Lucius and DD was Re: Snape and Lucius was James and Intent And Snape

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 187084

Annemehr wrote:
> 
> A couple of points here:
> 
> Actually, Dippet was headmaster when Myrtle died.  


Carol responds:

Right.

Annemehr:
However, you are quite right that DD bears huge responsibility for Myrtle's death.  As we see in his Pensieve memories of the Gaunts, he is a Parselmouth and so would have been able to hear the Basilisk in the walls.  And according to the memory of the child Tom in the orphanage, he knows Tom was also a Parselmouth.  There is no way that DD didn't know what was going on.  And yet he let Tom go on, Myrtle get killed, and Hagrid take the blame.

Carol responds:

Do we actually know that DD is a Parselmouth? It's possible to understand a language without speaking it, and we never hear him speak it. And if Professor Binns is correct, Dumbledore searched for and failed to find the Chamber of Secrets. Apparently, Slytherin enchanted the CoS so that only his true heir could find it, open it, and control the Basilisk. If that was the case, Dumbledore wouldn't be able to find it even if he could speak the word "Open" in Parseltongue (and he also wouldn't have been able to control the Basilisk had he done so).  Ginny can open the CoS because she's possessed by the Horcrux. Harry can open it in part because he has part of Voldemort inside his scar, so that he shares a part of LV's mind and soul, and in part because Diary!Tom wants him to. (He must already know from Ginny that Harry is a Parselmouth.) Ron, too, can open the CoS, but he knows where it is. He could never have found it had it not been for Harry and could never have opened it had it not been for his gift for mimicry. (Of course, had the Basilisk still been alive, he and Hermione would have died.)


Nor would DD necessarily be able to hear the Basilisk in the pipes (and know what it is) simply because he speaks Parseltongue. Harry can hear it, true, but he has a bit of Slytherin's "true heir" in his scar. Ron, who knows Parseltongue when he hears it, hears nothing. Dumbledore managed to get a position for poor thirteen-year-old Hagrid (and presumably kept him out of Azkaban), but he couldn't keep him from being expelled. (I just realized that he could have repaired the pieces of the broken wand that Hagrid hides in his umbrella using the Elder Wand. No wonder Hagrid says, "Great man, Dumbledore!"), but if he could have proven Hagrid's innocence (and Tom's guilt), he surely would have done so. And if he could have prevented Myrtle's murder, I think he'd have done that, too.

At any rate, I think we should take Binns at his word that DD tried and failed to find the Chamber of Secrets. Sure, he should have questioned Moaning Myrtle, but it apparently never occurred to him that she could reveal the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. And, as I said, it's just possible that even though he could understand Parseltongue, he couldn't speak it. Unlike Mermish, it's not a living language that he could learn by consorting with intelligent beings like the merchieftainess. He couldn't call snakes to him to learn their language and they wouldn't have taught him if he could. Tom Riddle and the Gaunts were born knowing it; Harry acquired the ability through the scar bit. How DD could possibly have learned it without being born a Parselmouth is unclear; he must have studied it in books written by the "wise and good" but unidentified Parselmouths he mentioned to Harry.

Or maybe, like Snape, he just knows Parseltongue when he hears it and knows that *Harry* understands what the Gaunts are saying. Being intelligent and knowing the circumstances behind those memories, perhaps having visited them multiple times, he has figured out what the Gaunts are saying to each other.

Carol, whose train of thought was interrupted by a phone call and hopes that she remembered everything she intended to say!