The Hat, the sword and the chamber, and Dumbledore

[David <dfrankiswork@netscape.net>]

No: HPFGUIDX 51516

Cathy wrote:

> My point was that I don't think the sword was in the Hat.  I think 
> the Hat gave Harry the sword when he asked the Hat to help him.   
> When the Basilisk swept the Sorting Hat at Harry, it 
says "something 
> soft hit his face." I believe Harry probably would have noticed if 
> there was already a sword in the hat when he jammed it on his 
head. 
> The Sorting Hat produced the sword when Harry asked it to help him 
> because that is what Harry needed to battle the Basilisk.  After 
all, 
> the Sorting Hat is magical, it is not just another hat.  

Yes, that is how I have always read this passage.

I think that this and the other sorting hat passages are consistent 
with the idea that the Hat really only functions fully when on 
somebody's head.

Dumbledore's statement about 'only a true Gryffindor' as a deduction 
from a choice made by the Hat gains force when we consider the Hat's 
normal function.  It isn't just that when Harry was in difficulty, 
he got a Gryffindor objrct: Dumbledore's point is that the Hat, 
which was the source of Harry's doubt in the first place, when given 
a free choice of its own, picked Gryffindor's sword.  As others have 
argued, the force of this argument is weakened if Dumbledore himself 
was the one who selected the sword.

I think it is an interesting question to ask why Fawkes brought the 
Hat.  Fawkes himself seems to be Dumbledore's representative, as the 
loyalty of phoenixes is tied to Dumbledore's remark in Hagrid's hut 
about only being gone when all those loyal have left.  It's as if 
Fawkes' actions underline the idea that the existence of the Chamber 
and the basilisk is a problem left by the founders, and they need to 
be present symbolically - which means magically in JKR's world - to 
resolve it.

Whether the Chamber itself had any role in facilitating the arrival 
of phoenix, Hat, and sword, is another interesting question.  
Certainly, by the end of the scene, it is frankly just *littered* 
with symbolic objects.   Even the most dedicated of temple thieves 
would worry about the inflationary effects of removing them all.

As to what exactly Dumbledore knew, that's a hard one.  Certainly he 
seems to see Creevey's camera as decisive.  The trouble is we don't 
know very much about the previous opening of the chamber.  It's 
clear Myrtle wasn't the only victim, so Dumbledore may simply have 
recognised a similarity of pattern in the attacks.  Another camera-
wielding victim in the forties is unlikely but not impossible.

On the whole it seems plausible, though, that he believes the 
monster is a basilisk.  It's possible that he may have trouble 
getting his staff to believe him, if he's seen as someone who went 
against received opinion about Hagrid:  "Oh, Albus doesn't really 
think straight about the Chamber.  He's never really been able to 
accept Hagrid's guilt."  One must suppose that Fudge, at least, 
thinks something of the sort.

David