The Map (Blocked Passage)

[karenoc1]

No: HPFGUIDX 98239

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Mandy" <ExSlytherin at a...> 
wrote:
> Mandy here:
> Yes I agree. There had to have been a way for Tom Riddle to get in 
> and out of the Chamber.
> 
> We know of only one way in, and that is from the sink in the girl's 
> bathroom. A pipe leading down hundreds of feet below the school, 
but 
> you can't get out of the Chamber that way.  Only the Basilisk 
could, 
> as it was a blood big snake that can slither up and out of vertical 
> pipes.  No human would ever climb out of that pipe Harry, Ron and 
> Lockhart slid down to get into the Chamber.  Remember Fawlks flew 
> them out.  
> 
> There has to be another entrance.  One that Tom used fifty years 
> earlier to get in and out, and one that will be used again, as the 
> girl's bathroom entrance is now partially blocked by the rubble 
from 
> Ron's wand backfiring the Memory Charm onto Lockhart.
> 
> Cheers Mandy

karenoc1 delurks briefly:
Not necessarily.  We know that Tom Riddle could control the 
basilisk.  So why couldn't he ride the basilisk up the pipe and out 
of the Chamber?  (It seemed to be an awfully large pipe!)  Also, I 
don't think that Tom always entered the Chamber to summon the 
basilisk.  I think he may have called to it from the bathroom 
entrance to the tunnel.  Remember Moaning Myrtle's description of her 
death?  

[p. 299 Scholastic edition of Chamber of Secrets]
"'... It happened right here.  I died in this very stall. ... The 
door was locked, and I was crying, and then I heard somebody come 
in.  They said something funny.  A different language, I think it 
must have been.  Anyway, what really got me was that it was a boy 
speaking.  So I unlocked the door, to tell him to go and use his own 
toilet, and then--" Myrtle swelled importantly, her face shining, 'I 
died.'"

If Myrtle's death description is accurate, then Tom would not have 
had time to go down to the Chamber to summon the basilisk.  The 
basilisk, at this point, was "on call" so to speak.

But I also always thought that the blocked passage had something to 
do with the structural collapse of the tunnel leading to the 
Chamber....  The two passageways could have been near each other but 
not necessarily connected.  Otherwise, wouldn't the Marauders have 
found the Chamber during their numerous explorations?