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

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 94141

-Carol 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. <<
> 
Pippin responded:
> 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.
<snip>
>  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.

Carol:
I wasn't thinking of the yellow eyes specifically but of a glance that
could kill or, if indirect, petrify. Short of the Gorgons of Greek
mythology, I'm not aware of any monsters with that sort of ability.
(But then I haven't read FBWF. Maybe it provides information about
other candidates for the monster in the Chamber.) Also I think DD
would have associated snakes with Salazar Slytherin. Put them
together--a snake with the ability to petrify--and you have a
basilisk. I agree that knowing there was a basilisk in the Chamber
would be of no use in locating the Chamber. So I think Dumbledore had
a strong suspicion that the monster was a basilisk and that Tom had
unleashed it (especially if he knew that Tom was a Parselmouth) but
had no way of proving that. He must then have assumed that
Tom/Voldemort had returned in some form to do it a second time. ("The
question is not 'who'. The question is 'how'.") If, as you and I
agree, DD had Snape test Harry to see if he could speak Parseltongue,
it could only have been because he knew or suspected that it was a
basilisk. Otherwise, the test makes no sense at all.

Sorry I had the "language" (Parseltongue) confused with a speaker of
the language (Parselmouth). I do, of course, know that a language is a
"tongue"--I just never made that connection until now.

Carol