Why put the entrance tothe Chamber of Secrets in a girl's bathroom?

[Berit Jakobsen]

No: HPFGUIDX 88320

K wrote:
Actually I think that proves it's been remodelled at some point 
because it looked like an ordinary sink, not a thousand year old 
sink. I don't exactly know how they would remodel without moving the 
tap - but then they would probably remodel with magic rather than 
calling in a plumber so it's more a case of transfiguring things than 
moving them too much. There may even be spells where you can add the 
provision when transfiguring things that you want it to still work at 
the end - otherwise you'd need the detailed plans of where the 
plumbing goes every time you wanted to change things. The fact is if 
it looks like a modern bathroom then either it's been pretty heavily
> remodelled over the last thousand years, or Slytherin and co could 
see the future and tell what developments in technology (obviously 
magical technology not muggle technology) were going to happen over 
that period.
 
Berit replies:

Well, I have canon facts that suggests the bathroom probably has not 
been remodelled... Quote: "'That tap's never worked', said Myrtle 
brightly, as he [Harry] tried to turn it.'" (CoS p. 222 UK Ed).

It's kind of implied the reason that tap has never worked is because 
it has a different use than the usual one; it's the key to the secret 
chamber, not an ordinary tap where water pours out if you turn it. 
So; if the Hogwarts caretakers/staff at any time in Hogwarts history 
thought the bathroom needed upgrading, wouldn't they have wanted to 
replace the tap that didn't work? Logical, right? Let's say they 
tried to, but it wouldn't budge? Wouldn't that have arisen some 
suspicion, especially when the handiman tok a closer look at the 
stubborn tap and discovered the tiny snake on its side?  Since the 
tap is still in Myrtle's bathroom, a thousand years after Salazar 
himself put the entrance to the secret chamber there, I'm inclined to 
think the bathroom has not changed. My guess is that if the sinks 
needed modernizing, someone just waved their wand at changed their 
shapes to make them look more modern, leaving the taps and the pipes 
intact. They couldn't have used too much energy and paid too much 
attention to the bathroom, because then they would invariably have 
noticed the snaky tap that didn't work and needed replacement... 
Which to me suggests noone really bothered with modernizing the 
bathroom, ever.

And by the way; we don't know what thousand year old magic-made sinks 
at Hogwarts looked like, and neither did Ron and Harry, so we can't 
really know whether they have been replaced with newer models :-)

Berit
http://home.no.net/berjakob/snape.html