic dictates that the attacks were stopped by catching Hagrid. When the attacks start happening fifty years later, Hagrid is taken away because he has a record and the Ministry do have some grounds to question him.
• A. No, normal logic doesn't dictate that at all. The monster was still on the loose, Hagrid's explulsion did absolutely nothing about it. What, did the authorities say: "Ok, there's absolutely no reason to believe that expelling this boy will somehow stop the attacks, but since finding the monster is hard, let's NOT do that and just hope against all reason that nobody else dies. Fingers crossed!" and everybody was ok with that? B. Question him about what? Bloody writings on the walls, petrified people - none of that has anything to do with his record whatsoever! Why don't they take Snape away while they're at it? He has a record as well, and two pointless arrests is certainly twice as good!
• First, there were anti-giant biases at work. They had a Head Boy's word against Hagrid. This is why Hagrid was deemed responsible enough to be expelled from Hogwarts. Second, they also knew they had no evidence of even what kind of monster killed Myrtle, so they couldn't legally pin any evidence on Hagrid. Was raising an acromantuala reason enough to expel him? Perhaps, but in truth, it was likely no one actually knew he was raising one. Did Riddle get a good enough look to be able to identify what Aragog was?

Spare Wands and Molly's Vindictiveness

• 1) So why doesn't the school keep spare wands? Ron effectively loses an entire year of education involving anything that requires wandwork such as charms and transfiguration. Surely to god someone somewhere has lost their wand from time to time or broken it; especially in a place like Hogwarts where staircases change shape, poltergeists roam the halls and things explode on a daily basis. We know that anyone can use a wand so no problem there and please don't say that the students in question should be more careful with their wands when we are a) talking about young children and as such are naturally careless and b) even the best of us have accidents. Do you really have to wait until someone sends you a replacement or until the school holidays? what if your OWLS are approaching? 2) Molly is apparently being extremely spiteful by not sending Ron a replacement. I can understand her being pissed for a couple of months, especially since Arthur was going through a tribunal, but most people probably would have calmed down by Christmas and sent him one as a present. Like I said above Ron is harming his education by not having a wand and Molly will go on to claim many times (particularly involving Weasleys Wizard Wheezes) that the education of her children is very important to her. I refuse to believe that they couldn't afford one as all their kids would be at school which means they should have extra money from not having to feed them and Harry's wand only cost seven Galleons.
  • In regard to the latter, Mrs. Weasley didn't know Ron had broken his wand. Harry even tells Ron he should ask her for a new one, but Ron thinks he'll just get yelled at again for breaking it.
  • ^This. I don't believe Ron actually goes home for the Christmas or Easter holidays this year, so his family might not have known until the summer. Alternately they weren't able to afford a new one, considering Ron was using Charlie's old one. We could assume that he simply used someone else's (Hermione's or Harry's) in class if he needed to practice spells. The teachers tell him his wand needs to be replaced but it's not their responsibility to replace it.
  • You are mistaking the world they live in with the world you live in. The wizarding world is a behind-the-times world where therapists don't exist, social services don't exists, teachers aren't required to be substitute parents who put children above themselves, and people do what they think works rather than what scientists had proven works better than whatever else by that and that many percent. Oh, and scientists don't exist in the wizarding world either. Nor do lawyers as we know them. And there aren't any libel laws and if you think you are being slandered you are supposed to challenge the one doing it to a duel. That is the sort of world the wizarding world is. So the school was not required to provide him alternative anything. And as for the wand, considering that he broke it during his incident for which he'd received a howler, I simply don't see him asking his parents for a new wand unless the one he has now simply doesn't work, and since he has no idea how to gauge whether it works or not outside of the simple "does it do anything" test which it passes, that's that. Oh, and that one galleon is bought with about five pounds does not mean it is worth five pounds; in fact, the price of the galleon seems to be economic nonsense and in the story galleons are treated as worth at least ten times as much as that (which means that 7 galleons would be equivalent in value to at least 350 pounds) and quite likely much above that even; remember, the galleons are supposed to be worth their weight in gold, which was probably 22-carat gold (based on the colour), so at the weight of about 16 grams per coin (which is what an average one-inch-diameter coin made of 22-carat gold would weight) the worth of the gold that the galleon is made of would be about 100 pounds.
  • The official replica of the Marauders' Map that I have actually has a room in Hogwarts marked as containing lost wands.

It has to hurt because magic

• Was there any indication why Harry couldn't take some painkillers or anesthesia during the bone-regrow? Or did those not exist in that wretched universe either?
  • They probably don't exist. Since most wounds can be healed in an instant, there probably isn't any need for magical painkillers. And most wizard society seems to be pretty archaic (they still use candles and quills rather than modern conveniences). They might not even know about Muggle medicine.
  • In real life, some medicines interact badly with each other. So if you are on something that reacts badly to a type of painkiller, you can't take that pain killer. It's not stated if they have different types of potions to get rid of pain. So it could be that potions for that don't exist, or that the bone-regrowing potion reacts 'really' badly with such things and Harry was better off without it. And that's ignoring that fact Hogwarts is a school and probably doesn't have much call for something like that (of course, that begs the question of why Skelegrow was available).
  • Ok, incompatibility issue makes sense, but still, couldn't DD have lent the kid the Pensieve to loose himself into some memory for the night?
  • Lend the Pensieve? Come on, it's not excruciating pain. Harry had a hard night just like any child who plays sports and has accidents will have at some point after breaking a leg or arm (yeah, "he lost all bones in his arm, that's not a casual wound!". It is, in the wizard world, let's be honest). No need for the director to get involved and lend something as valuable as a Pensieve for Harry to distract himself. He can get a book for that.
  • Why not? Did he have anything better to do with the thing at the moment or was he afraid it'd get broken or stolen?
  • Because it's unnecessary. It's a pretty valuable magic object to lend just for someone to get distracted from pain. If you break your arm at the school's sport tournament, the director isn't going to lend you his home's television, and a Pensieve is worth even more than the comparison implies. Even if Harry's a favorite of Dumbledore, at best Dumbledore should lend him a book to pass the night and that's done. And anyway, as far as I remember, you have to walk through someone's memories in the Pensieve. Harry needed rest, so going into the Pensieve would just tire him more.
  • No, you don't have to walk through the memories, if they don't involve walking, nor is there's any reason for mental walks to be exhausting. As to whether or not it's an incredibly douchey move to withold something you don't even currently need, no matter how valuable (no, seriously, what does it matter in this situation?), but which could absolve a child from pain so severe he cannot sleep, well, that's for each to decide for themselves, I guess. Not that withholding incredibly helpful things from people in dire need is by any mean uncommon for the "good" wizards, so perhaps I'm wrong, and DD is simply being kept in-character here.
  • We don't really have confirmation on whether going through someone's memories is a physical or mental magic, since it's always Harry going. If it's mental, then granted, he probably wouldn't feel tired once he comes back, but we have literally no clue if once he's inside a memory, his wounds vanish or something. If they don't, then he'd just be walking with an arm that hurts like hell, which helps nothing. Like, even if you say "it's memories, obviously Harry's body isn't really there" we don't know how it works. Being someone's memories, I'd expect Harry to just see what happens through the person's eyes, not be able to hear conversations the person did not listen and not having to follow them around. However all of this happened when he went through Snape's memories, so. He feels sucked into the Pensieve whenever he goes in there, so I assume his body would have to go in there too, but it's all assumption. Look, I don't disagree that something could've been done to distract Harry from the pain, but I don't understand the insistence in that it had to be the Pensieve of all things. Walking around someone's memories doesn't even sound like a good distraction, and where (or when) would Dumbledore send him in order for it to be fun? Someone's birthday? I just feel that the Pensieve being used for the sake of distraction is overkill, like lending someone your own diary so they can distract themselves with a light reading (yeah, I know Dumbledore could choose the memory, but my point still stands). Fred and George's Patented Daydream Charms seem like they would work much better, so magic has similar ways of giving people daydreams as distraction tools. Why they did not give it to Harry, I don't know, but it didn't have to be Dumbledore's personal Pensieve.
  • Of course not. It just came to mind as an immediately available and accessable option.

Are roosters more rare than Mandrakes?

