Skip to main content

harry potter - How Did Ginny Weasley Set the Basilisk on Muggleborns Without Getting Killed or Petrified?


In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Ginny Weasley carries out Tom Riddle's plan by proxy and apparently leads the Basilisk to attack four Muggleborns and Filch's cat Mrs Norris in the castle.



‘Ginny Weasley opened the Chamber of Secrets. She strangled the school roosters and daubed threatening messages on the walls. She set the serpent of Slytherin on four Mudbloods, and the Squib’s cat.’

‘No,’ Harry whispered.

‘Yes,’ said Riddle, calmly. ‘Of course, she didn’t know what she was doing at first ...’

Chamber of Secrets - page 229 - Bloomsbury - chapter 17, The Heir of Slytherin



How was Ginny able to direct the actions of the Basilisk without using her sight (so the Basilisk wouldn't be able to look her in the eyes), or without being killed or petrified herself?


Side note: Tom Riddle described Ginny as being in "a sort of a trance" while she was carrying out Riddle's orders -- would this make her more or less aware of the dangers of the Basilisk?


★ I prefer a canon-based answer if possible (the Harry Potter novels, the three supplemental books, quotes from J.K. Rowling, or Pottermore information) and do not prefer an answer from either the HP Wikia or the Wikipedia.



Answer




She didn't need to be looking at Basilisk's eyes. She merely needed to tell it in Parseltongue where to go and what to do. At most, she needed to be generally aware of:




  1. Where Basilisk was...




    • No need to look it in the eye.




      • She could hear it, or look at the bulk of the body.





      • or, Tom could have made her to order Basilisk to close its eyes when she looked in its direction.




      • or, less likely, Tom's soul was aware of Basilisk's location supernaturally.









  2. ...and where the prey was.




    • No need to look Basilisk in the eye unless she was almost directly on Basilisk=>Prey line. Presumably, Tom was smarter than allowing that to happen.


       [Ginny]   -------- [Prey]  -------- [Basilisk........]  <== bad





Please note that, based on how Basilisk hunted Harry in the CoS, it may only have had to be given rough orders and it would figure out how to get the prey itself. She didn't need to act as a navigator daemon with constant course corrections and turn by turn directions.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Did the gatekeeper and the keymaster get intimate in Ghostbusters?

According to TVTropes ( usual warning, don't follow the link or you'll waste half your life in a twisty maze of content ): In Ghostbusters, it's strongly implied that Dana Barret, while possessed by Zuul the Gatekeeper, had sex with Louis Tully, who was possessed by Vinz Clortho the Keymaster (key, gate, get it?), in order to free Big Bad Gozer. In fact, a deleted scene from the movie has Venkman explicitly asking Dana if she and Louis "did it". I turned the quote into a spoiler since it contains really poor-taste joke, but the gist of it is that it's implied that as part of freeing Gozer , the two characters possessed by the Keymaster and the Gatekeeper had sex. Is there any canon confirmation or denial of this theory (canon meaning something from creators' interviews, DVD commentary, script, delete scenes etc...)? Answer The Richard Mueller novelisation and both versions of the script strongly suggest that they didn't have sex (or at the very l...

Why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize Missy right away?

So after it was established that Missy is actually both the Master, and the "woman in the shop" who gave Clara the TARDIS number... ...why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize her right away? I remember the Tenth Doctor in The Sound of Drums stating that Timelords had a way of recognizing other Timelords no matter if they had regenerated. And Clara should have recognized her as well... I'm hoping for a better explanation than "Moffat screwed up", and that I actually missed something after two watchthroughs of the episode. Answer There seems to be a lot of in-canon uncertainty as to the extent to which Time Lords can recognise one another which far pre-dates Moffat's tenure. From the Time Lords page on Wikipedia : Whether or not Time Lords can recognise each other across regenerations is not made entirely clear: In The War Games, the War Chief recognises the Second Doctor despite his regeneration and it is implied that the Doctor knows him when they fir...

story identification - Animation: floating island, flying pests

At least 20 years ago I watched a short animated film which stuck in my mind. The whole thing was wordless, possibly European, and I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine it... It featured a flying island which was inhabited by some creatures who (in my memory) reminded me of the Moomins. The island was frequently bothered by large winged animals who swooped around, although I don't think they did any actual damage. At the end one of the moomin creatures suddenly gets a weird feeling, feels forced to climb to the top of the island and then plunges down a shaft right through the centre - only to emerge at the bottom as one of the flyers. Answer Skywhales from 1983. The story begins with a man warning the tribe of approaching skywhales. The drummers then warn everybody of the hunt as everyone get prepared to set "sail". Except one man is found in his home sleeping as the noise wake him up. He then gets ready and is about to take his weapon as he hesitates then decides ...

warhammer40k - What evidence supposedly supports Tau as related to the Necrontyr?

I've heard of rumours saying that the Tau from Warhammer 40K are in fact the Necrontyr. Is there anything that supports this statement, in WH40K canon? I just found this, on 1d4 chan 1 : Helping Necrons? Or are they Necrontyr descendants? An often overlooked issue is that Tau have no warp signatures, just like Necrons, hate Warpspawns and Warp in general, just like Necrons, have the exact same skull shape,stature and short lives, and the overwhelming need for Technology and beam weapons, JUST LIKE NECRONS. GW may have planned a race that simply prepares a pacified, multiracial galaxy for Necrons to feast upon, supported by Ethereals that have a C'tan phase blade. Then there is a reference of "dark seed in east" by the Deceiver, so the tricky C'tan might give Tzeentch the finger in the JUST AS PLANNED competition. Or maybe GW just has so little creativity that they simply made a new civ conforming to an Old One's standards without knowing it. Is this the connec...