another flint?

[Susan Miller <constancevigilance@yahoo.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 50249

<obbippon at h...> wrote:
> 
> Hermione says at the Deathday Party (COS p.132, American
> paperback):> "She haunts one of the toilets in the girls' 
> bathroom on the first floor."

> Then, only 6 pages later, "Harry hurtled around the second 
> floor, ...edited...

Then bboy_mn:
> Joy, it looks like you are right. I reread some of the parts in my 
US
> edition (paperback) and they seem to consistently use the same UK
> references. In the front door (ground level) up the marble staircase
> (first floor) up another staircase to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom
> (second floor).
> 
> That would make Hermione's statement the FLINT.  (snip)
> 
> So, I guess it is a mistake. No one at the publishers seems to have
> caught it though. 
> 

I think Myrtle haunts ALL the bathrooms. We also see her in the 
prefects bathroom on the (help me, LOONS) 4th floor (?). I think her 
favorite is the one that she died in, which I think is on the second 
floor, as the resident expert on Hogwarts plumbing she can be 
expected to show up anywhere.

Which brings me to a topic that I haven't seen discussed before. 
Myrtle + plumbing + basilisk.

When Ginny as front man for the heir of Slytherin freed the basilisk, 
how exactly was this done? If she spoke Parseltongue at the magic 
sink and opened it, then there should be some evidence of that. At 
the very least, there should be fresh slithering marks on the tube 
and maybe in the bathroom. And we must also assume that whenever the 
Basilisk was released, Myrtle was elsewhere. (Perhaps in the first 
floor bathroom?)

The other possibility is that Tom Riddle told Ginny some other spell 
that would release the basilisk, but just into the pipes, not the 
bathroom. Even so, the basilisk has to come into the fresh air 
sometime in order to petrify students throughout the book. There 
should still be some slither marks and maybe a slime trail from 
contact with pipes gone 1000 years without a cleaning.

But the biggest problem I have with this is Myrtle. She explores the 
plumbing in the castle enough to find the prefects' bath, but she 
doesn't investigate the non-functional sink in her favorite bathroom 
in 50 years. She is always there when the Trio wants to speak with 
her, but she is always AWOL when there is snake mischief afoot, with 
or without Ginny. She isn't aware when her pipe kingdom has a massive 
trespasser, or if she is, she doesn't think it worthwhile to inform 
Harry.

In any case, I hate to be a flint-buster, but I think there are other 
reasons for Hermione to attribute more than one bathroom as being a 
haunt of Myrtle. And thanks for the hook to allow me to present my 
basilisk conundrum.

~ Constance Vigilance ~