If DD knows, then why...? [was: Snape, trying very hard not to smile?]

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 94116

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "justcarol67" 
<justcarol67 at y...> wrote:
 But maybe [Dumbledore] did ask [Myrtle] about her
> death and she couldn't identify the boy whose voice she heard
> (probably she didn't see Tom or even the basilisk itself--only 
the deadly yellow eyes). That would confirm DD's suspicions that 
a basilisk had petrified the students, but he still wouldn't have 
had the proof he needed to implicate Tom and rescue Hagrid. <<

Neither FB nor Hermione's library book page  reports that 
basilisks have yellow eyes, probably because up to the time 
Tom started using the  basilisk's glare to petrify 
instead of kill, nobody had ever survived seeing it. So even if 
Dumbledore questioned Myrtle and the victims of the other 
attacks that Dippit mentioned, he wouldn't know that the yellow 
eyed monster was   a basilisk.

Tom, of course, is perfectly capable of saying that Hagrid's 
monster had big yellow eyes, counting on the fact that nothing on 
earth would convince Hagrid to produce Aragog for examination 
(and subsequent disposal.)


 Dumbledore may have later guessed that the monster was a 
basilisk using the same evidence (fleeing spiders and dead 
roosters)  that Hermione did. Short of stationing crowing 
roosters everywhere in the castle,  the information would be of 
little use unless he could locate the entrance to the Chamber. I 
do wonder if he thought that Harry might be a Parselmouth and 
charged Snape with finding out. He wouldn't want to test Harry 
himself because the whole subject of Harry's connection with 
Voldemort is a very touchy one which Dumbledore is trying to 
avoid.

Pippin