They could try reconstructive surgery.

 

Fanfics sometimes mention basilisks having inner eyelids that turn off their lethal stare. Is this canon? My google fu is failing me.

 

Fanon, afaik.

 

In the movie, there is a circular door separating the tunnel leading to the CoS from the Chamber itself. Is there a door in the book, or does the tunnel just open into the Chamber?

 

The fun bit is that snakes are partially differentiated from legless lizards by the fact that they don't have eyelids at all, much less nictating membranes (inner eyelids). If the basilisk were to have eyelids at all, it would be king of lizards, not king of snakes.

The door is canon. Harry hisses "open" in parseltongue to open it in the book.

 

I am actually a little depressed about this epiphany: Parseltongue permits Harry and the descendants of Slytherin (and Herpo, if he had any) to speak to snakes. Just snakes. Not newts, salamanders, and particularly not dragons.

Am I wrong?

It's not like I write for canon compliance but it really limits the use of Parseltongue for story purposes if you're trying to stay close to canon-compatible.

 

Is it canon that the cry of a rooster kills a basilisk, or is that in-character misinformation?

Ginny slaughters Hagrid's roosters on Tom's orders, which would indicate that Tom himself thought they were a risk for his monster, though he could of course be wrong as well.

 

Snakes and lizards are different. Dragons are always described as magical lizards. I'm not a zoologist, but I'm quite certain that they're more different than, say, gorillas and humans. Giving them both the same language is sort of diminishing the fact that parseltongue is the language of snakes and everything to do with them. Canon is limiting, certainly. But this one limit seems very plausible. Voldemort had unusual control over Nagini because she was a horcrux, I remember a quote from Dumbledore to this effect. The only other snake we see interacting with humans is the basilisk. If you're trying to be canon compliant, giving every snake the intelligence and abilities of Nagini deviates from Dumbledore's words. Going to other magical animals like dragons and salamanders completely distorts canon. The language is an association with snakes, nothing else.

Or rather, riddle me this, had Parseltongue been able to communicate with dragons, would Salazar Slytherin not have been famed for his masterful control over them?

Edit: The cry of a rooster is fatal to them, as Hermione's book fragment in CoS reveals. The one she was clutching while she was petrified, that is.

 

It's also in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, along with instructions for how to breed them, which is a bit wtf. "Hey kids, here's the really easy way to make an instant-death monster!".

I mean, with adults clearly the fact that they get instant death too is going to stop them breeding one. But since when has the possibility of instant death stopped kids from doing stupid shit?

 

I thought it was the crow of a rooster at dawn

 

Snakes and Lizards would be about as closely related as Humans and Lemurs.

 

"Snake" is an arbitrary category designed by humans, so unless there's a magical XML tag describing which animal counts as a snake, you can have whatever you want speaking in Parseltongue.

 

Yeah, those wizards ain't humasn they're aliens

 

As we're talking about a magical language power based upon an affinity that originated with Herpo the Foul (whose name in his native Greek is 'snake' or more literally, 'I crawl'), I'm going to say it covers any genetically limbless reptile.

And now my headcanon for Herpo includes losing his limbs at some point (extreme diabetes or leprosy or something) and him using magic to make or grow replacements.

 

I didn't mean that anything could speak in Parseltongue, but that however Parseltongue originated, its definition of snake doesn't necessarily have to match up to our current definition.

 

As Bill said, snakes and lizards are around as related as humans and lemurs genetically. And yes, genetically, snakes are quite different from lizards. Snakes have evolved from lizards, and are anatomically different (no eyelids, lack of ears, a very small tail, forked tongue, paired organs being one in front of other rather than side by side, the entire body being a huge thorax etc). Stick insects disguise themselves as leaves, and no one's claiming that just because they look similar and seem to sway in a breeze they should be able to speak a common language. Hell, no one claims you should be able to interact with lemurs because we're in the same order of classification (primates). Reptilian + No limbs != Being able to speak parseltongue

In any case, the question being discussed is the usage of parseltongue for dragons and salamanders. No matter what your views on the difference between snakes and limbless lizards, you cannot classify dragons in either category. Hence, the point is moot.

 

New question: Are there any known examples of potions that are not intended to be ingested? I can't think of any off the top of my head but that doesn't mean there aren't any.

In connection to this I've been trying to come up with what alchemy is used for besides attempts to create the Philosopher's Stone and what similarities and differences it has with potions.

 

Harry Potter and the Witch-Queen has a nice example of beginner's Alchemy being used in Chapter 12, but it's fan-made.