• So, Ginny kills all the Hagrid's roosters. Ok. Why doesn't he buy new ones? Even setting aside the fact that they cannot possible not know or at least suspect what the monster is, which alone would warrant buying every last one in the country, perching them all around the school and ending that nonsense, doesn't Hagrid need the roosters (otherwise why have them)?
  • He could just keep them on his own land for the eggs. From what I remember, Hogsmeade isn't an agricultural village so he might not be able to get replacements. Alternately he might have realised he could make do with his three meals a day at Hogwarts and not bothered.
  • Roosters don't lay eggs. They're male.
  • Still, somebody's gotta have a rooster to borrow from somewhere. They can apparate, this would take even less effort than me driving to the nearest farm. They would rather wait eight months for mandrakes than eight minutes to buy a rooster from a farmer?
  • They weren't waiting eight months over eight minutes. At the time, no one knew that it was a basilisk doing the petrifying (we know there has to be another way to petrify people, otherwise the minute someone turned up frozen everyone would've known immediately what was doing it), and no one knew that roosters would be really useful to stop more people from being attacked. Hagrid probably decided not to get more until he could find out what was killing them. By the time everyone discovered that the monster was a basilisk, it was dead. Also, the Mandrakes had to be grown anyway once the petrification started, regardless of whether a rooster managed to kill the basilisk, so it wasn't a one-or-the-other situation.
  • "We know there has to be another way to petrify people, otherwise the minute someone turned up frozen everyone would've known immediately what was doing it" yes, and that is another plot hole. There's absolutely no indication that there're other beings capable of that. Even if there were, a simple cross-reference with mentions of roosters AND fleeing spiders (becuase it's painfully obvious that all three are interconnected) would've yielded the culprit in no time.
  • No, cross-referencing with roosters and spiders only would have yielded confusion, because the Basilisk is not normally considered a creature capable of petrification; remember, it's gaze is known to kill on sight, not petrify. Every case of petrification turned out to have occurred by dumb, dumb, dumb-lucky coincidence, implying that cases of Basilisks petrifying rather than killing are either extremely rare or completely unheard of, which is why it was such a big surprise when they finally caught the culprit. With how large and ridiculous the body of magical creatures in the wizarding world is, I would be absolutely shocked if there weren't a handful that were capable of petrifying people (by sight, sound, venom, etc.) But the point is, the Basilisk is nowhere on this list. It kills, thus it is eliminated from the drawing board... for now.
  • "Every case of petrification turned out to have occurred by dumb, dumb, dumb-lucky coincidence," Indeed. However, it was mentioned that when the Chamber had been first opened 50 years prior, there'd been "attacks", but only Myrtle had actually died. Rowling, of course, didn't think of the implications, when writing this, but to me they're clear: there'd been more cases of dumb luck back then and more petrifications. Regardless, even if petrification couldn't be linked directly to Basie, such peculiarities as aversion to roosters and influence on spiders should've most likely sufficed.
  • There could've been attacks in which the victim never actually saw the basilisk at all, e.g. if it ambushed someone in complete darkness. Likewise, there may have been fatal attacks on animals, or even on unlucky house-elves who caught sight of the creature; all we know for sure is that such incidents didn't go on record as the deaths of students.
  • There might not have been roosters on the grounds to kill back then. Might have had a smaller spider population, or a less concentrated one that made their fleeing less obvious.
  • It could have been that the possessed Ginny killed all of the roosters, they bought more and Ginny killed those as well. At that point, they would have had to figure out what was killing the roosters before buying more. Also, just a question, but why did the roosters need to be killed in the first place? Are the roosters that close to the castle that they can be heard inside? It wasn't as if the basilisk was in the main part of the castle for that long at a time.

Snape trying to get Harry expelled

• If Snape was good and wanted to protect Harry, why was he so eager for any excuse to expel him? After the Whomping Willow incident, Snape clearly tells Harry and Ron that if they were in his house, they'd be out of Hogwarts like shit through a goose. Then when Dumbledore lets them off with a warning, he tries to convince him to expel them anyway. True, the part of him that felt bitter and hateful towards James would've gotten immense satisfaction from seeing Harry expelled, but in the HP universe, expulsion from Hogwarts is basically the kiss of death for anyone's future as a wizard or witch. Not only would Harry be more or less alienated from the wizarding world, he would be utterly defenseless should Voldemort ever return.
  • Out of universe, Rowling was still using Snape as that teacher everyone hates and hadn't quite worked out the full details on his motivation. In-universe, a couple of solutions presents themselves: If you want to be charitable, then Snape honestly thought that Harry would be better off outside the wizarding world. If he was expelled and dumped into the muggle world completely he might be lost in the crowd and prevent Voldemort returning as well as being safely anonymous should it happen. Plus it would be nice revenge on James to bump his son out of wizard life, just as a bonus. Explanation 2: Snape never really thought that Dumbledore would do it for an instant, but pressing the matter scared Harry and Ron right to the core at just the very thought.
  • Doesn't Snape claim to only see James's rulebreaking and reckless behavior in Harry? Sure, he may not want him to be expelled, but when he catches him doing something against the rules, it's either threatening him so much that it scares him into shape for next time or actually doing it.
  • Basically so, trying to scare him straight and also venting. Snape knows Harry will never be expelled no matter what, so all those threats are just that. Snape is the "bad cop" to DD's "good" one.
  • Looking at the situation objectively, Harry and Ron essentially got a slap on the wrist for doing something incredibly dangerous and reckless, not to mention risking exposure of the entire wizarding world (when they could have just called Ron's parents). I'd imagine that Snape is also more than a little peeved at Dumbledore's favoritism, and might have been pushing for (if not expulsion,) at least a harsher punishment.

Dumbledore Knows Where Voldemort is, Does Absolutely Nothing With It

• In the end DD claims that "my sources tell me he [V] is currently in hiding in the forests of Albania." Ok, first of all. What kind of "sources" is it that can track an incorporeal shadow across Europe and into a specific country? And second and most importantly, why doesn't he do anything with this information? What, his sources can track the ghost to Albania, but cannot keep watch over it or track the now-corporeal Voldemort back to England? That is kinda hard to believe.
  • My guess would be that the "sources" in question are people in ICW who'd reported that "something like that, somewhere in Albania, was seen in some forest". Since apparitions like that seem to be fairly rare, it might even be that none of them told him that it's Voldemort but he'd made the connection himself. And we don't really know how much power his position as "Supreme Mugwump" gives him, but based on the fact that we don't know and that Dumbledore had refused the position of the Minister of Magic because he said that he doesn't want power, it's likely tha the position is a ceremonial one with him maybe serving as some sort of advisor too, in which case he might not actually be able to do anything with those reports.
  • He's also the Supreme Judge, the leader of a para-military organization, the most powerful wizard in the world, and the bare fact that he was offered the leading post thrice clearly implies a great of authority and respect in the high places. Cordoning some forest due to presence of a notorious terrorist doesn't seem out of reach for someone like that.
  • Which means there has to be a reason why it hasn't happened yet. And let's face it — no one in the Wizarding World wants to admit that Voldemort is still around, no matter how much they might suspect it. Even when there was substantial proof that he had returned, they refused to believe it. If all they have is evidence of ghostly activity in some random foreign forest that may or may not be connected to a guy who's been presumed dead for 12 years, they're all the more likely to cling to the "or may not" in that scenario and just assume it isn't him.
  • Except Dumbledore is lying when he says that. Or sort of. Basically that line is to reassure Ginny that he knows she was under a spell and in no way responsible for what happened. Albania is where he was when he possessed Quirrell; information he could have got from the man himself. Remember in the books, Quirrell doesn't die instantly and is just left to die when Voldemort leaves his body - so Dumbledore could have questioned or extracted information out of him. But he'd have no idea to know where Voldemort is currently in hiding, as his influence is limited to possessing snakes.

House Elf Freedom

• Does giving a House Elf a sock hidden inside a book really count as "presenting him with clothes" when Lucius neither knew nor intended to give them to him? And what about laundry? Does a wizard that owns an elf have to specify every time he hands the elf a basket of clothes "these aren't for freedom. These are for cleaning.?"
  • Since Lucius couldn't do a "wait, no, I wasn't being serious, that sock doesn't count", then of course it's counts. We see in Half-Blood Prince that house elves are magically compelled to follow orders; Kreacher, when ordered to shut up, quit yelling and settled for a silent tantrum. So it's likely that freeing a house elf is also a magically binding matter that depends on the act, not the motive behind it. For washing clothes, the master might have to do it themselves with spells; the Hogwarts house elves completely avoided Hermione's hats and scarves left for them. (although she wasn't their master, so it's debatable whether that would have even worked. Perhaps the gesture alone was enough to offend them.)
  • Chances are the Malfoys never directly hand Dobby the laundry anyway. If he doesn't already know to do it on his own, then they could just tell him to pick it up and wash it. Also, in the fourth or fifth book, it's mentioned/suggested that only the master of an elf's house has the authority to free him or her, meaning Narcissa or Draco could easily give Dobby the laundry without invoking the escape clause.
  • As for "dropping a sock in disgust that happens to land on Dobby" qualifying as "giving Dobby clothing", the whole "present with clothing = freedom" idea comes from Real Life fairy-tale folklore about brownies and similar household spirits. Such stories' rules tend to be rife with Loophole Abuse; indeed, abusing loopholes (wittingly or otherwise) is usually the whole point of the story.
  • I simply took it to mean that house elves use their magic in any case of laundry/ironing/etc and don't actually touch the clothing.
  • Dobby could interpret the sock as a gift for him to wear, whereas if Lucius makes him wash his, Draco or Narcissa's clothes then he couldn't interpret those as gifts - as the owners would be intending to wear them again.
    • Also remember that it wasnt "dropping a sock in disgust". Harry put the diary inside the sock and passed it to Lucius, who then tore it off and threw it to one side, to which Dobby dived to catch it. Still a slight liberal interpretation of passing him a sock but he did technically pass it to dobby.

