Slytherin's Snare (was:Mild TBAY, trying to answer JK's Edinburgh questions.

[catjaneway]

No: HPFGUIDX 132213

Janeway:
Wow Saraquel, I'm in awe! You found some truly brainteasing 
connections in cannon. Despite your well-founded skepticism with my 
Slytherin theory, I still think a modified version can survive, at 
least in not being completely *ruled out* by cannon. 

>Janeway wrote earlier:
>So maybe he <Salazar Slytherin> also provided some kind of time-
>persistent magical
>protection for his last surviving descendant in case his line was
>ever in danger of disappearing completely.

Saraquel:
No, I don't think Slytherin did that. <snip> [LV] is still unsure 
why he survived and remarks in the graveyard that "it appeared that 
one or more of my experiments had worked." If he had found something 
in the COS, he would have known that he was immune to the AK curse.

Janeway:
Very good point. At the least this means that SS didn¡¦t leave an 
immortality potion in a bottle labeled ¡§Drink me to live forever.¡¨ 
It¡¦s still possible that he could have left something that LV used 
in his experiments without knowing its intended purpose. Or he could 
have given LV protection that LV is completely unaware of. 

Saraquel:
We also know that he last entered the COS when he was 16, COS
p230 "I knew it wouldn't be safe to open the Chamber again while I
was still at school. <snip> I decided to leave behind a diary,
preserving my sixteen-year-old self ¡K" He afterwards became Head Boy
and must still have looked like Tom Riddle, not the snake like
appearance of LV. So I think that the protection from the AK curse
came about afterwards.

Janeway: 
Also an excellent point. Given that he closed the Chamber at 16, in 
order to have received some protection from Slytherin that came into 
play much later, he would have had to:

1. Find something (information, ingredients, magical item) in the 
chamber, take it out, and use it later; or
2. Return to the chamber after he left school; or
3. Do something in the chamber at age 16 whose effects would only 
appear later. Your idea of a blood transfusion could conceivably 
work this way: (Saraquel:  ¡§Maybe this is what happened with the 
snake blood in LV, it gradually took over and transformed the muggle 
blood into snake blood.¡¨) Say he got a transfusion of blood or a non-
lethal venom bite from the basilisk in the chamber which took a 
couple of decades to manifest itself as the new snake!Voldie.

However, I agree that given these two points, the idea of some 
deliberate protection from SS becomes more tenuous. The only cannon 
I can draw on to support it is the very strong connection between 
Slytherin, snakes, and Voldemort. It seems more than coincidental 
that the representation of SS in the COS is a statue whose mouth 
opens to let out a snake; Voldemort transforms into something very 
like a snake; and his mark is a skull with a snake emerging from the 
mouth. At the very least, in choosing this mark LV is asserting a 
direct parallel between himself, SS, and the COS. (And the DEs would 
recognize the reference, because as Draco says, his father ¡§knows 
all about¡¨ the first time the chamber was opened. COS p225). 

Saraquel:
Tom Riddle hates his father's blood, so he does experiments to rid
himself of his muggle blood, replacing it with snake blood, as in
some sort of blood transfusion.<snip>

Janeway:
Or maybe snake venom? It could be like the old detective story 
standby when the murderer takes small amounts of poison in order to 
build up a tolerance, gradually increasing the amount until they can 
survive a dose that would kill anyone else. It just seems easier to 
get the venom (via fangs) into LV's blood than it would be to get a 
snake's blood into his blood.

Saraquel:
Snakes are cold blooded creatures. I once heard that when tickling
for trout (catching trout fish with your bare hands) that you first
have to cool your hand to the temperature of the river, otherwise
you burn the cold blooded fish. When Quirrel/LV touches Harry in PS
this is what happens: PS p213 "Quirrel let go of him. <snip> he
looked around wildly to see where Quirrell had gone and saw him
hunched in pain, looking at his fingers ¡V they were blistering
before his eyes." And again lower down the page Harry looks at
Quirrell's hands and describes them, "they looked burnt, raw, red
and shiny." In GoF, when LV finally does touch Harry in the
graveyard, his finger is cold.

So toying with the notion of cold blooded and warm blooded, warm or
hot blooded is often used to describe people whose emotions run high
and cold blooded used to describe people who seem to have no emotion
or no empathy/compassion. <snip>

Janeway:
This is genius! I love this, it¡¦s very subtle but it totally makes 
sense. Cold-blooded, unemotional, snakey LV vs. hot-blooded, caring, 
(lionhearted?) Harry. This makes me wonder if the bit of LV that 
made it into Harry was actually a drop of his blood. When Harry is 
hit by AK, he survives but receives a cut. When the AK rebounds, 
LV¡¦s body goes splat and some of his blood splashes into Harry¡¦s 
cut. Over the years this drop has been gradually multiplying (as in 
LV before him). Yes, it¡¦s farfetched, but would help explain your 
next point:

Saraquel:
The protection given to Harry by his muggle mother, Lily, also
concerns blood. Her muggle blood is running in his veins. OotP p
736 DD says "She gave you a lingering protection he never expected,
a protection that flows in your veins to this day." LV now has some
of this in his body. Therefore Lily is in LV. Although, LV can now
touch Harry, he has also re-introduced some muggle blood into
himself.

Janeway: 
So Harry and LV would have exchanged blood, and each have a piece of 
the other within them (they are blood brothers¡K sorta).

So this is fun to speculate about, but I'm not sure how likely I 
think it is. Going back to your original post, I agree with you that 
I don't think the answer is going to be incredibly complicated.


Janeway, who sends her warmest thoughts and wishes to Londoners and 
all of the U.K.