Chamber of Conspiracy Theories
Dec. 13th, 2017 07:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sunnyskywalkerI swear, I don't go looking for conspiracies in the Harry Potter books, or dastardly plots concocted by Dumbledore. And I'm sure that mostly, Rowling just didn't realize some of the problems caused by failing to keep track of who knows what when. But looking at things Watsonianly, a lot of things just don't add up without something extremely dodgy going down in the background.
Case in point: basically everything in Chamber of Secrets. I know many people have talked about how the questions of what exactly Dobby knows about the "dangerous plot," how he knows it, what Lucius Malfoy actually knows and intends, and basically everything else connected to the Diary deployment and Dobby trying to keep Harry out of Hogwarts get harder to explain the more you examine them, so I'll pass over that particular subplot. There's still plenty to keep me busy.
For instance, while Dumbledore's precise degree of skill at Legilimency is in question, he surely has some (Snape would surely notice if he didn't). So it's always possible that he does see what Harry's thinking. In this scene, for example:
Now, the scene actually doesn't specify eye contact. So maybe Harry just stared at Dumbledore's hands the whole time. Maybe. And if he didn't? If he looked up into those twinkly eyes, making no effort to hide his thoughts because he doesn't know the risk, how much of that could Dumbledore have seen? All of it?
For reference, this is after Harry has outed himself as a Parselmouth in the dueling club. If Dumbledore did get a good peek into Harry's mind, combined with his existing knowledge, he could know all of the following:
Starting at the beginning of the list, if Dumbledore saw anything in Harry's mind, he has reason to suspect Harry is planning something involving Polyjuice, and knows where to find the potion. And does nothing to stop it. How hard would it be to arrange for a "cleaning" or "repair work" to the bathroom and mess up their brewing? (He could identify them as the brewers or be "unable" to do so, as he decides.) For that matter, if the Hogwarts house-elves clean the bathrooms regularly, they might have already notified Dumbledore that someone is brewing in Myrtle's bathroom, so he could have evidence from a source other than Harry's mind. Snape has no doubt reported that boomslang skin went missing from his stores after someone in his second-year Gryffindor/Slytherin class threw a highly distracting firework into a cauldron. Dumbledore even probably knows the likely targets of this little investigation.
What exactly does he think the benefit of allowing the kids to execute this plan will be? After all, if he suspects Draco has somehow brought Voldemort into the school, he hardly needs to rely on twelve-year-olds with a half-baked impersonation scheme to prove it. And one would imagine that the risks here, to student safety alone even if you discount the Trio's development in reasoning ability, planning, and morality, would demand that he intervene somehow. Is there any explanation that isn't either unspeakably callous indifference or chilling manipulation?
As for the rest...even if he assumed during the original incident fifty years ago that Tom had simply terrorized the school himself and then AK'd Myrtle...no, back up. Why would he assume that when her ghost is right there and he could ask her how she died? She remembers the hissing sound and the big yellow eyes. Yet she acts like no one has ever asked her what happened. Seriously? I know wizards are terrible at investigating anything, but that's a bit much to swallow. And we know Dumbledore has gone to some trouble to collect Tom-related memories from Bob Ogden, Hokey, and Morfin. A trip to Azkaban takes a lot more effort than walking down the stairs to chat with a ghost. Are we really supposed to believe he didn't bother?
So, Dumbledore has asked Myrtle what happened...and Obliviated her memory that he asked, so no one can know that he knows what the monster is, but not her memory of dying. Or restored that memory, if he initially Obliviated it. Or maybe he didn't alter her memories at all; it's only Harry's impression that she had never been asked how she died. She never actually says so.
Starting over: Dumbledore knows that in the original incident, Myrtle died after hearing someone, probably known Parselmouth Tom, hissing, and then seeing big yellow eyes. "Basilisk" should have been on his short list of suspects fifty years ago, if he's really so clever. He knows that this time, Parselmouth Harry has been hearing a voice talking about killing which no one else can hear. He doesn't have to be a brilliant wizard to start thinking "this is almost definitely some kind of snake." And the identity of a snake which kills people by looking at them is hardly obscure or secret knowledge. (Muggles know that one.) Hagrid bringing in a dead rooster, and the fleeing spiders if he's noticed that, would just confirm that yep, this is almost certainly a basilisk.
