I keep calling them semi-sentient because I'm uncertain of their sentience. Sometimes portraits interact with characters like normal human beings and sometimes they act like chatbots with limited phrase banks. It's mostly Jo being inconsistent in her writing. But yeah, headmaster shouldn't be able to say that he doesn't know what happens in the castle. After all he has ghosts, portraits and House Elves... Even if Tom managed to Oblivate every portrait he passes, in theory you could cross-examinate portraits and locate portraits that have holes in memory (after all would Tom have enough time to bother with creating new memories for every portrait?) and thus learn how the culprit moved around castle. That alone eliminates a lot of potential culprits.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2019-07-28 04:38 pm (UTC)But yeah, headmaster shouldn't be able to say that he doesn't know what happens in the castle. After all he has ghosts, portraits and House Elves...
Even if Tom managed to Oblivate every portrait he passes, in theory you could cross-examinate portraits and locate portraits that have holes in memory (after all would Tom have enough time to bother with creating new memories for every portrait?) and thus learn how the culprit moved around castle. That alone eliminates a lot of potential culprits.