Gryffindor Had a Sword...Why?

• Why did Godric Gryffindor comission a goblin-made sword? He was an insanely powerful wizard, so why did he think to himself that a sword was what he needed for when stuff gets serious?
  • Perhaps so he wouldn't be defenseless if he ever got disarmed or lost his wand. Also some creatures such as dragons are resistant to magic making a sword a better weapon with which to fight.
  • Name another wizard that used a sword. I think Bellatrix went around with a knife here and there, but generally speaking, even knowing that they can get disarmed or lose their wands, wizards almost never seem to carry another weapon, and my question is why.
    • Well, Gandalf for a start...
  • Wizarding was probably different back in the Founders' day - maybe melee combat was more revered. There's also the fact that savage and (mostly) magic-proof beasts like giants and dragons were almost certainly more abundant back then.
  • Word of God is that swords in a wizard's possession was commonplace in the days before The Masquerade was formed. It was more sporting to use a sword against a muggle.
  • Godric Gryffindor was very much pro-heroism and bravery; it's what his House Sorts for. Wielding a sword in fair combat with Muggles or monsters, even though you could easily demolish them with spells, certainly seems like something a brave man who believes in heroic ideals would do.
  • Also, we don't know that it's common practice for wizards and witches not to own guns. The books take place in Britain, where it's next to impossible to possess one.
  • Swords are not always used in combat. Some are just ceremonial gifts the person is presented with. Even after guns were invented, it was still tradition to present a man with a sword. You may as well ask why Rowena Ravenclaw had a tiara when she wasn't royalty.
  • Swords are also one of the traditional magical tools of real life Ceremonial Magick, alongside such things as wands and cauldrons. They are use in Ceremonial Magick to project the magic. Of course, who knows if Rowling knew this but the sword could have magical uses as much as a wand.
  • Hagrid put his wand inside his umbrella; perhaps a wand could be implanted into a sword as well.

Why bring Lockhart along?

• Harry and Ron find out that Lockhart's a fraud. They still take him along to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. Why? The guy's obviously not going to be a help.
  • Maybe they thought he could Obliviate the Basilisk? Or just that he would do well enough as bait or a distraction for it while Ron and Harry went to get more help. At that point, Lockhart probably would've done anything to avoid them going to Deputy Headmistress and revealing that he was a fraud...At least, that's what he led them to think, before he revealed he was just going to wipe their memories anyway.
  • Probably to prevent him from running off, getting someone else's wand and using it on them.
  • Hey, if nothing else, he would make a decent meat shield.
  • Well Harry at least wants to be part of the solution, he doesn't want to sit around not knowing how things are going. Ron is Harry's best friend, so he's going to go with him. Lockhart, as a teacher, gives them some credibility and an excuse for staying behind when the building is closed and all students are supposed to be going back to the train. Blackmailing him for help is also punishment for his crimes and his attempt to attack them.
  • Upon reading the books it's clear what happened. First, Harry and Ron had learned of Ginny's disappearance and possible death (this is the first time they had a problem in Hogwarts without Hermione to think up a solution). They hadn't done anything the whole day because they were grieving for her. They started thinking about the situation and came up with the idea to tell Lockhart about the Basilisk so he could fight it better. They found Lockhart in his office, where they learned he was planning to abandon Ginny and that he was a fraud. That angered them, especially when he tried to attack them to keep his secret. The combination of grief, anger, the attack and the fact that all the teachers seemed to have given up led Harry and Ron to decide to do something about it themselves. They brought Lockhart because they thought he could be useful and because in their grief and anger they weren't thinking clearly (which also explains why they didn't tell someone else).
  • Lockhart's a fraud, but he's an adult fraud. Harry and Ron are just second-year students; their knowledge of magic is pretty limited at this point. Just because Lockhart's specialty are Memory Charms, that doesn't mean they're the only magic he knows. At the very least, he'd have been capable of Stunning Spells, which Harry only learns as a fourth-year when studying by himself. Whether a Stunning Spell would have worked on a Basilisk is open to a little more debate, but any adult wizard — fraud or not — would have a far more impressive repertoire of spells than two second-years.

Did Harry care at all about Lockhart?

• Throughout the movie, Harry and Ron seem to hate Lockhart. But Harry looked concerned when Ron knocked him out with the rock.

A Home to Riddle

• Was Riddle genuine when he told Dumbledore the school was more of a home to him than the orphanage he came from, and that he didn't want it to close? If so, why does he put together a plan to open the chamber later in the future? And why did he open it in the first place if he didn't want the school to close?
  • He was genuine, yes. Hogwarts was his only home. He even begged to be allowed to stay there during the summer holidays. He didn't know the school would be closed if he opened the chamber. And there's nothing saying he intended to do anything with the basilisk. He only opened the chamber to find out what was down there. Remember that Myrtle's death was an accident. Riddle didn't know she was in the toilet. She opened the door to tell him to go away and came face to face with the basilisk.
  • He did open the chamber a few times, since him and Professor Dippet mention "these attacks". I think Myrtle was the only one killed, while the others were Petrified. Perhaps he thought of Hogwarts as his home and he didn't want Muggle-borns 'tainting' his home, so he attacked them. He stopped when he realized that would cause the school to be closed, something he hadn't foreseen earlier until speaking with Professor Dippet.

Telling McGonagall

• In the book, Harry and Ron plan on going to Professor McGonagall once they find out that the monster is a basilisk, but the announcement about Ginny interrupts them the first time the try. After that, though, why don't they ever try again? Instead of bringing Lockhart with them to find the chamber, why don't they just tell McGonogall, so she can evacuate the students, Aparate a dozen roosters to the school, and then install one in every bathroom to kill the basilisk that way?
  • My theory is that they just forgot. They're twelve. Multiple times in the early books, they do something only to realise later on that there was a far simpler option. Case in point: they miss the train and decide to fly to Hogwarts as opposed to sending Hedwig with a letter or waiting for Molly and Arthur to discover the problem.
  • It's less likely they forgot than they were desperate to get the problem solved as quickly as possible, not knowing how long they had until Ginny died. Lockhart was a teacher, and that was good enough pretext for them entering the chamber, and they were very angry with him anyway.
  • Which is why they wait an entire day doing absolutely nothing, right?
  • They go to Lockhart because he's already said he'll be going to face the monster directly. That's the solution the teachers have come up with - sending Lockhart to face the monster. So Harry must be thinking of cutting out the middle man and just telling Lockhart directly, during which he finds out that he's a fraud and had no intention of going. So in the boys' anger, they forget about telling McGonagall and do things themselves - which is perfectly in character (flying the car to Hogwarts).

Heads of Houses

• After Ron and Harry fly their car into the Whomping Willow, Snape tells them he can't punish them because they're not in his house. But then how do we see numerous other times teachers punishing students and taking away points from all around the school, regardless of what house they were in?
  • He says he cannot expel them.

Did Percy have a time turner?

• The younger Weasleys are concerned about Percy because he hasn't gloated at all about his twelve O.W.L.s. Since even Hermione couldn't take twelve courses without time traveling and going crazy, how is Percy doing it?
  • Perhaps he was using a time turner. It seems that the Department of Mysteries has a list of situations in which a Time Turner can be used, and it seems that, with teacher permission, using a time-turner to get to class would have far more benefits than risks, (as opposed to killing Hitler and other shenanigans), and might even be common practice for over-achieving students.
  • Hermione took on all her new courses in a year. Percy could have just added two or three a year until hitting and acing 12 in his fifth. That doesn't even necessarily discount the Time Turner: the fact that Hermione was given one implies a precedent, so maybe they used Percy's success to justify another high-level student being granted the privilege.

Gaining Harry's trust

• Riddle says that he tried gaining Harry's trust by showing him how he caught and had convicted "that brainless Oaf" Hagrid. Even if he didn't know at that point that Hagrid and Harry were friends (in which case I'm surprised Ginny didn't mention it at all), what did Hagrid's capture have to do with gaining Harry's trust?
  • He wanted Harry to think that he (Riddle) was a heroic guy who cared for his schoolmates so much that he'd take the risk of investigate the case and confront the culprit. Yeah, Hagrid was innocent, but Harry'd thought that either Hagrid was framed by the real murderer or Riddle made an honest mistake.
  • The first part of the memory that Riddle shows him is his meeting with Dippet - where Harry learns that Riddle is an orphan like him and Hogwarts is like a home for him. Therefore getting Harry on his side by appealing to his fears that he could lose his only home. If he did know that Harry and Hagrid were friends (Ginny could have easily mentioned it since I think Hagrid does mention that she was at his hut once) then this makes Harry sympathise with his reasons.