Dumbledore knows the monster is a basilisk maybe fifty years ago and almost certainly before Christmas, and he doesn't warn people to carry mirrors. Is it just too awkward to explain how he knows certain things? He has a reputation for brilliance; surely he could give the impression that he just figured it out based on clues like the roosters and the spiders and the method of injury/death, and everyone would buy that. And he's had plenty of experience with people taking his word for brilliant deductions before. So what benefit does he see in not warning everyone what the monster is and how to protect themselves against it?
My best idea is that he doesn't know how to warn people about a killer snake without painting a target on Parselmouth Harry's back. But Fred and George also seem to have a clue as to what the monster is. Shortly after Dumbledore probably gazes into Harry's eyes, we get, "'Yeah, he's off to the Chamber of Secrets for a cup of tea with his fanged servant,' George said, chortling." Maybe he's using "fanged" as shorthand for "evil but unspecified monster." But George knows Harry is a Parselmouth--everyone does. If even fourth-year students are thinking "giant snake of some sort," it just can't be that hard to work out. Are we really supposed to believe that no one makes the leap from "giant snake" to "basilisk" until after the Easter holidays? And no one but Hermione until summer? Seriously? Is someone drugging or Confunding half the castle or what?
Well. Maybe someone is. To protect Harry. He does later say he didn't care if countless others died so long as Harry was safe and happy, didn't he? But I have a hard time buying the idea of Dumbledore running around Confunding dozens of people who get too many ideas about big snakes. It's just too much.
Maybe he doesn't want the school to be closed down immediately and his chance to catch the culprit lost. Which would mean he's taking a chance that a few students will die for the greater good of stopping the monster once and for all. It's...understandable, I guess, but still chilling.
Moving on. Let's back up again to the "Rogue Bludger" chapter. Harry is in the hospital wing, re-growing the bones in his arm. Dumbledore and McGonagall enter carrying a Petrified Colin Creevey, Dumbledore wearing "a long woolly dressing gown and nightcap." Pomfrey asks what happened, and the story is...odd.
So...Dumbledore was going down to the kitchens in his nightclothes for cocoa, and McGonagall thinks he scared off the attacker before Colin could die...which led to McGonagall discovering Colin's Petrified form? Er, something's off here. If she was also headed down for cocoa, or was out patrolling, why doesn't she think her proximity might have contributed to scaring off the monster? Since she must have been at least as close, if not closer, to the scene in order to find Colin before Dumbledore did? Curiously, no one says exactly how she arrived at the scene in the first place. (Or whether she's in her tartan bathrobe or day wear.)
Well. Maybe she found Colin while patrolling, Dumbledore coincidentally passed by a moment later, and she assumed that without his timely arrival, the monster might have come back and finished both her and Colin off. Because the monster and the Heir would naturally be scared of the Great and Powerful Dumbledore, but wouldn't blink at attacking anyone else. Sure. I guess that could work. But what a coincidence, that McGonagall should happen to find Colin just as Dumbledore is toddling downstairs for cocoa, alone, with a monster on the loose. I don't know what this might add up to, if anything, but as I said, it's...odd.
Okay, last one. Harry and Ron have just found the ripped-out library book page on basilisks in Hermione's clenched hand (gosh, if only someone had invented a machine of some kind to make copies of paper with writing on it by 1993). They've run through the whole explanation of the basilisk traveling in the pipes and why each victim ended up Petrified rather than killed, and the possibility that the entrance is in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, while sitting in the hospital wing, apparently with no one close enough to hear them. They run down to the staff room to tell McGonagall. When the announcement comes for students to return to their dorms and all teachers to go to the staff room, instead of waiting for the teachers to arrive, handing over the torn page, and explaining everything they've worked out, we get this:
Then, after the boys hear that Ginny has been taken, they...wait until the teachers file out, head back to the Gryffindor dorm, and do absolutely nothing for the rest of the day. Um, why? They could just jump out and explain their discovery as they originally planned! Even if they were in too much shock to act or think at that moment, surely it would have occurred to them to try their original "tell McGonagall" plan sometime over the next few hours? But instead, near sunset, we get this:
He couldn't think of anything else to do? When just hours earlier he'd been planning to tell McGonagall, and has heard no reason he shouldn't? Harry and Ron know perfectly well that Lockhart can't even manage Cornish pixies. It doesn't occur to them, not once, that they could tell Lockhart and the other teachers? For that matter, why not tell their classmates about the note they found in Hermione's hand when they went to visit her in the hospital wing, and that they should all be carrying mirrors for safety?
