Albus Dumbledore: the myth and the man

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 96187

> vmonte responds:
> Nice post! Great observation! You're right, it's too much of a 
> coincidence that Professor Sprout had all those Mandrakes 
>handy.  


Is it? Dumbledore could know from Ollivander that Tom Riddle is 
Voldemort. He knows Tom Riddle opened the Chamber last 
time. It's a good bet people were petrified last time. (Dippet 
refers to "all these attacks" but only one person was killed. ) He 
knows Voldemort is laying for Harry. He knows that the Chamber 
monster was never caught. Even if his portrait spies aren't 
keeping an eye on Malfoy manor, wouldn't  it be prudent of him to 
lay in a supply of  mandrake root? 

I really can't believe all those petrifications happened by 
accident. Isn't it a lot more likely that Tom experimented with his 
pet until he discovered, or rediscovered, the basilisk's ability to 
petrify? It would be juicily ironic if petrification was remembered 
in Muggle legends (as it is in real life), and thus known to Tom, 
but lost to wizard lore due to the famous wizard reluctance to 
discuss anything to do with dark magic. 

So Tom picks his Muggleborn victims, decoys them into place 
and then ambushes them, concealing the basilisk in the 
shadows and ordering it to avert its gaze until the moment is 
nigh. All the victims ever see is the great big yellow eyes, and 
that's no help, since no one has ever reported what a basilisk's 
gaze looks like.  So nobody, even Dumbledore, can guess what 
the monster is, even if the revived victims of the basilisk can 
remember what happened to them. There's every possibility that 
the monster is a new creation like a blast-ended skrewt anyway. 

Only  Hermione's naivete  and  Harry's ignorance enable them to 
solve the mystery. Wiser and more learned wizards like 
Dumbledore would have "known" that basilisks don't petrify 
people and they would have disregarded the fleeing spiders and 
the slain roosters as disinformation--false clues left by The Heir. 
Just like certain listies disregard the Snape-vampire clues 
because they "know" that vampires are dead and crumble to 
dust in the sunlight ;-)

Pippin