Chamber of ....Secrets?

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 185978

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "kempermentor" <iam.kemper at ...>
wrote:
>
> > Carol:
> > Carol, seriously wondering how the legend got started since no Heir of
> > Slytherin appeared until June 1943 (IIRC)
> 
> Kemper now:
> Well, Tom is the only heir we know of.  There were probably more.
Maybe Tom was the most ambitious in learning all there was to know of
Hogwarts.  Or, if his magical mum, uncle and granddaddy are any
indication, perhaps he was the only competent Slytherin Hogwarts has
seen since Salazar.
> 
> Kemper
>
Carol responds:

If any previous Heir had appeared, both Tom and Dumbledore would have
known it if only because the Chamber of Secrets would have been
opened. The Chamber remained a legend *because* it had never been
found or opened. (Binns would have viewed it differently if its
reality had been established by an earlier instance of Petrification
or death at Hogwarts.) 

IIRC, no wizard since Slytherin is widely known to have spoken
Parseltongue. That's a problem, I realize, since we know that the
Gaunts speak it, but my impression is that they never attended
Hogwarts. Gaunt, remember, doesn't acknowledge owls. (I'm surprised
that Merope learned to read. How did she learn to brew a love potion
with no books in the house? Her father certainly wouldn't have taught
her!)

As for an absence of competent Slytherins who predate Tom, we have
Slughorn, for one, and Phineas Nigellus for another.

Carol, who suspects that Parseltongue, like the genes for magic in
Muggle-borns, disappeared for a long time before it resurfaced in the
inbred and outcast Gaunt family