It strains credulity. You can't claim that it never occurred to them to tell McGonagall or that they didn't think anyone would believe them, because they were planning on telling the4 teachers and then just...didn't, with absolutely no explanation why they suddenly changed their minds. Not even a hint!
Or maybe a hint. What else happens in that staff meeting?
Let's just say, hypothetically, that you are a fraud who actually can't handle monsters the way you've claimed, and it's a thorn in your side that one of your students is more famous than you without even trying. Say, hypothetically, that you're heading toward the staff room for a cup of tea or whatever, and you see Famous Harry Potter and his sidekick run inside. Then you hear an announcement that suggests another attack has happened, meaning Hagrid wasn't the one releasing the monster. Rats. Now someone's sure to ask you to deal with it. How to get out of it?
Maybe kill two birds with one stone--the Potter boy is suspicious, being a Parselmouth like Salazar Slytherin and on the scene of the attacks far too often. And he's conveniently on hand now. So Disillusion yourself for a moment and Confund him and his little friend into hiding instead of talking to any other teachers and then coming to you--and only you--later. Sneak back out into the halls and pretend to show up after everyone else. Plan to Obliviate the kids when they show up (but not before gloating--it's so hard not getting recognition for what you're really good at!) and arrange things so that it appears you stopped them as they were releasing the monster--and tragically, your valiant defense resulted in them losing their memories. And now you're so overcome with grief at the tragic loss of two bright young lives to evil that you can't bear to stay in the castle another moment! You'll pack and be gone at once!
Maybe not. Maybe it was something else entirely. But it's very, very hard to read that scene and not see some kind of nefarious influence preventing the boys from telling the teachers what they'd discovered as they had been planning to do only moments before.
If not Lockhart, who else might be lurking about? Dobby, maybe. But it's hard to see Dobby's motive, unless he had explicit orders to stop anyone who tried to say openly what Slytherin's monster is or stop it. Dumbledore can't be ruled out. He's supposedly not in the castle, but Fawkes could have teleported him right back in after he left. And failing that, there's a tunnel from Honeydukes into the castle he might know about, plus assorted other tunnels which may or may not be caved in or blocked at the moment. For all we know, Dumbledore has been living in the Room of Requirement and wandering around Disillusioned anytime he pleases. (Won't truly have left Hogwarts, hah! What a lovely private joke if he meant that literally.) Still, Confunding Harry and Ron seems a bit... active for him. And much harder to justify to himself if he wants to believe he's really Great and Good, not just convince other people of that.
If Rowling wanted to ensure that Harry and Ron felt they had no choice but to mount a rescue themselves, she not only failed, but did everything possible to make it look like something--or someone--was actively preventing them from asking for help. I mean, you just don't set up your characters as being about to ask for help and then have them inexplicably not do so unless you want people to see that as fishy. Whatever the most likely explanation is, the whole thing is horribly suspicious.
On the bright side, this all makes Chamber of Secrets more interesting to me. I always unaccountably bounced off it, even though all the elements of it ought to be Sunnyskywalker catnip (secret chambers! historical mysteries! dastardly plots! spooky atmosphere!). I chalked this up to the major plotholes which Rowling didn't even attempt to paper over, like Harry and Ron inexplicably changing their minds about telling anyone about the basilisk until they also inexplicably decide to go to Lockhart. At least looking for an in-universe reason for this bizarre behavior allows for the possibility of a plot that makes sense instead of just watching the author march puppets through set-pieces.
Case in point: basically everything in Chamber of Secrets. I know many people have talked about how the questions of what exactly Dobby knows about the "dangerous plot," how he knows it, what Lucius Malfoy actually knows and intends, and basically everything else connected to the Diary deployment and Dobby trying to keep Harry out of Hogwarts get harder to explain the more you examine them, so I'll pass over that particular subplot. There's still plenty to keep me busy.
For instance, while Dumbledore's precise degree of skill at Legilimency is in question, he surely has some (Snape would surely notice if he didn't). So it's always possible that he does see what Harry's thinking. In this scene, for example:
Harry waited nervously while Dumbledore considered him, the tips of his long fingers together.
"I must ask you, Harry, whether there is anything you'd like to tell me," he said gently. "Anything at all."
