Entering the Chamber

[Barry Arrowsmith]

No: HPFGUIDX 90464

Since I submitted the original Possession post a week or so ago, 
aspects of the whole Chamber question have been bothering me. According 
to  Tom it took him five years to find the entrance to the Chamber, but 
annoyingly he doesn't tell us how he solved the problem. Nor is there 
any hint as to why the entrance should be in a girl's bathroom. There 
is also a faint possibility that there is more than one entrance.

To take the last point first - Harry is aware of something (the 
Basilisk) that he can hear moving about in the structure of Hogwarts. 
To do so it had to leave the Chamber; but Myrtle has apparently seen 
nothing unusual in her bathroom recently. Isn't this a bit odd? There 
sits Myrtle, alone and palely loitering in her U-bend, desperate for 
company or someone she can nag, and she is not  aware of the multiple 
Basilisk forays that cause such a fuss, nor did she notice Ginny using 
the bathroom to access the Chamber. Surely the sound of Possessed!Ginny 
speaking Parseltongue to open the Chamber would have attracted her 
attention? Apparently not. Or perhaps it didn't all happen in the 
bathroom. Tell me, how did Tom get *out* of the Chamber all those years 
ago? He certainly didn't use Fawkes. It's a long slide down to the 
bottom - and there are no steps.

Harry first hears the Basilisk during his detention with Lockhart - 
this is within the first few days of the start of the school year. Is 
it likely that Ginny has already opened the Chamber in that short time? 
I wouldn't have thought so, and if I'm right then the Basilisk can 
somehow access the school pipework by a route other than the entrance 
in Myrtle's boudoir. Maybe it has always been able to do this and only 
a Parselmouth would have been able to realise it. After all, there are 
lots of side pipes branching off from that slide down to the Chamber.

The only two Parselmouths since Salazar's days that we know about are 
Harry and Tom. Is this what alerted Tom to the existence of the Chamber 
and the monster within? But Tom, like Harry, might not have realised 
that what he was hearing was Parseltongue; why should he? It's just a 
voice so far as he is concerned. But there is something else in the 
school that can help him. Tom is a sneaky, devious little creep. He 
spies on people. He's been spying on Hagrid and his little pet and 
Aragog knows all about Basilisks. He fears them and begs Hagrid to let 
him leave. He doesn't tell Hagrid what it is that he fears but a 
brilliant scholar like Tom may have reasoned it out in much the same 
way as the Trio, especially Hermione, did later. Acromantula - spiders 
-  obsessive fear - Basilisk! Pipes - pipework - bathrooms. Check 'em 
out!  Yippee! Jackpot!

Diary!Tom tells us that he was a prefect when Myrtle died, so he was 
probably in his sixth year. It took him five years to find the Chamber, 
so it's highly likely that he had been down there before Myrtle came 
eyeball-to-eyeball with her nemesis. Remember the timings in that 
event: Myrtle was being happily miserable in her cubicle, hears someone 
speaking, unlocks the door and faces her ultimate Freudian nightmare. 
Not enough time for Tom  to slide down to the Chamber and call the 
monster from Salazars statue; the Basilisk was not sleeping, it was up 
and about and eager to be out and at 'em. Something, presumably Tom, 
had already primed it for action.

But the problem remains, Tom could enter the Chamber from the bathroom, 
but from the way it is described, he couldn't get out of the Chamber 
that way. Transfiguration into a bird? We never see him indulge in 
Transfiguration either as Tom or Voldy, and there'd be a risk that with 
the loss of his human intelligence the Basilisk would get him too. A 
broom-stick? He'd hardly wander around the school and into girl's 
toilets carrying a broom, would he? People would talk, start ugly 
rumours.

No, I strongly suspect that there is another entrance.. Bets?

Kneasy