What rules?

• At the end of the film, Dumbledore tells Harry and Ron that during their trek into the chamber, they've broken "at least a dozen school rules and regulations." Despite him going on to say that they'll be rewarded for their services, how could they realistically have broken that many rules? All I can really come up with as possible rule-breakings were being out of bed and out in the corridors at night, and forcing a staff member to come with them into the chamber. Lockhart being injured and losing his memory was his own fault, and any other damage done only occurred underground in the chamber, so what rules did they break? Or was this just Dumbledore being Dumbledore?
  • If you include everything they did during their "investigation" throughout the year, as DD likely meant, the list bloats up quite a bit.
  • Using Polyjuice Potion, stealing the ingredients to make that polyjuice potion, playing in the girls' bathroom, breaking curfew, skipping class, entering the dorms of another house, attacking fellow classmates and stuffing them in a closet, never bothering to mention a diary that was clearly endowed with dark magic, et cetera et cetera.
  • Upon rewatching the scene, to be sure, Dumbledore begins by saying "In the past few hours..." So maybe not going to a teacher about the chamber, especially with what Harry knew about the diary, along with the previously mentioned offenses, but that still only leaves three rules broken out of twelve.
  • In which case, we can mark this as hyperbole. While there were at least a handful of school regulations broken in the process of entering the chamber that night, it probably did not exceed a dozen.
  • Out of bed after hours, going out of bounds, attacking a teacher, sneaking around the castle, being in a girls' bathroom, potentially exposing the rest of the school to a dangerous monster, putting a faculty member's life in danger, withholding vital information from a member of staff, playing with sharp objects?

A weird line from Lockhart

• This one line from Gilderoy Lockhart when he admits he's a fraud seemed pretty weird:
  "My dear boy," said Lockhart, straightening up and frowning at Harry. "Do use your common sense. My books wouldn't have sold half as well if people didn't think I'd done all those things. No one wants to read about some ugly old Armenian warlock, even if he did save a village from werewolves. He'd look dreadful on the front cover. No dress sense at all. And the witch who banished the Bandon Banshee had a harelip. I mean, come on —"
  • ...Now, this doesn't sound like the reasoning of a single individual pulling off major fraud. I know he's an egotist but the phrasing of this does not remotely sound like an attractive man saying he is entitled to the credit for the accomplishments of the ugly. No, this sounds like he's parroting the reasoning of a corporate marketing team for which Lockhart is the figurehead. Like some people came together and decided to take a bunch of amazing things that various people had done and put all of them together under a pretty face so the stories would sell well. But then, it's pretty clear that Lockhart is working alone, as he's the one who went out and cast all of the memory charms and no mention is made elsewhere of anyone he answers to... so what exactly does this quote imply? Was he originally just a biography writer who was already writing about these people, and whose Start of Darkness was in coming to the above realization and using a memory charm on them so that he could get filthy rich combining his own pretty face with their accomplishments?
  • My guess is that he's just that clueless. Like, he's honestly gotten himself to believe over the years that all that fame was being wasted on ugly people and that he was entitled to take it from them. He didn't get his pretty-boy looks from anyone else, after all.
  • It's true, Lockhart really was that selfish and shallow that he got his fame by taking it from other people because they weren't physically attractive and he had an ego.
  • Actually, the "writer/publisher turned fraud" story makes a lot of sense. Probably those books indeed didn't sell well, both because the evil-fighters themselves were not glorious enough, nor their work exciting enough for the masses, and they wouldn't let Lockheart embellish their deeds out of some stupid "professionalism". By taking their place, he kills a whole flock of birds with one stone: he puts a pretty face on the cover, gets "creative freedom" to cater the stories to public tastes, and avoids that pesky royalty issue.
  • Well looking at it superficially, who are most of Lockhart's fans? Squeeing witches (and presumably any wizards that swing that way). Lockhart knows that if he can slap his face on something, mindless female fans will buy it - and potentially be willing to overlook any inconsistencies or holes in his stories.

Where did Riddle go?

• (Spoilers for the whole series ahead) So… Diary!Riddle's comments demonstrate he is a separate entity from the main Voldemort, with different memories and whatnot. We know the main Voldemort's piece of soul ended up as that flayed-baby-thing in limbo after he died at the end of Book 7, but what about the independant soul-pieces of his 7 Horcruxes? I can think of three possibilities. The confusing if straightforward answer is that they also end up in Limbo as separate flayed-baby-things (but what if the seven ones meet?). The pessimistic answer is that destroying the Horcrux outright destroys the soul, causing Cessation of Existence, but wouldn't that be insanely harsh? Even the main Voldemort wasn't deemed worthy of such a fate by Rowling. Finally, the hopeful answer is that the seven parts do end up as separate flayed-baby-things in limbo, but over time might undergo Character Development and feel the needed remorse to merge back into one being, allowing a finally redeemed Voldemort to eventually move on. But what are your thoughts?
  • I think the baby was meant to represent the Horcrux that had been inside Harry, which he "tagged along" with when Voldemort inadvertently killed it with his Killing Curse. Since we don't see any other weird baby things lying around in limbo, and the real Voldemort himself hadn't died yet, I think that when each Horcrux is destroyed, its soul piece heads to limbo and sort of "joins" with the others to form a more complete soul, albeit not in the same way as feeling genuine remorse might cause them to. In this case, the memory from the diary would've been the first part to end up in limbo, but considering it was the first (or second, maybe, after the ring?) Horcrux he'd ever made, that particular piece probably would've been significantly less substantial than the baby-soul we see in Deathly Hallows, which was seen after all but one of the Horcruxes had been destroyed, and which presumably would've grown or changed even more once the real Voldemort passed on. As for what you've said about cessation of existence, even if it were true, Voldemort's got no one to blame but himself for it. If he didn't want it to happen, he shouldn't have made any Horcruxes in the first place.
  • I guess your explanation does make a lot of sense. Although for your last point… there's someone else he could blame — the Powers That Be that designed the magic system in which such a thing can happen. Seriously. I often want to kick whoever created the HP universe^note In-universe. I'm not talking about J.K. Rowling. for designing a world where Dementors can exist, the Killing Curse can exist and where it's ridiculously hard to contact the Afterlife.
  • The flayed baby is all that's left of Voldemort, the other pieces were destroyed. Voldemort being trapped in a nightmare state forever is the consequences of his actions, he wanted to never die and now he never will no matter how much he might want to. The pieces of his soul could have been restored, if he'd truly felt remorse and wanted the pieces of his soul back, but he didn't and now there's not enough to move on.
  • The OP is referring to the baby Harry saw after his near-death in Deathly Hallows, when he met Dumbledore in King's Cross Station. The real Voldemort was still alive at that point, so the baby Harry saw in that scene had to have been one or all of the separate pieces of his soul he'd made into Horcruxes. So it/they couldn't have been destroyed.
  • This has been answered for a long time. The mutilated fetus in Limbo IS Voldemort's base soul. It's the fate that awaits him after he dies. The book explicitly stated that the pieces of soul that reside within the Horcruxes are eradicated when the Horcruxes are destroyed.

