Re: CHAPDISC: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter 17, Bathilda’s Secre

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 182390

Pippin wrote:
<snip>
> Nagini could have smelled Harry and Hermione while they had the
cloak on,  but presumably Harry would smell like the Muggle he was
impersonating, not like the boy Nagini had met in the graveyard. 
> 
>  I suppose Nagini was lurking in the graveyard until she saw them
put flowers on the grave and pull on the silvery cloak. Then she went
and got Bathilda's body (ugh!) and followed them by scent to the
Potter house. But I don't think she could be sure it was Harry until
she spoke to him in parseltongue and he answered her. <snip>

Carol responds:
I think that Steve is right about Nagini's infrared vision, which
enables her to see through Invisibility Cloaks despite the cataracts
on Bathilda's eyes. I agree that her speaking to Harry in Parseltongue
was the test to determine whether this seeming Muggle was "Potter,"
but Hermione's conjuring a wreath for Harry to put on the Potters'
grave was also a clue. She would have gone from the graveyard to the
Potters' ruined cottage next, expecting him and his companion to go there.

But I don't think that Nagini was hiding in the graveyard as a
twelve-foot snake or that she'd been in hiding for months in snake
form and somehow got into Bathilda's rotting corpse despite her huge
size. Harry mentions Lupin's remark about magic that they'd never seen
before, and the Aurors (IIRC) found the signs of Dark magic on
Bathilda's body. I think that Voldemort had placed some sort of spell
on her to enable her to inhabit Bathilda's tiny body until "Potter"
showed up. The neighbors would think that Bathilda was still alive,
wandering around the village half-blind and more than half crazy. She
wasn't reported as dead or missing until Nagini had abandoned her body
after the failed attempt to capture Harry.

Carol, wondering whether Voldemort would have been angry with his dear
Nagini, Horcrux and surrogate mother or no, if he hadn't been
sidetracked by the photo of the merry-faced thief that Harry had dropped