Harry didn't know what to say. He thought of Malfoy shouting, "You'll be next, Mudbloods!" and of the Polyjuice Potion simmering away in Myrtle's bathroom. Then he thought of the disembodied voice he had heard twice and remembered what Ron had said: "Hearing voices no one else can hear isn't a good sign, even in the wizarding world." He thought, too, about what everyone was saying about him, and his growing dread that he was somehow connected with Salazar Slytherin...
Now, the scene actually doesn't specify eye contact. So maybe Harry just stared at Dumbledore's hands the whole time. Maybe. And if he didn't? If he looked up into those twinkly eyes, making no effort to hide his thoughts because he doesn't know the risk, how much of that could Dumbledore have seen? All of it?
For reference, this is after Harry has outed himself as a Parselmouth in the dueling club. If Dumbledore did get a good peek into Harry's mind, combined with his existing knowledge, he could know all of the following:
- That Harry believes Draco Malfoy might be behind the attacks due to his prejudiced outburts;
- That Harry and his friends are brewing Polyjuice Potion in Myrtle's bathroom as part of some sort of plot to investigate Malfoy;
- That Harry can speak to snakes;
- That Harry hears a voice in the walls no one else hears;
- That the monster is something that kills without leaving a mark;
- That the monster is something he suspects Tom Riddle, a Parselmouth, can control;
- That Hagrid is carrying around a dead rooster when making coq au vin is not part of his job;
- That Harry is afraid he's descended from Salazar Slytherin, also a known Parselmouth.
Starting at the beginning of the list, if Dumbledore saw anything in Harry's mind, he has reason to suspect Harry is planning something involving Polyjuice, and knows where to find the potion. And does nothing to stop it. How hard would it be to arrange for a "cleaning" or "repair work" to the bathroom and mess up their brewing? (He could identify them as the brewers or be "unable" to do so, as he decides.) For that matter, if the Hogwarts house-elves clean the bathrooms regularly, they might have already notified Dumbledore that someone is brewing in Myrtle's bathroom, so he could have evidence from a source other than Harry's mind. Snape has no doubt reported that boomslang skin went missing from his stores after someone in his second-year Gryffindor/Slytherin class threw a highly distracting firework into a cauldron. Dumbledore even probably knows the likely targets of this little investigation.
What exactly does he think the benefit of allowing the kids to execute this plan will be? After all, if he suspects Draco has somehow brought Voldemort into the school, he hardly needs to rely on twelve-year-olds with a half-baked impersonation scheme to prove it. And one would imagine that the risks here, to student safety alone even if you discount the Trio's development in reasoning ability, planning, and morality, would demand that he intervene somehow. Is there any explanation that isn't either unspeakably callous indifference or chilling manipulation?
As for the rest...even if he assumed during the original incident fifty years ago that Tom had simply terrorized the school himself and then AK'd Myrtle...no, back up. Why would he assume that when her ghost is right there and he could ask her how she died? She remembers the hissing sound and the big yellow eyes. Yet she acts like no one has ever asked her what happened. Seriously? I know wizards are terrible at investigating anything, but that's a bit much to swallow. And we know Dumbledore has gone to some trouble to collect Tom-related memories from Bob Ogden, Hokey, and Morfin. A trip to Azkaban takes a lot more effort than walking down the stairs to chat with a ghost. Are we really supposed to believe he didn't bother?
So, Dumbledore has asked Myrtle what happened...and Obliviated her memory that he asked, so no one can know that he knows what the monster is, but not her memory of dying. Or restored that memory, if he initially Obliviated it. Or maybe he didn't alter her memories at all; it's only Harry's impression that she had never been asked how she died. She never actually says so.
Starting over: Dumbledore knows that in the original incident, Myrtle died after hearing someone, probably known Parselmouth Tom, hissing, and then seeing big yellow eyes. "Basilisk" should have been on his short list of suspects fifty years ago, if he's really so clever. He knows that this time, Parselmouth Harry has been hearing a voice talking about killing which no one else can hear. He doesn't have to be a brilliant wizard to start thinking "this is almost definitely some kind of snake." And the identity of a snake which kills people by looking at them is hardly obscure or secret knowledge. (Muggles know that one.) Hagrid bringing in a dead rooster, and the fleeing spiders if he's noticed that, would just confirm that yep, this is almost certainly a basilisk.
Dumbledore knows the monster is a basilisk maybe fifty years ago and almost certainly before Christmas, and he doesn't warn people to carry mirrors. Is it just too awkward to explain how he knows certain things? He has a reputation for brilliance; surely he could give the impression that he just figured it out based on clues like the roosters and the spiders and the method of injury/death, and everyone would buy that. And he's had plenty of experience with people taking his word for brilliant deductions before. So what benefit does he see in not warning everyone what the monster is and how to protect themselves against it?