Identifying Muggle-borns

• How did the basilisk tell which students were Muggle-born? It's not as though you can tell by sight or scent or magical ability and I doubt Ginny knew every single Muggle-born, and there are according to Jo, Muggle-borns in Slytherin. But then, the ones who were attacked were those Ginny would know to have been Muggle-born.
  • Well I do hate to use this, but... A Wizard Did It. Literally, it was a creature created by Salazar Slytherin's for that purpose.
  • Doesn't Ginny or Tom know the answer to this question?
  • It seems as though the whole school was buzzing about who was Muggle-born and who wasn't once Mrs. Norris came up petrified, and the only characters we know were petrified were also ones who had their blood purity mentioned at least once. It probably would've been very easy for Ginny to have gleaned the information through gossiping with other students, which was used by Tom and the basilisk to select targets.
  • Ginny might not have known, but Lucius certainly did. Nothing was stopping him from providing Riddle with information.
    • How on earth would Lucius know? Although it's theoretically possible that Draco could collect the names of every single student in Hogwarts and then owl Lucius with the list, it's not very likely, particularly as Lucius specifically orders Draco to "keep his head down and let the Heir of Slytherin get on with it." Even if he did find out the names and checked all the family backgrounds, how could he inform Riddle when Ginny has the diary?
  • Who was all petrified, though? Collin Creevy was in her year and house, ergo, she certainly knew he was muggleborn (your bloodline being normal conversation at the first diner if we take Philosopher's Stone...) Justin was pretty loud and obnoxious about the Chamber of Secrets so it would make sense for Ginny to have at least suspected he was muggle-born based on that. Hermione is her brother's best friend so of course she knew Hermione was, and Penelope was her brother's (Percy's) girlfriend at the time so her blood status could've been known to Ginny too. The only connection I don't think Ginny could've made was Mrs. Norris being a squib's cat. That's something that Riddle might've known if Filch had been there long enough or could've otherwise just been a coincidence.
  • I lean more towards Salazar training the Basilisk to recognise Muggle borns. There's a lot of coincidence involved if it couldn't detect them on its own.
  • There's the possibility that the targets were planned well in advance. Ginny knows all the people that were attacked. She was in Colin's year and would have known him quite well by the time he was petrified. Justin would become infamous as the boy who nearly got attacked by a snake (and I believe Ginny was in the library when Harry had it out with Ernie and the Hufflepuffs). Depending on which of the girls was the planned target, she would of course know Hermione as Harry and Ron's friend, and she knew Penelope as Percy's girlfriend (she'd walked in on them together). She would have reason to know about each of them being Muggle born (Penelope's blood status has never been confirmed, so she's either Muggle-born or half-blood, and she might have gotten the details from Percy). I like the idea of Penelope being the planned target because that gives each house except Slytherin a planned victim (Colin a Gryffindor, Justin a Hufflepuff and Penelope a Ravenclaw; Hermione just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time). Filch is a grey area, but maybe Fred and George knew he was a squib and let slip the detail around Ginny. Older students would probably notice that Filch never appears to do any magic, so maybe one of Ginny's brothers mentioned the possibility in front of her.
    • Riddle could also have got Ginny to ask Percy about Penelope's blood status before he made her the victim.
    • Or, if Percy'd been dating Penelope during the previous year, her Muggle-born status might have come up in a family conversation over the summer. Certainly Arthur would've pressed his son for details about her Muggle ways.

Polyjuice Potion Mishap

• How is it that Hermione can still talk while transformed into a cat?
  • She wasn't transformed completely into a cat, just given a bunch of feline attributes since the potion is only meant to be used for human transformations.

Double Transfiguration

• How is it that the water goblet spell works on Scabbers/Pettigrew, despite already being in a Transfigured state?
  • Has there ever been anything stating that already-transfigured things were incapable of being further transfigured?
    • It might not be stated but it does seem a handy and oft accepted explanation that the reason why Ron's spell to turn him yellow in the Philosopher's Stone didn't work on Scabbers was because he was not, in fact, a rat, but an Animagus.
    • Ron's "spell" didn‘t work because it wasn’t a spell at all. Nothing to do with Scabbers being an Animagus.
  • I'm pretty sure that spell didn't work because it wasn't an actual spell. And it seems logical that you could transfigure one thing, and then transfigure it again into something else, other than its original form. Animagi would even seem to have an advantage in doing something like this, since one of the most dangerous things about human transfiguration is maintaining a human mentality when you transform, which is something Animagi are already required to maintain.

Dobby's ultimatum

• During Dobby's visit to the Dursleys', why didn't Harry just tell him he wouldn't go to Hogwarts? Then Dobby would've just given him his mail, not dumped the dessert atop the houseguests, and then Harry could've just gone to Hogwarts anyway. It's not like Dobby could've really stopped him.
  • Even if he couldn't, Harry doesn't know that. For all he knows (from fairy tales and such) promises made to magical creatures are serious business. Besides, despite what future books might try to paint of him, he's a really bad liar.
  • Harry also makes a little connection with Dobby even in those first few minutes - feeling sympathy for Dobby's reaction to being treated with politeness. So he may have felt guilty lying to him. In real life, a lot of people find it hard to outright lie or promise to do something they don't intend to.

Vernon Keeping Harry From Returning to Hogwarts

• In the second chapter, Vernon finds out that Harry is not allowed to use magic outside of school without getting expelled and locks Harry in his room intending to keep him there forever and never let him go back to Hogwarts. Why did he think he could get away with this? Ignoring the later rescue from Ron, Fred and George, what made him think no one at Hogwarts would notice he was missing? A year ago, the school knew that Harry hadn't received his letter and continued to send multiple letters (hidden in eggshells, bursting through the fireplace, and being sent to the hotel they were staying at when they tried to run away) and finally sending Hagrid to deliver the letter personally. What made him think that Hogwarts (or heck, the Ministry of Magic, since they would probably take notice that the "Boy Who Lived/Chosen One" was not continuing his education shortly after being told that he couldn't perform magic outside of school) wouldn't send someone to ask about Harry, realize that Harry's been locked up, and free Harry, ignoring the Dursleys' protests and (depending on who was sent) probably threaten them if they ever pulled this stunt again?
  • My guess is that he knew someone would be there to check on Harry, and that it would ultimately better to send him away where he couldn't bother them, and he just locked him in his room as a way of punishing him while he still could, with the intent of releasing him eventually. Him saying Harry would never be going back there was just Vernon being stubborn and angry in the aftermath of what had happened. Every time something like this happens in the series, where Harry gets thrown out or locked up or tries to run away, the Dursleys always accept him back at some point.
  • Indeed. I know it's hard to remember, because who cares about those untermenshen, but Vernon had just lost, apparently, the opportunity of a lifetime, not to mention the damage his reputation and business-relations must've suffered. He was venting and, probably, not thinking clearly out of anger.
  • Honestly, under any other circumstances, Vernon would be very reasonable in considering not sending Harry back to school - he's being taught things that the Dursleys have almost no knowledge of and are potentially dangerous, and the most recent instance of them (whether it was Harry's fault or not) wound up ruining an important business deal that he been meticulously planning and preparing for. He had every right to be upset about that.
  • "Him saying Harry would never be going back there was just Vernon being stubborn and angry in the aftermath of what had happened." Yup, it pretty much sounded more like a bluff than a real threat, at least in the movie I don't remember if the book makes it look like if Vernon was serious. He has to know better, not only must know that someone from the magical world would come looking but that even if that doesn't happen he can't have a minor lock forever without social services paying a visit. When he is serious about it is when he throws Harry out of his house.

The Heir alone

• So according the lore, no one at Hogwarts ever found the Chamber of Secrets because only a descendant of Salazar Slytherin could locate and open it. Reading the book, I was always given the vibe that it's been so long that no one actually knows who the heir is at this point, hence why there's so much suspicion and accusations being thrown around. However, later books and supplemental materials show that the Gaunts seemed pretty well-known for being descended from Slytherin, and Ilvermorny's history tells us that there were decent members in the family. So...did none of these decent Gaunts ever attend Hogwarts? Or did they just not manage to find the chamber, even if they hadn't been specifically looking for it? Slytherin clearly intended for it to be opened at some point, so he couldn't have hidden it too well - otherwise, he's running the risk of no one ever coming across it.
  • It's not so much that the Gaunts were famous for being descended from Salazar Slytherin, but rather that it's their claim to fame. It's an inbred family rife with mental illness, without much in the way of actual wealth and power. A few dark family curses? Maybe. But they're essentially the wizarding equivalent of hicks who brag about being descended from Robert E Lee- in other words, irrelevant, annoying, and not polite company. It is also implied that the Gaunts did not regularly attend Hogwarts, and were likely homeschooled. Now, aside from the issue of lineage, the people at Hogwarts aren't even sure if the Chamber exists. It is perfectly conceivable at the time that whoever is attacking students is simply using the legend as a part of his/her racist manifesto. The location of the chamber- or even its very existence- was never something that Salazar Slytherin made public. Whatever his motives or intentions, we know for a fact that Salazar Slytherin secretly built the chamber before a falling out with the other three Founders of Hogwarts- very likely shortly before. Whether or not he intended for the chamber to be used by a descendant, it clearly did not see much, if any, use until Tom Riddle showed up. To the staff and alumni of Hogwarts, the chamber is likely as real as the swimming pool on the fourth floor of your high school. Even setting aside the questionable existence of the chamber, it is still possible (and probable) that the perpetrator is, again, simply using the legend, and only calling himself the "heir"- indeed, Voldemort is often considered the Heir of Slytherin, not because of his physical lineage, but rather his ideological lineage. Even if the perpetrator is a physical heir of Salazar Slytherin, if you do genealogical work, you should know that one individual, if they father multiple healthy offspring, can have quite a few "heirs". It's very probable that the Gaunts are not the sole survivors of the Slytherin line. Especially considering how inbred the entire wizarding community is, I wouldn't be surprised if half the students at Hogwarts have a few drops of Slytherin blood in them.
  • You also have to be a Parselmouth to open the chamber, and it is a very rare ability. Morfin had the gift yes, but he doesn't seem smart enough to go investigating hidden corners of the castle.

