Albus Dumbledore: the myth and the man

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 96213

 vmonte responds:
>> Weren't the mandrakes acquired before anyone was petrified 
at school? (I hope what I'm remembering isn't movie 
contamination.) If the  Chamber was still closed (and we go with 
the theory that DD is not  all knowing), then DD didn't know that 
Voldemort was at the school.
 So why buy mandrake?<<

"In my fifth year, the Chamber was opened and the monster 
attacked several students, finally killing one." CoS ch. 13 

Dippet clicked his tongue sympathetically.
"The thing is, Tom," he sighed, "special arrangements might 
have been made for you, but in the current circumstances...."
"You mean all these attacks, sir?" ...
"We are no nearer locating the--er-- source of all this 
unpleasantness." --CoS


 Dumbledore was at the school when the chamber was opened 
*before*.Several people were attacked but didn't die. Is it too 
much of a stretch to assume they were petrified and revived with 
mandrake, the standard remedy for "returning people who have 
been transfigured or cursed to their original state" ?  

Dumbledore wouldn't have had to know what  kind of monster 
it was to believe  that Voldemort, obsessed with 
destroying  Harry, might find a way to set it loose again. He did 
believe that Voldemort would have to leave Albania to do it, but 
Voldemort had already shown that he was capable of doing that. 
Quirrell could have opened the Chamber, but I suppose the 
basilisk would have had to look in all three sets of eyes to 
dispose of Fluffy. Too risky.

Pippin