Salazar's retirement career

[sunnyskywalker]

It's interesting that we never hear what happened to Salazar Slytherin after he "departed" that fateful morning. Jodel suggested a couple of possibilities (included below). As a slightly tongue-in-cheek exercise, here's a quiz on his possible post-Hogwarts activities.

(a) He founded Durmstrang.
(b) He founded the Department of Mysteries (whatever it was called pre-Ministry).
(c) He started a war (maybe with pureblood supremacist ideology, maybe something else).
(d) He retired and lived a quiet life of scholarship and contemplation.
(e) He served on the Wizards' Council.
(f) He started a pet shop specializing in exotic snakes.
(g) He accidentally got killed by his own basilisk. The other Founders covered it up out of respect for his memory.
(h) The other Founders killed him and buried him under the foundations of their new Astronomy Tower.
(i) Other, explained in comments.

Comments

[torchedsong.livejournal.com]

(b) and (e) sound like they could be interesting. I'd also go with (d) but maybe that wouldn't be exhilarating for an ambitious person like Salazar? Or maybe he did have enough of the craziness inherent in the Wizarding world and enjoyed going off the grid and chilling for the rest of his life.

(g) sounds like the type of poetic irony JKR would probably find fitting or amusing, but she already did that with Snape - the whole "Slytherin getting put down by their own house emblem" thing....

In a weird way, the story of the four Founders of Hogwarts reminds me a tiny bit of Avatar: The Last Airbender, especially the opening narration. "Long ago, the four nations founders lived together in harmony. Then everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked Salazar Slytherin distrusted Muggle-borns."

I'm being silly, but I do wonder what would drive a man like Salazar to disappear, especially after putting so much work in his Chamber and basilisk.

[sunnyskywalker]

I guess it would be hard to transport a basilisk? Maybe he wanted to leave it to protect his students? (Not that this is necessarily a rational reason, but maybe he had a Hagrid-like attitude toward "interesting creatures.")

But yes, it is an awful lot to just walk away from. Chamber, basilisk, and students. The Hat really didn't give us enough details.

[torchedsong.livejournal.com]

This is perhaps a sign of my priorities being out of order, but I'd be more worried about leaving the basilisk behind more than anything else. But I've always had questions about the basilisk in the Chamber. How can a gigantic creature survive on rats alone? Did it have nothing else to eat? Was it put to sleep temporarily until Tom Riddle awakened it? How big were the pipes in Hogwarts that a giant serpent could slither around? Why did it not eat any of the students or staff? Why is basilisk venom special enough to destroy horcruxes?

Those are all rhetorical and random questions. Maybe I'm too big of a worrier, but I can't imagine leaving such a creature behind without an urgent reason. I don't think Salazar would've left after one or two squabbles with the other founders; I think it would've had to be something substantial for him to walk away by choice (if he did choose to walk away in the first place and wasn't forcibly kicked out or killed).

[arcanetrivia]

"Temporarily until Tom Riddle awakened it"? Wouldn't that have to be like 900 years?

[torchedsong.livejournal.com]

Ha, true. :D It lived longer than the average basilisk, so it either spent hundreds of years sleeping in the Chamber until Riddle commanded it in the 1940s, or it spent hundreds of years doing...something. Eating and slithering around? I can't remember if it could leave the Chamber without being commanded to do so.

I know a gigantic serpent is far from a harmless and helpless pet, but I can't imagine Salazar leaving it behind without a good enough reason. There's also the chance he didn't care about the serpent as a living creature and saw it more as a weapon to use.

Maybe I'm thinking too much over this. Perhaps JKR just wanted a big scary snake for Harry to battle in a foreboding secret dungeon and didn't think too much about the basilisk beyond that.

[chantaldormand]

I'm almost positive that there is secondary entrance to CoS that leads to Forbidden Forest.

When Harry enters tunnels leading to CoS he notices rat bones and snake molts. Considering that the tunnel's walls are wet, those must be recent.
This means that over 6 meters long snake ate well enough to grow, but there is no way that this big boy would be satisfied with just rats and we don't hear any reports of missing pets. So what the Basilisk eats?

About 50 years ago Hagrid released an invasive specie of spiders into forest. Spiders that grow to size of elephant. Students are forbidden from entering the forest so aside from occasional rule breaker spiders must prey on some other big animals.
And yet the forest isn't overrun by Aragog's spawn and in the first book not only there is enough unicorns for herd, but also centaurs aren't afraid of travelling on their own.
So something must act as population control for Acromantulas.
I believe that after Acromantulas ate all animals that Basilisk normally ate, it moved to eating younger Acromantulas.

[sunnyskywalker]

Now there's a thought. Spiders are also naturally afraid of basilisks--maybe Acromantulae are something like like to eat when they get a chance, and all the little spiders are afraid because of the stories from their giant cousins?

It's also possible that the basilisk can get out into the lake. Maybe it eats baby giant squid, and that's why we only ever see one. (Otherwise, we have to ask whether it's an immortal giant squid, or do they re-stock it every so often when the old one dies, or what.) Maybe it's only because Harry killed it that they could hold one of the Triwizard tasks in the lake at all without risking the students getting Petrified by the basilisk's gaze through the water.

The rat bones are puzzling. Snakes don't actually rip the meat off and leave the bones, unless I'm wildly mistaken. Are basilisks different? Or did something else eat those rats--and if so, what?

[chantaldormand]

The bones are bit puzzling, but there might be explanation for this. While normally bones are digested by snakes, that would not be the case if the prey is vomited. Usually snakes vomit if they are too stressed out, are too cold (since their digestive system depends on environmental temperatures) or are sick. It's possible that since Diarycrux stopped the Basilisk from hibernating during winter, the poor thing had problems with keeping food down. Damp environment would speed up decay of soft tissues so only bones are left (though I wouldn't be surprised if adrenaline pumped Harry failed to spot fur laying nearby). When Harry enters CoS it's... June(?) so the snake had enough time to eat enough to shed molt.

It's kinda scary to think what will happen now that Basilisk is dead.

[sunnyskywalker]

All very good questions. I would hope it was magically hibernating at lot of the time, and that Salazar put it into a magical sleep in the first place as a precaution.

On the other hand, do we know for certain that this is his basilisk? Maybe he just had a normal big snake for a pet, someone else made the basilisk over the many centuries since, and the legend got a little muddled.