The Curious Case of the Gender Bending Tom Riddle

• So the reason why no one goes into that bathroom is because of Moaning Myrtle, who was killed by the basilisk after it released. OK... so how did Tom get in and out of this bathroom whilst it was still fully in use without no one seeing and reporting him? Not only did he have to sneak in and out whenever he wanted to call the basilisk, but he also had to investigate it long enough to find the entrance which can not have been a quick job. Was he using polyjuice or something to slip in and out of there? The idea that the future Lord Voldemort may have potentially been watching his female classmates use the toilet whilst he waited for them to leave is a real healthy dose of Fridge Horror.
  • At this point in time, Riddle is a prefect. It probably wouldn't be too much of a stretch for him to take advantage of, say, hall monitor duties between classes or during the night, wait outside the bathroom until it's emptied out, and get to his evil business. If this seems like a risky method, well, then that's why Moaning Myrtle got killed; sitting in a stall, sobbing so no one hears you for ten minutes plus, Riddle probably didn't realize she was in there.
  • Hermione performs a spell in Deathly Hallows to see if anyone else is in Grimmauld Place. Presumably Riddle used it to check that the bathroom was empty beforehand. Why he didn't use it when Myrtle was involved is anyone's guess.
  • Here's some more Fridge Horror. What if he knew that Myrtle was in there and was planning to make her the next victim?
    • Which is especially likely given that he created a Horcrux out of her murder. It is somewhat implausible that the yet unexperienced Tom would be in position to perform a difficult ritual on the spot if the murder itself had not been premeditated.

Why did Lockhart sign up at Hogwarts?

• Forget the whole 'Why did they hire him' debate, why the hell did Lockhart even volunteer for the job in the first place? Sure, he is an arrogant Glory Seeker, but he is not stupid. He knows he can't do all those things written about him, why would he sign up for a job that could potentially reveal his fraud and memory crimes by showing that he can't teach the kids shit?
  • I'm pretty sure it's mentioned somewhere that he only agreed to take the job after finding out the great Harry Potter would be one of his students. If not for Harry, he probably wouldn't have been there. Also, Dumbledore was planning on using his employment as a means of exposing him as a fraud, after which he probably would've had to find another teacher anyway. Obviously, the whole "students turning up petrified" thing put a little bump in that plan, but Lockhart might've been told originally that he'd only be there until they found another teacher.
  • He's exceptionally self-absorbed, probably on the verge of Self-Serving Memory, so even if he didn't convince himself he knew his shit, he probably decided he'd be able to convince others he does. After all, Hogwarts employs Trelawny, so how hard can it be to fool them? (Yes, I know technically she's the real deal, that's besides the point). And as was mentioned elsewhere all the students would have to buy his books, so the payoff was worth the risk.
  • And also; does who can't, teach.
  • And remember, all of the things in his books about monsters and ways of dealing with them are supposedly completely legit - Lockhart was only a fraud through claiming that he did them. It's likely that most of DADA was spent reading from the books and lectures based on what Lockhart remembered from other wizards, with him doing demonstrations as little as possible. (Sort of like when Umbridge taught the class in Order of the Phoenix, except here the kids can at least practice magic and don't have to help each other in secret.)
  • In fact, in the third book, the entire class is rather surprised at Lupin telling them they'll only need their wands the first day of class. Harry specifically recalls Lockhart's pixie disaster the previous year as the last time they did anything involving actual magic. So they did spend most of the year going over the content of Lockhart's books which, as mentioned above, were fairly accurate in terms of everything except who did them.
  • It's job security. He gets to live at Hogwarts where three delicious meals a day are prepared for him by House Elves - who also clean up after him and make his life very easy.

Literal or metaphorical petrification?

• Some of the entries further up the page feature discussion over this issue and while film canon comes down on metaphorical (as did my interpretation of the text), clearly there's disagreement on whether the basilisk just put its victims in stasis or literally turned them to stone. Is there any clue one way or the other that's been missed?
  • They originally mistook Miss Norris for dead, so should be stasis.
  • The film offers a compromise where they're not turned to stone, but something has definitely happened to make the body all rigid. The clue is in the piece of paper found in Hermione's hand - her fist is still balled around it weeks later.

What was in that little box Malfoy had?

• While under the disguises of Crabbe and Goyle, Harry and Ron meet with Malfoy in the Slytherin common room to gather information about the Chamber of Secrets. At one point, he holds a small box tied with a ribbon and asks if it belongs to Goyle (Harry). What could've been in that box? It's the one plot hole in the movie that has bothered me all these years.
  • It’s nothing, it's just a joke about Malfoy being so spoiled and selfish that he takes presents that are not his if the owner is not around.
  • How is that a plot hole? It's just a minor thing that wasn't remotely integral to the plot. In order for something to be a plot hole, it needs to connect to the plot.

Just wait for your parents

• If Mr. and Mrs. Weasley can Apparate and Ron knows this, then why didn't he and Harry just wait for them to Apparate back to the car?
  • First and foremost, both of them acknowledge that they made a rash and stupid decision by trying to take the car themselves...In their defense, King's Cross was a Muggle train station. Arthur and Molly may've been worried about Apparating in broad daylight, and decided to wait until they could get back through the barrier, if that was the only way for them to leave.
  • They both panic because the gateway has never sealed itself before (Ron would have accompanied each of his brothers for the trip and so would have more experience of going through than Harry) and Ron starts to worry that his parents won't be able to get back through.

Summer holidays=homework or vacation?

• Early on in the book, Harry worries that he won't be able to do his homework for Hogwarts while he's at the Dursleys. Then later on, Ron wonders how Hermione can be doing homework while they're on vacation. If Hogwarts really does give assignments to its students during the summer holidays, then why does Ron act so surprised by the fact that Hermione is doing homework?
  • The answer is Ron Weasley is an underachiever. To the point he makes Harry, a boy with noticeable self esteem issues and worrying lack of ambition, look rational, assertive and resourceful by comparison. In fact, summer homework my be exactly why Harry Potter fairs ever so slightly better than Ron in academics, despite Ron having a head start on him by already and continuously living in the wizarding world.
  • Doesn't Ron make a crack about Hermione doing homework specifically while she's on holiday? As in, on a trip with her parents.

Slaying the basilisk

• In both book and film, Harry kills the basilisk by ramming the Sword of Gryffindor through the roof of its mouth (along with yanking one of its teeth out, I guess)...Is that really all it takes to kill it? Unless a vital organ happened to be located there, it seems like such an enormous creature could've put up more of a fight.
  • The movie actually clears it up. Looking at the sword's length and the angle of attack◊, the sword would actually have pierced the poor Basilisk's brain.

What did he say, dear?

• Was I the only one who thought Harry's mispronunciation of "Diagon Alley" wasn't too far off in the film? Even as a kid, I remember being confused as to how he'd ended up in Borgin & Burkes, since he didn't really botch it to the point where it could be misinterpreted as "diagonally" like he did in the book.
  • He was told to speak clearly, and he did say it rather fast, so it sounded more like Digonally. Not much of an answer, but that's my reasoning.
  • Listen to how Ron says it in the film - he says it slowly enough to distinguish between the two words so there can be no mistake which place he means. Harry says it too fast that the Floo Network or whatever got confused, and compromised by chucking him out in Knockturn Alley.

We do not speak his name! ...Anagrams, though, those are OK.

• If Tom held such contempt for the name he'd gotten from his "filthy Muggle father", why was he okay with adopting an anagram of it as his new title? Why didn't he make up an entirely new name for himself, rather than rearranging the letters in the one he hated so much?
  • Because Riddle hated his name as it was due to how common it was, and then when he found out his father was a Muggle, and saw 'Lord Voldemort' as a mighty title that is far, far from the normal, mundane, and common name of...Tom. Plus, some people out there have made up new names for themselves using some, or all, of the letters in their original name(s), so, Reality Is Unrealistic is in effect here.
  • He hated the "Tom" and the "Riddle" part of his name. He liked the "Marvolo" part, because it was a wizarding name and his strongest connection to his mother's pureblood heritage. Rather than get rid of his name entirely, including the part he did like, he chopped it up and rearranged the bits, so at least a little of his grandfather's identity survived in his chosen alias.
  • Perhaps he liked the symbolism - that the "ugly Muggle" name was hiding the magnificent and grandiose wizard name inside it. Kinda like the ugly duckling tale. Surely it must be the sign of fate that he was given a name that changes so nicely into his real title!
  • Tom had already been using "Lord Voldemort" as a private nickname among his school croneys for years before he even learned his father was a Muggle. When he did find out, he simply renounced the use of his birth name, and declared the nickname he'd already adopted for purposes of self-aggrandizement as his new one.

What does the Ford Anglia's interior look like from the outside?

• The book specifies that it's Bigger on the Inside. Given that a car is surrounded on all sides by windows then would the people inside look narrow and distorted if you looked in the windows at them. And should't the scenery look widened when you look out the windows?
  • Arthur must have accounted for that. Since Molly doesn't notice anything wrong when she's in the car, we can assume there was an enchantment to avoid any suspicion (from his wife and Muggles alike).

