The Sword of Gryffindor

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 182562

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Carol" <justcarol67 at ...> wrote:
>
> Geoff wrote:
> > <snip> I think that I can see that Dumbledore could send Fawkes who
> has sensed Harry's loyalty and presumably conveyed this to him and,
> either Fawkes or Dumbledore knowing that the Hat possesses special
> powers, that gets sent along as well but Dumbledore can hardly know
> what problems Harry will face. 
> > 
> > Dumbledore, at this point, was not fully cogniscent of what or who 
> Diary!Tom was. <snip>
> 
> Carol responds:
> 
> True. But the sorting Hat is not sent to deal with Diary!Tom. It's
> sent to deal with Slytherin's monster, which DD must know, based on
> its powers of petrification and the necessity for a Parselmouth to
> open the Chamber, that the monster is a Basilisk.
> 
> The diary's being a Horcrux is irrelevant at this point. In fact, DD
> doesn't even know about the diary at all. He only knows that the Heir
> of Slytherin, who has to be Riddle!Voldemort in some form, is again
> opening the Chamber of Secrets and again releasing the monster, which
> is Petrifying Muggle-borns and may kill one (as it killed Myrtle fifty
> years before).
> 
> So DD sends the "songbird" Fawkes, who can help Harry fight the
> Basilisk (and heal Harry with his tears if he's bitten) and the Sword
> of Gryffindor, which can come to him via the Sorting Hat in conditions
> of need and peril (specifically if he asks or calls for help--"Help
> will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it," as DD tells
> Harry before he leaves the school, having already set up the necessary
> protections, 264. He mentions loyalty to himself, the prerequisite for
> calling Fawkes, in the previous sentence.)

Geoff:
This firstly assumes that Dumbledore is aware of the fact that the 
Chamber of Secrets contains a basilisk. Does Dumbledore know 
that for a fact? People are being petrified - not killed, the latter 
being what you would expect from contact with one, of these 
creatures.

Secondly, the diary is far from irrelevant to Harry; it is the major threat 
to him because of the appearance of Tom Riddle. It is the manifestation 
of Riddle which has drawn Ginny into the Chamber and, hence, Harry. 
The basilisk only attacks Harry on the instruction of Riddle's "image" 
and, as we see, it is only when Harry manages to destroy both the 
monster and the Horcrux that he is safe again.

I believe we can only speculate as to the exact nature of the Hat's 
abilities. I think Steve, who replied after me last night, took a very 
similar line to mine. I think the main point of agreement is that the 
Hat possesses quite powerful magical abilities; precisely how these 
work out in practice is not laid out in full detail in the books, 
probably because this is not necessary to the development of the 
story.

Geoff
About to go to a foreign country (Wales!) for the weekend but 
hoping to keep up to date on a friend's English-speaking computer. 
:-)