CoS question was: Re: Dumbledore evil??

[Karen Hess]

No: HPFGUIDX 105149

Pippin wrote:

The Chamber is most likely one of those magical objects with a
mind of its own. I'm not sure anyone could find it unless it
wanted to be found. The snake marking on the tap could be like
the Dark Mark or the writing on the Marauders Map--only visible
under certain circumstances. Riddle *wanted* Harry to enter the
Chamber--if he hadn't, perhaps Harry would have searched in
vain, parselmouth or not.

Now KB(me):

If understand correctly, this statement seems to make a distinction between 
"finding" the chamber and "unsealing" it, which I think is an important 
point (IMHO).

Looking at canon for the history of the Chamber, Prof. Binns says 
(pp.114-115, CoS, Can. ed.):

"Slytherin, according to the legend, sealed the Chamber of Secrets
so that none would be able to open it until his own true heir arrived
at the school. The heir alone would be able to unseal the Chamber
of Secrets, unleash the horror within, and use it to purge the school
of all who were unworthy to study magic. ... Naturally, the school has
been searched for evidence of such a chamber, many times, by the
most learned witches and wizards. It does not exist."


Both Harry and Tom were able to unseal the chamber because they spoke 
Parseltongue. But to unseal it, one first has to find it. Seems to me, for 
HRH -- or should I say HR, even though Hermione played a role before she was 
petrified -- finding the Chamber was mostly a fortunate combination of 
circumstances, which an earlier poster (sorry, forget who) has already said.

One of the most fortunate (i.e., fateful) circumstances for HRH was that 
Diary!Tom had already opened the Chamber (through Ginny) and released the 
Basilisk. Without that, I don't think they would have found the entrance to 
the Chamber. So IMO it's not so much that the Chamber *wanted* to be found 
as that it already *had* been found. (How? Diary!Tom says only that it took 
him "five whole years" (CoS, p. 230) to find it; he does not say how.)

Even if past witches and wizards had been able to find the snake symbol 
scratched on the tap (or wherever it may have appeared before the plumbing 
was installed), we don't know that they would have been able to unseal the 
passage to the Chamber... I'm not sure where I'm going with this. It led me 
to all sorts of questions about the nature of Parselmouths and their 
relationship to Salazar Slytherin. But I think that's a different topic, so 
I will end here.

KB


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