Why trying to grab the pudding during the Dursleys' evening with the Masons?

• When Dobby decides to throw Aunt Petunia's pudding to the floor, why Harry didn't just return to his room and let Dobby did whatever he wanted to do with the pudding in both the book and the film? As far the Durlseys knew, Harry was on his room and thus he couldn't be responsible for levitating the pudding and throwing it. That said, at least in the film adaptation, it seems that Dobby's original intention was not to throw the pudding on Mrs. Mason's face until Harry tried to grab the pudding, but regardless of that, in both the book and the film, if Harry had left the kitchen, the Dursleys would have had no way to connect the incident with Harry.
  • No, the Dursleys would only know that a normal person couldn't have levitated the pudding from his bedroom. But they already know Harry is a wizard, and are suspicious of him being a wizard despite never really learning the rules of what he can do as a wizard. They would be very right to suspect him of the act even if they could confirm he'd been in his room when it happened, because they have no reason to think that he couldn't cast a levitation spell from upstairs. And even if they didn't suspect him personally, there was obviously something magical to blame, and Harry is the only reason why anything magical would be happening in the house, so he's bound to be punished for it either way.

How did Harry knew that Lucius was going to hand the diary to Dobby?

• At the end, when Harry gives Tom Riddle's diary back to Lucius, he tries to leave with Dobby, but Dobby discovers that Harry left his sock there and thus he is now free. But how did Harry know it would play out that way, book or film? In the book, Lucius throws the diary to the floor and Dobby just finds the sock upon approaching it; in the film, Lucius just hands it to Dobby and orders him to come before Dobby opens the diary at Harry's urging and finds the sock. But what if in both versions Lucius just decided to take the diary himself and kept it on his pockets? Then Dobby would not have been freed and Lucius could have disposed off the sock once back at his home...
  • It pans out a lot better in the book than how you describe it. Harry didn't stuff the sock in the diary in the book - he stuffed the diary in the sock. So when he handed the diary to Lucius, he knew Lucius would discard the sock once he pulled the book out of it, and was planning on Dobby being so desperate for freedom that he would catch the sock and utilise it as his dismissal. Plus, in the film version, it still works because Lucius thinks of himself as an all-important wizard of a pure bloodline, and thus would make Dobby - his slave - do anything he wishes, including carrying his items for him if he deems them invaluable - which a destroyed diary would certainly count as. So he just thursts the book at Dobby as a silent way of saying, "Carry this thing, vermin," and then Harry tells Dobby to open it and find the sock. In both versions, Harry is utilising Lucius's supremicist views against him - in the book, by seeing the sock as a useless thing the diary was in, and in the film, by seeing the diary as a useless thing he didn't know a sock was in, and both times something he wouldn't think would have an impact on him or Dobby.
  • In addition, there's nothing saying how much Harry was betting on things playing out as intended; he was just making an attempt to free Dobby from servitude when there was no risk to his own safety if it failed. If Lucius kept the diary on his person until they'd made it home, then Dobby wouldn't have been freed, but Harry isn't any worse off for that. He'd just be a bit depressed that it didn't work.

It's just a highly dangerous, sapient, invasive species, nothing to worry about, children.

• According to lore, Acromantula are from Asia, Aragog was 55 when he died, and he was huge, not only that but his wife was probably much bigger (as most arachnid species tend to be in dimorphism), except for Hagrid’s care for Aragog, why in the hell would Dumbledore allow such a dangerous species to roam in the forest? For that matter how does anything survive the forest? A colony of spiders the size of cars would wipe out any ecosystem in no time flat.
  • Are we ever told that Dumbledore knew about Aragog and his family living in the forest? I know Dumbledore knew about Aragog being in Hagrid's care the time of his expulsion, but I don't think it's ever said Dumbledore was aware that there was an Acromantula colony in the Forbidden Forest. We also need to remember Aragog was very sentimental to Hagrid, and they probably made an agreement that the Acromantula hunt in a specific area of the forest.
    • Well, Hagrid was kept on as gamekeeper, so, Dumbledore probably knew of his innocence, meaning he knew Aragog was not the creature of the Chamber, one theory relates to real life advocacy for not killing spiders, as they keep numerous pest insect populations down, maybe Aragog and his brood hunt mostly dangerous animals, the one hole about this is that, according to lore, Acromantula are considered a XXXXX class creature, the same classification as Basilisks and Dragons, basically nothing in the forest was as dangerous as Aragog and his brood.
  • Harry gets bitten by one in the fourth book and doesn't seem to have any lasting problems - especially after going through a whole confrontation with Voldemort right afterward. So their venom might not be lethal. It seems they're classed as that dangerous because they're cannibalistic. But they're capable of human intelligence and reasoning, since they have an agreement not to enter the grounds that they still honor even after Aragog's death. And when they do swarm the castle in the final battle, it doesn't look like they caused much harm. So they're dangerous if you're alone against an army of them in their turf, but less so when up against wizards that can fight back against them.

Lemme just murder a student outside Dumbledore's office with an Unforgivable curse!

• At the end of the film, after Dobby was freed, Lucius Malfoy pulls out his wand, and very clearly said "Avada..." before getting blasted by Dobby, the film came out in 2005, five years after the book of Goblet of Fire, even if the theory is correct that Lucius was targeting Dobby, it's still stated that the Unforgivable Curses are illegal to even use, regardless of target, to the point that you need special dispensation to use them at all (The Aurors during the first war against Voldemort were given permission from Crouch Sr. to do so, and Crouch Jr!Moody said he asked Dumbledore to be allowed to show them,just on spiders) so what was Lucius' big plan afterwards? "Sorry, got a bit carried away and murdered Harry Potter, the Boy who Lived, with the same curse that killed his parents"
  • The curse was ad-libbed by the actor, Jason Isaacs. The script didn't give a specific spell for him to say, so he just used the first one that came to his head — and that happened to be the beginning of the Killing Curse. From an in-universe perspective, maybe there are other spells that begin with the same sound, and he'd planned on casting one of those instead. (For what it's worth, the delivery sounded so raspy and hiss-like that I've always had trouble getting "Avada" out of it.)
    • There is also a fan-theory that justifies it better: he may have been planning to kill Dobby instead. Dobby is the one who says 'don't hurt Harry', and attacks Lucius to stop him from finishing the curse, but there's nothing to specify if Harry was actually the target or if Dobby was just, as before, trying to protect Harry from anything he deemed as a threat (such as being at a school full of powerful wizards who could keep him safe from harm). It's possible Lucius was so upset at having lost his slave / status-symbol that he decided 'if I can't have it, nobody can', and was prepared to kill Dobby rather than let him go free.
    • I think the spell started with Ferra... It was most likely an attack spell but I doubt it was AK.

When the Horcrux was made

• The diary horcrux was said to be forged from Moaning Myrtle's death. Yet, the horcrux shows Harry the events of Hagrid's arrest. Which occurred after the death of Myrtle. So, could the diary have been made from someone else's death?
  • Just because the event the diary showed happened after Myrtle's death doesn't mean the diary can't show memories that occured after it becomes a Horcrux. It's like the Pensieve - memories can be viewed in it, but events that occur at the same time within a certain proximity, even if the person the memory belongs to was not directly present, can be seen as well. It could also be a case of, when in close proximity to the 'Master Soul', the soul fragment can pick up memories from it.
  • Yeah, okay sure. I can accept that. Part of the reason why I thought the way I did before that, is because when Harry confronts young Tom in the chamber, Tom shows complete ignorance to what has happened in the wizarding world up until that point. There seemed to be implications that the diary was not able to process any information unless written in, so it holding the memory of Hagrid's arrest didn't make sense to me.

Selective Magic Detection?

• After Dobby levitates and drops a cake on the heads of the Dursley's houseguests Harry receives a letter from the Ministry warning him that any further uses of magic outside of school prior to age 17 will result in immediate expulsion. So clearly the Ministry can track the location but not the user, so how do they handle families with multiple children? Wouldn't Ron have gotten in trouble every time one of his parents or older siblings used magic?
  • It's been explained that young witches and wizards with magical families are monitered less intensely than wizarding children in Muggle families. The Ministry trusts magical parents to punish their children if they perform magic outside of school.
    • I see. But what if there's a widowed muggle who married a witch or wizard or what if a muggle family was lucky/unlucky enough to have multiple kids with magical abilites?
  • Then the Ministry moniters those families more intensely. It may also be a case that, as they are aware there is more than one underage wizard/witch in the area, the Ministry sends someone to determine which one did the magic (probably through Priori Incantato), and punish them accordingly. It's just that, with Harry's case, because the Ministry is only aware of him being the only wizarding resident of Privet Drive, they automatically assume any magic that sets off the Trace in his vicinity was caused by him, but if they are aware of more magical residents in an area, they most likely take better care in working out what caused the magic.

