[HPforGrownups] Slytherins heir? Says who?

[eloiseherisson at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 43594

Brian:
>      How did Riddle discover that he was the Heir of Slytherin, 
> anyway? In CoS, Diary!Riddle, while talking to Harry in the Chamber, 
> claims that the blood of Slytherin runs in his veins through his 
> mother's side, yet in the graveyard scene of GoF, Voldemort states 
> that his mother died giving birth to him. So how did he find out? 
> It's not the kind of thing that his father would have told him about 
> even if he had been involved in the childs' upbringing. Nor would it 
> have been included in whatever records were kept at the orphanage 
> where he grew up.(This would be in the late 20's to early30's if Tom 
> finished at Hogwarts in the spring of '45). 
> 
> 
Eloise:
Ah...but assuming his mother had also been at Hogwarts, there were likely to 
be other students who knew her family, some of the staff were likely to have 
known her. Perhaps the old head of Slytherin house quietly took him aside one 
day and told him.
I think there are ways he could have found out.

Brian:
>Is there a geneology 
>section in the Hogwarts library? If so, why hasn't Harry used it?

Eloise:
Harry never opens a book unless he has to!  ;-)

Brian:> 
>      One explaination would be the ability to speak parseltongue. 
> Again, in the Chamber, Diary!Riddle describes himself and Harry 
> as "probably the only two Parselmouths to attend Hogwarts since the 
> great Slytherin himself". A thousand years since Slytherin left 
> Hogwarts and then TWO parselmouths in the same century? Diary!
> Riddle's use of the word "probably" was prudent because there's no 
> way for him to know for sure.  After the incedent at the duelling 
> club, Ron tells Harry that "it's not a very common gift". Either 
> this is the understatement of the year, or the ability just isn't 
> seen (or heard, for that matter) in England very often. If the gift 
> was as rare as Diary!Riddle seems to think, why would Harry's use of 
> it create the stir that it did? It would show up so seldom that no 
> one would have memory of it, and nothing would be written about it 
> other than through association with Slytherin, probably as a 
> footnote in his official bio. 

Eloise:
I think you've put your finger on it. It is *extremely* rare (to say the 
least), but it was one of the things Slytherin was *famous* for (COS, 147, UK 
PB). Rather than being a footnote, I think that everyone except Harry 
*immediately* made the connection.
I also think that there may well have been other Parselmouths in the interim, 
who had the good sense to keep their ability hidden! Harry would have, I'm 
sure, if he'd realised the implications.

Brian:
Dumbldore speculates that the ability > was passed to Harry on the night that 
> Voldemort's AK rebounded. Let us not forget that GINNY, while posessed by 
> Diary!Riddle, opened the Chamber both to release (and presumably command) 
> the basilisk, and also to enter the Chamber herself towards the end of CoS. 
> This gives 
> evidence that the ability can be imparted through an enchated item 
> such as the diary.


Eloise:
IIRC, it is Riddle who says that Ginny opened the Chamber; Dumbledore says 
that it was opened by the same person as last time, i.e. *Riddle*.
As you say, Ginny was possessed by Riddle, he was pouring his *soul* into 
her. If Ginny's mouth spoke Parseltongue, then it was Riddle who spoke 
through her.
In a sense, the ability was passed on through the diary, because the 
possession happened via the diary. But I don't think that Ginny *is* a 
Parselmouth in the way Harry is. I don't think the ability outlasted the 
possession.

Brian:> 
>      Working hypothesis: Riddle, as a first year, read the Slytherin 
> bio and was intrigued by the legend of the Chamber of Secrets. He 
> then began to study all that he could over the next few years about 
> Slytherin himself, and his research eventually took him into the 
> restricted section of the library. Being a favorite of almost the 
> entire faculty (Dumbledore excepted), such access should not have 
> posed much of a difficulty.  It was in the restricted section, that 
> he obtained the clues to give him the location of the entrance to 
> the Chamber. At this point in my theory, I should point out that I 
> do not believe he was a parselmouth. 

Eloise:
You mean that he is not yet a Parselmouth at this stage of the theory?
And yes, we know he did five years' research before finding the entrance.

Brian:
He had found the tap with the > snake scratched on it and dedeuced the 
> parseltongue "password". He then transfigured himself into a snake in order 
> to open the tunnel. (I am not suggesting that he was an animagus; Animagi 
> transform at will but wizards can transfigure themselves with spells as 
> evidenced 
> by Krum in the second trial of the Triwizard tournament.)
> This is how he gained access to the Chamber and it's contents. One 
> of the items I think he discovered was a "Last Will and Testament" 
> which was enchanted with some of the essence of Salazar Slytherin in 
> much the same way that the diary was imbued with a little of Tom 
> Riddle. It was after Tom's possession by this document that he  
> literally became Slytherin's heir, AND aquired the ability to speak 
> parseltongue because, in a sense, Slytherin HIMSELF now lives!

Eloise:
That's an interesting theory and I think it works, although it depends on a 
few things for which we have no canonical proof. But doesn't it also imply 
that Slytherin must also live in Harry via the curse that failed?

Brian:> 
>      Prediction: The Chamber of Secrets will be the room to be 
> revisited. I fail to understand why Dumbledore hadn't pulled Harry 
> out of class in order to open the Chamber for him at some point in 
> the last two books, or why the twins didn't cajole him into it for 
> the purpose of exploring.

Eloise:
The key thing was that no-one knew where to look for the entrance. Harry 
couldn't have found it if they hadn't put two and two together and realised 
that Myrtle was the basilisk's last victim. And just being a Parselmouth 
wasn't enough: Harry couldn't even manage to speak Parseltongue without a lot 
of effort at visualising the scratched snake as a real one, so he couldn't 
have just gone round the castle making a command to 'open up' in Parseltongue 
until he found it. Also no-one, not even Dumbledore, realised that the 
monster *was* a basilisk and that it was using the plumbing to get around.

I wonder if they would even have *thought* to look at the plumbing system? 
Perhaps using the plumbing was Riddle's idea (IIRC, the monster had never 
been released before and therefore hadn't needed a way to get around): the 
true entrance to the *Chamber* seems to be that at the end of the tunnel, to 
my mind. (Don't ask me how he found it, though!)

This would answer the problem that has beene voiced over the entrance to the 
Chamber which Slytherin created a millennium ago being in a relatively modern 
bathroom fitting.

As for the twins, they thought they knew every last inch of the place 
already. I don't suppose they would think that Harry could find something 
they hadn't.

I don't think Parseltongue was the only thing necessary to open the Chamber. 
I think that Harry could only get in because Riddle had already done it, 
unlocked it, as it were.
The legend to which Prof Binns refers is quite specific: only *Slytherin's 
true heir* would be able to open it. (COS, 114, UK PB). This seems to be what 
Riddle understood.

And that, of course leads us right back to the discussion on what is meant by 
an 'heir'.
There doesn't seem here to be any indication that being Slytherin's heir is 
something that is passed on from generation to generation, rather that there 
was to be *one* future, true heir, more in the line of the 'chosen one' that 
we have been discussing re Gryffindor's heir.

I wonder if Helga Hufflepuff and Rowena Ravenclaw have true heirs, too?

> 
> I await your criticisms with clenched teeth and closed eyes. Be 
> gentle!
> 
Wasn't that bad, was it? I hope not. :-)

Eloise


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