Dumbledore did posit that Voldemort knew more about magic than any man living (including himself) in OotP, after describing him as perhaps the brightest student to ever pass through Hogwarts (again, including himself).

 

One explanation is that the portraits, like the esteemed honey badgers, just don't give a fuck. I think Rowling's pottermore extension of portraits does this explanation justice. They are not alive. They are semi-sentient imitations that need to be taught how to act by the painter/model.

I doubt all those portraits have been imparted with enough sentience/logic to say 'Hey look a giant snake, maybe I should tell someone.'

Still a massive plothole though even taking this explanation into consideration.

 

This is ridiculous explanation, most likely wrong, but here it goes:

Salazar Slytherin cast some sort of spell which makes the basilisk invisible to the Hogwarts portraits.

 

Considering how many problems from canon could be solved using portraits and/or ghosts I would say they are all useless except when it is plot convenient.

 

Warlocke: Pretty much what afrojac said.

Dumbledore is a respectable source of truth in Rowling's work, and being a guy who could have mentioned X wizard from Burkina Faso (like he mentioned Humphrey Belcher about the cheese cauldron making) instead of Lord Voldemort, I think he was right.

It doesn't mean anything, because all that knowledge didn't serve him to win, but it is one (and the most important) of the few hypothetical foundations I have to think that perhaps if he could have completed the 6 horcrux goal, he would have stopped aging, being more powerful, etc.

 

Are we told that there are portraits in the Library around the shelves, or in every hallway, or in the second floor girls bathroom? Since the basilisk travels through the pipes in the wall (another question, how could something that big travel through the pipes in the wall), isn't it possible, if not plausible, that it only came out in places that had no pictures. I know the movie painted Hogwarts as walls upon walls of pictures with no end in sight, but I didn't think that was necessarily true of every wall and every room.

 

Not sure here but I don't remember any hallway that was described not having portraits. Could be wrong though since it has been too long.

At least we know there are parts of the castle with enough pictures in them that one of those portraits can easily guide people by jumping the pictures.

 

It's a magic castle with moving staircases and a room that can turn into nearly anything and is inhabited by people who can do magic, bro.

 

I think you're both missing the main point of my post.

Said point being that it was primarily intended as a delivery system for this phrase:

 

On the vampires don't have magic point. I would think the simplest fix would be that they don't have souls and therefore can't do magic. The only flaw in that would be, do animals have souls. Because both a phoenix and a basilisk can do 'magicy' shit.

 

And it could be said that while Voldemort was supremely knowledgeable about magic, your point still stands in many ways, because he was pwnt in the end by what magic he didn't understand, which Harry and Albus understood much better. Recognizing the power of love, was, I think, part of what Harry called "the magic of certain acts" in DH, which was what Dumbledore was most successful in teaching him about magic.

 

Yes, Dumbledore stated many things. Such as:

 

Well, I did always feel that was J.K.'s (and Dumbledore's) way of seeing magic in the context of music (wands like conductor's batons and all that), as something that had a potent science all its own, but was most powerful not in that so much as its capacity to make one feel so truly and intensely, in such a profound way. Voldemort had mastered the former, but Harry had the latter in spades. Dumbledore understood both.

 

So basically: Voldemort has a PhD in musical theory but Harry has a natural affinity with music and instruments? Whilst Dumbledore has a Masters in Theory and a decent grasp of various instruments?

That's actually a pretty neat way of seeing things.

 

Essentially, yes. Dumbledore is the old man sitting there listening to symphonies in pure bliss, who could play every note himself. Voldemort could play the symphony, maybe even with more skill than Dumbledore, but he could never be touched by it the way Harry could, could never derive the emotional understanding Harry could.

Voldemort knew how to play, but Harry knew how to listen. Dumbledore, again, was a master of both.

 

Finally I tried to put those in to the words before but was unsuccesfull, If anybody ask me about it again I will simply point here.

Thanks guys.

 

Did Pettigrew have anything to do with Barty getting away from his father?

I'm toying with a bunny centered around Sirius offing Pettigrew and that setting back Voldemorts return by about a year or so. But if Barty is still stuck under imperious I can't use him for the resurrection.

 

I think so yes, will have to check but I don't have the books with me right now. If no one else answer in a few hours I will find one online and look for the relevant part.

 

Voldemort understood that kind of magic. He knew what had happened the moment his curse backfired - he explains it in GoF. He just didn't fully appreciate it. He views that kind of magic as not very important - one in a million chances and alignments, not easily controlled, not harnessable at will, not rule bound, not predictable, and generally not useful.

It's only because he's the villain in a storybook that he was wrong in that.

Voldemort's approach to magic very much represents modernity: seeing things in a mechanistic, ordered, rule-bound way. If something isn't directly and immediately useful, or if it's wishy-washy in any way, it should be discarded.

Dumbledore and Harry represent a more spiritual/romantic view of the world where everything has meaning and chaos and chance rule under the superficial rules.

I rather sympathise with Voldemort.

 

Yes, because Pettigrew brought Voldemort back from Albania and nursed him to health, and then Voldemort went with Peter and put Barty Crouch Sn under the imperious, which freed Barty Jn from his fathers curse.