How is Hermione a witch if her parents are Muggles?

• Just something that's been confusing me for 20 years since I was six.
  • If you subscribe to that Umbridgian logic, how was the first ever wizard born? It's a Pureblood myth that all wizards have to come from the union of other wizards.
  • She had wizarding ancestry. Specifically, one of her ancestors was a Squib, who married into a Muggle family. Many generations later, magic resurfaced, with Hermione being the result. In other words, an ancestral throwback.

Intervention of Child Services?

• How was Uncle Vernon able to install bars on the window of Harry's bedroom without any neighbours noticing it? Aside from the fact that anyone walking through Privet Drive could see the bars and that the neighbours weren't told that Harry was a criminal boy until the fifth book, shouldn't Mrs. Figg have been aware of that if she constantly checked on Harry? By the way, at least in the book, couldn't the man hired by Vernon to install the bars have become alerted to the fact that he was locking up a twelve-year-old boy?
  • Vernon may have phrased it that the bars aren't to lock Harry up, but to keep him safe. He could state Harry is prone to sleepwalking that has the potential to cause him to open his window and fall out. After all, the neighbors won't know that Harry is being locked up all the time, and the man Vernon hired won't know that either.
  • Maybe the excuse that Harry was a criminal or badly behaved boy was thought up because the neighbours were asking questions about the bars?

Robes and their impracticality

• This may concern also other HP volumes/scenes, but it jugs bugs me, how impractical the wizard robes are. Granted they get rid of them in later installments, but that is more fashion/film-wise than anything. It never struck me as a child, but particularly the scene, where Harry runs from Basilisk... holy shit, his robe must be slowing him down immensely. Not only it flaps around your limbs, and throws away your balance when running, but plays considerable part in decceleration in aerodynamic means. The first thing I would do would be taking that thing off BEFORE I started running (or at least as I would realize it 3 seconds after I started running). It's not that he has anything important in his robe at this time. At least not anything that can help him fight Basilisk or Riddle.
  • Good point. I suppose there are spells to make robes more streamlined and aerodynamic, just as there are to keep the rain off Harry's glasses, and experienced wizards would know these spells. In many computer games involving wizards, heavy armour is an impediment to spellcasting, so wizards' robes would be light and supple. At least the young wizards do wear trainers or sneakers under their robes; for some reason, Harry's trainers (not just "shoes") are frequently mentioned in the books. Also, as mentioned in Order of the Phoenix, robes have the benefit of being able to discreetly stamp on someone's foot to stop them talking.

Harry has no sense of self-preservation

• I have rewatched the movie and after the final battle, the scene in DD's office, Lucius comes and yadda, yadda. Harry is holding the Gryffindor sword... with both of his BARE hands on the BLADE. I have many problems with this:
  • 1) Not only is this dangerous with regular swords, but mind you...
  • 2) This particular sword is now impregnated with the basilisk venom (so it can destroy Horcruxes in the future).
  • 3) Even if you come with a theory (which I personally almost immediately discarded as soon as I thought of it) that Harry is now so to say immune against the venom by the tears of Phoenix (for what we know, they may act as a magical permanent antidote; but again, I don't support it), he may still injure himself badly.
  • 4) It is illogical to hold it like this if for the sake of practicality... like holding a turned off chainsaw with the plate where the chain rotates. The handle must be heavier and you must feel it that it is not right way to hold.
  • a) Is Harry a three year old? b) Is he braindead? c) Does he have a death wish?
    • 1) It is perfectly safe and possible to hold a sword by the blade - it's actually a method people used way back to block another person's sword blows. 2) Just because the sword now has basilisk venom in it does not mean simply holding it will spead that venom - Harry held a basilisk fang, which also has said venom, yet was perfectly fine afterwards. 3) See previous point. 4) As said before, holding a sword by its blade actually was a viable method of blocking blows.
    • Thanks for the answer. By the 2), I meant that if he cut himself by accident, of course, not that the venom would be absorbed by skin. And I went a bit deeper into this and stand corrected by the blade holding in fights, nonetheless it seems to be the case of Murphy's laws. If he was attacking someone with his hands on the blade, he wouldn't probably cut himself, but just standing idly, he is more prone to accidentally cutting himself. Like a paper cut. If you try to cut into the skin, with a paper, odds are you won't succeed. But when a page takes you by surprise, it can cut almost to the bone.
    • OP again, going to throw a bold guess here, just for the fun of the conversation. Maybe when the sword impaled basilisk, it may not be actually impregnated by the venom per se, as in filled with it to poison everyone who got just mildly scratched by it? Maybe the sword has only kind of "leveled up", in the terms of knowledge? As it only learned about the powerful basilisk venom and used it to destroy the horcruxes/other magical/powerfully enchanted items. If it was embalmed by tears of a phoenix, for example, it would grant also healing powers by laying it on the wound... but you would still be able to cut yourself or anyone else with it...

Rogue Bludger

• Why didn't anyone else notice that one of the Bludgers was aiming only for Harry? Madam Hooch is a stickler for fairness, and McGonagall is obsessed with Quidditch and beating the Slytherins. Even if an inquiry would require ending the game with the Gryffindors losing, someone in the crowd should have at least protested and said something. For that matter, what kind of rules would make a team choose between either forfeiting the game for an inquiry into possible cheating or continuing when the odds are clearly stacked against them? Wouldn't that just encourage cheating?
  • Well, this might not be a satisfactory answer, but considering Wood, who is obsessed with winning himself, didn't notice, and what he comments on when Fred and George get him to do a timeout is that one of the Chasers got knocked off her broom, it seems that during that particular game, the focus was mostly on the Chasers (which makes sense since the Slytherins were scoring well, so both teams would have reason to focus on that a bit), not Harry, and Fred and George only noticed because it's their job to notice and handle the Bludgers, so they noticed Harry's problem right away, it seems that when it came to the issue of the crowd, Madam Hooch, and so on, they all Failed a Spot Check when it came to this, somewhat justified because they were paying attention to a much more obvious and noticable part of the game. After that though, the movie shows Harry's, Dobby's Bludger's, and Draco's chase happening and being at least sort of noticed, and in the book, there's a brief mention of the crowd noticing and laughing, so something similar may have happened. It seems no one noticed earlier because the incident hadn't gone on long enough, and once it did go on, people started seeing what was going on with Harry. As to the "forfeiting" thing, I assume that was just a badly structured bit of writing on Rowling's part, but an in-universe thing might be that Harry, who is the one most adamant about it, while everyone but Wood outright protests on the spot, it's possible that Harry was overestimating the risk, and that it wasn't so much "we definitely forfeit" and more "If the Slytherins deny it, which they will, and all this becomes a thing, we might be at risk of some sort of consequence or complicating our Quidditch chance this year" and Wood was too worried about losing a chance, and too doubtful Harry would change his mind, to make the call against him. Basically, Harry might've been thinking too simplistically on the whole thing, and didn't want to risk whatever may or may not happen if they didn't continue, even if he actually could've been fine if he did go the other way with it. Honor Before Reason to put a Trope on it. I imagine that, since later we're shown cheating is penalized, yet the Slytherins still did it, it's likely doing this would've caused trouble (If it had been the Slytherins who did it), and made the match end, but it wouldn't have been a forfeit like Harry thought unless they couldn't prove that the Bludger was behaving strangely, which they could, which is where I think Harry might've been mistaken, since what is said before that was Wood doubting or at least being unsure how the Slytherins did it since the Bludgers were secure, and Harry was overthinking the issue.

How is a Howler written?

• Does the writer "dictate" a Howler into their wand? Or do they cast a "Howler" spell on an already-written letter? Is the tone of voice determined in a similar way to the portraits which take on the personality of somebody alive or dead?
  • We can see in the film version that the words written on the note inside the Howler envelope match what it screams, so it can be presumed that the message itself is written on ordinary paper and the envelope is charmed to absorb the energy and voice of the writer. The fact that it quiets down to congratulate Ginny on making Gryffindor proves that it forms a type of psychic link with the user where it understands who exactly it needs to yell at and in what tone.

Why doesn't Harry let anyone know about Dobby?

• That rogue bludger was actually trying to kill him and Dobby confesses to rigging it to do so?

A memory gains memories?

• How is it that the Horcrux Riddle, who stated he was just a memory left in a diary, knows about his future? The Memory knows that as a baby, Harry survived the killing curse by Voldy, which led to Voldy's downfall. I can't imagine that the soul Voldy would have had enough strength to impart that knowledge into his diary, nor is it ever stated that he visited with the Malfoys to put the information in there (if so, he may have also tipped them off that the diary was very, very important to him.
  • Riddle does state he knows about recent history, particularly that which concerns Harry, because Ginny had told him, by writing in the diary.
    • So Ginny just starts to write about having a crush on Harry and then she goes into detail about his backstory? What would even prompt that?
    • The diary does write back. He could have just asked her about him.