Who needs Harry? (was: GoF CH 27-29 Post DH look/ Snape and Harry redux)

[montavilla47]

No: HPFGUIDX 182324


> Carol:
> (How Slughorn, who was not interested
> > in such things, knew about them, I can't guess. Maybe they were 
> still
> > occasionally mentioned by teachers when he was in school in the 
> early
> > twentieth century. Or JKR needed him to know about them as a plot
> > device. Note that he didn't know the spell used to create them 
> unless
> > he was lying.)
> 
> Magpie:
> Yes, he's another person who knows about them and as you say, knows 
> about them without ever wanting to make one. I have no problem 
> believing that they are occasionally mentioned in lots of specialized 
> circumstances in the WW. They're not taught in school, but people 
> could still come across them doing different types of study. Hogwarts 
> doesn't seem to have ever taught them but Slughorn managed to pick up 
> the information somewhere. 

Montavilla47:
This isn't the best snip to put this under, but I can't help thinking how
ironic it is that Dumbledore's precaution of removing the books on 
Horcruxes probably helped Voldemort keep his Horcruxes secret.

It kept anyone who came to school afterwards from stumbling across
them in the school library.  Thus, it would be harder for any
hypothetical intelligent wizards to figure out the Horcrux connection.

Had those books been available when Snape was in school, you can
bet he'd have figured out the mystery before Regulus did.


> > Carol:
> > To you. To me, Basilisks seem much more rare than dragons or even
> > Acromantulas and their venom unobtainable unless you can control the
> > Basilisk through Parseltongue. 
> 
> Magpie:
> Well, however hard they are to get, if that's what you need to take 
> out the guy who's supposedly so awful, I think that would just be 
> part of the challenge. Somebody's going to go off and kill a basilisk-
> -I'm sure many a Gryffindor would love the idea. (Maybe they could 
> make a tournament of it!) Can nobody in the entire world be up for a 
> challenge but Harry--who killed a basilisk when he was all of 12 
> years old without being able to control it with Parseltongue? They'd 
> have to do it differently than Harry, obviously, but then they would 
> also be more prepared than Harry beforehand.

Montavilla47:
I have an idea for the enterprising would-be basilisk milker.  First,
get yourself a baby basilisk.  (I think it was Cassandra Claire who
said that all you need to make a basilisk is a toad, a snake, and a 
strong stomach.)

When the basilisk hatches, you grab it by the neck from behind and
blind it.  Not remotely humane... but then, you're a wizard and you
routinely turn hedgehogs into pincushions.  If you don't want to 
be bloody and violent about it, you can affix a small black eye-mask
to its head.

Anyway...  once you've done that, you have a basilisk that you can
look at.  Then, you can use any normal animal-training techniques
on it, perhaps teaching it to milk itself of venom.