My best idea is that he doesn't know how to warn people about a killer snake without painting a target on Parselmouth Harry's back. But Fred and George also seem to have a clue as to what the monster is. Shortly after Dumbledore probably gazes into Harry's eyes, we get, "'Yeah, he's off to the Chamber of Secrets for a cup of tea with his fanged servant,' George said, chortling." Maybe he's using "fanged" as shorthand for "evil but unspecified monster." But George knows Harry is a Parselmouth--everyone does. If even fourth-year students are thinking "giant snake of some sort," it just can't be that hard to work out. Are we really supposed to believe that no one makes the leap from "giant snake" to "basilisk" until after the Easter holidays? And no one but Hermione until summer? Seriously? Is someone drugging or Confunding half the castle or what?
Well. Maybe someone is. To protect Harry. He does later say he didn't care if countless others died so long as Harry was safe and happy, didn't he? But I have a hard time buying the idea of Dumbledore running around Confunding dozens of people who get too many ideas about big snakes. It's just too much.
Maybe he doesn't want the school to be closed down immediately and his chance to catch the culprit lost. Which would mean he's taking a chance that a few students will die for the greater good of stopping the monster once and for all. It's...understandable, I guess, but still chilling.
Moving on. Let's back up again to the "Rogue Bludger" chapter. Harry is in the hospital wing, re-growing the bones in his arm. Dumbledore and McGonagall enter carrying a Petrified Colin Creevey, Dumbledore wearing "a long woolly dressing gown and nightcap." Pomfrey asks what happened, and the story is...odd.
"Another attack," Dumbledore said. "Minerva found him on the stairs."
"There was a bunch of grapes next to him," said Professor McGonagall. "We think he was trying to sneak up here to visit Potter."
[...]
"But I shudder to think... If Albus hadn't been on the way downstairs for hot chocolate--who knows what might have--"
So...Dumbledore was going down to the kitchens in his nightclothes for cocoa, and McGonagall thinks he scared off the attacker before Colin could die...which led to McGonagall discovering Colin's Petrified form? Er, something's off here. If she was also headed down for cocoa, or was out patrolling, why doesn't she think her proximity might have contributed to scaring off the monster? Since she must have been at least as close, if not closer, to the scene in order to find Colin before Dumbledore did? Curiously, no one says exactly how she arrived at the scene in the first place. (Or whether she's in her tartan bathrobe or day wear.)
Well. Maybe she found Colin while patrolling, Dumbledore coincidentally passed by a moment later, and she assumed that without his timely arrival, the monster might have come back and finished both her and Colin off. Because the monster and the Heir would naturally be scared of the Great and Powerful Dumbledore, but wouldn't blink at attacking anyone else. Sure. I guess that could work. But what a coincidence, that McGonagall should happen to find Colin just as Dumbledore is toddling downstairs for cocoa, alone, with a monster on the loose. I don't know what this might add up to, if anything, but as I said, it's...odd.
Okay, last one. Harry and Ron have just found the ripped-out library book page on basilisks in Hermione's clenched hand (gosh, if only someone had invented a machine of some kind to make copies of paper with writing on it by 1993). They've run through the whole explanation of the basilisk traveling in the pipes and why each victim ended up Petrified rather than killed, and the possibility that the entrance is in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, while sitting in the hospital wing, apparently with no one close enough to hear them. They run down to the staff room to tell McGonagall. When the announcement comes for students to return to their dorms and all teachers to go to the staff room, instead of waiting for the teachers to arrive, handing over the torn page, and explaining everything they've worked out, we get this:
"What'll we do?" said Ron, aghast. "Go back to the dormitory?"
"No," said Harry, glancing around. There was an ugly sort of wardrobe to his left, full of the teachers' cloaks. "In here. Let's hear what it's all about. Then we can tell them what we've found out."
Then, after the boys hear that Ginny has been taken, they...wait until the teachers file out, head back to the Gryffindor dorm, and do absolutely nothing for the rest of the day. Um, why? They could just jump out and explain their discovery as they originally planned! Even if they were in too much shock to act or think at that moment, surely it would have occurred to them to try their original "tell McGonagall" plan sometime over the next few hours? But instead, near sunset, we get this:
If only there was something they could do. Anything.
