[HPforGrownups] Dead Basilisk; and ancient construction

[Alexander]

No: HPFGUIDX 40098

  Greetings!

f> Mahoney wrote:

f> True, but could anyone get there who is not a
f> parselmouth? Myrtle said that the tap which is the
f> entrance to the Chamber had never worked - so it hadn't
f> worked for at *least* 50 years. One might think that the
f> school would have tried to fix a broken tap, but if so,
f> never managed to get it working. Perhaps they were unable
f> to open it up to check for clogs or replace pipes, maybe
f> because the *only* way to open it is to use parseltongue;
f> impervious to magic and physical assault otherwise,
f> possibly.

  Agreed that only a parselmough can enter. Actually, this
thought had entered my brain ~10 seconds after I sent my
letter... ;)

  So, there's a supply of melee weapons for Harry and
Voldie. Still nice. ;)

f> On the other hand, I've been wondering about that tap in
f> Myrtle's bathroom, wondering how a modern sink tap
f> managed to be the entrance of a Chamber created and
f> sealed and never opened prior to Tom Riddle since Salazar
f> Slytherin's day a thousand years ago (did I get the time
f> frame right? No books at hand). I didn't think they had
f> indoor plumbing back then....

  AFAIK this question is somewhere among the unexplained
questions of the same kind, somewhere deep in HP Lexicon. My
personal view is that the castle is... well... magical, and
it may adapt to more modern techniques. Consider the room
with chamber pots Dumbledore found (if it was not a joke) -
such a room couldn't exist 1000 years ago either, when the
castle was built.

  But I care little for the tap, I'm more interested in
Basilisk's teeth. ;)

n> Naama wrote:

n> I've always assumed that it's Basilisk skin, shed the way
n> all snakes shed their skin.

  There is a shed skin, true, but there's also a dead
basilisk, killed by Harry, mouth full of razor-sharp
poisonous teeth. The body of basilisk was never removed from
the Chamber (such enterprise would require Harry's
assistance to get into the Chamber, and all events with
Harry we know about). So it's still lying there near the
wall, at the feet of Salazar's statue.

Sincerely yours,
Alexander Lomski,
Gryffindor/Slytherin crossbreed,
always happy to throw weird ideas into community.

Thursday, June 20, 2002, 15:40 local time (GMT+2:00)