[...]
"Do you know what?" said Ron. "I think we should go and see Lockhart. Tell him what we know. He's going to try and get into the Chamber. We can tell him where we think it is, and tell him it's a basilisk in there."
Because Harry couldn't think of anything else to do, and because he wanted to be doing something, he agreed.
He couldn't think of anything else to do? When just hours earlier he'd been planning to tell McGonagall, and has heard no reason he shouldn't? Harry and Ron know perfectly well that Lockhart can't even manage Cornish pixies. It doesn't occur to them, not once, that they could tell Lockhart and the other teachers? For that matter, why not tell their classmates about the note they found in Hermione's hand when they went to visit her in the hospital wing, and that they should all be carrying mirrors for safety?
It strains credulity. You can't claim that it never occurred to them to tell McGonagall or that they didn't think anyone would believe them, because they were planning on telling the4 teachers and then just...didn't, with absolutely no explanation why they suddenly changed their minds. Not even a hint!
Or maybe a hint. What else happens in that staff meeting?
The staffroom door banged open again. For one wild moment, Harry was sure it would be Dumbledore. But it was Lockhart, and he was beaming.
"So sorry--dozed off--what have I missed?"
Let's just say, hypothetically, that you are a fraud who actually can't handle monsters the way you've claimed, and it's a thorn in your side that one of your students is more famous than you without even trying. Say, hypothetically, that you're heading toward the staff room for a cup of tea or whatever, and you see Famous Harry Potter and his sidekick run inside. Then you hear an announcement that suggests another attack has happened, meaning Hagrid wasn't the one releasing the monster. Rats. Now someone's sure to ask you to deal with it. How to get out of it?
Maybe kill two birds with one stone--the Potter boy is suspicious, being a Parselmouth like Salazar Slytherin and on the scene of the attacks far too often. And he's conveniently on hand now. So Disillusion yourself for a moment and Confund him and his little friend into hiding instead of talking to any other teachers and then coming to you--and only you--later. Sneak back out into the halls and pretend to show up after everyone else. Plan to Obliviate the kids when they show up (but not before gloating--it's so hard not getting recognition for what you're really good at!) and arrange things so that it appears you stopped them as they were releasing the monster--and tragically, your valiant defense resulted in them losing their memories. And now you're so overcome with grief at the tragic loss of two bright young lives to evil that you can't bear to stay in the castle another moment! You'll pack and be gone at once!
Maybe not. Maybe it was something else entirely. But it's very, very hard to read that scene and not see some kind of nefarious influence preventing the boys from telling the teachers what they'd discovered as they had been planning to do only moments before.
If not Lockhart, who else might be lurking about? Dobby, maybe. But it's hard to see Dobby's motive, unless he had explicit orders to stop anyone who tried to say openly what Slytherin's monster is or stop it. Dumbledore can't be ruled out. He's supposedly not in the castle, but Fawkes could have teleported him right back in after he left. And failing that, there's a tunnel from Honeydukes into the castle he might know about, plus assorted other tunnels which may or may not be caved in or blocked at the moment. For all we know, Dumbledore has been living in the Room of Requirement and wandering around Disillusioned anytime he pleases. (Won't truly have left Hogwarts, hah! What a lovely private joke if he meant that literally.) Still, Confunding Harry and Ron seems a bit... active for him. And much harder to justify to himself if he wants to believe he's really Great and Good, not just convince other people of that.
If Rowling wanted to ensure that Harry and Ron felt they had no choice but to mount a rescue themselves, she not only failed, but did everything possible to make it look like something--or someone--was actively preventing them from asking for help. I mean, you just don't set up your characters as being about to ask for help and then have them inexplicably not do so unless you want people to see that as fishy. Whatever the most likely explanation is, the whole thing is horribly suspicious.
On the bright side, this all makes Chamber of Secrets more interesting to me. I always unaccountably bounced off it, even though all the elements of it ought to be Sunnyskywalker catnip (secret chambers! historical mysteries! dastardly plots! spooky atmosphere!). I chalked this up to the major plotholes which Rowling didn't even attempt to paper over, like Harry and Ron inexplicably changing their minds about telling anyone about the basilisk until they also inexplicably decide to go to Lockhart. At least looking for an in-universe reason for this bizarre behavior allows for the possibility of a plot that makes sense instead of just watching the author march puppets through set-pieces.
