What of Thee, oh Toad? : Toads and Basilisks

Introduction This post will serve the purpose of several comments I was going to make; but the first thing that I must admit is that I stole the first part of the title (the question) from Pauli ... it was the name of a post he had in draft form that eventually was worked into his post on Neville's Toad Trevor, which was a great post and the main purpose of this post is to follow up on it. The other comment purpose it serves is a comment I was going to leave on your site JKR2, under your post on reading the magical creatures work, and also connected with another thing from a previous comment interchange we had on your blog. You had asked what the word "chimerical" meant in regards to the Basilisk eventually becoming the "cockatrice" in Renaissance literature. Here is a link to the wikipedia page on the actual chimera creature ... and ... here is a link to a page on the Basilisk/Cockatrice in its later form that sort of let's you see(literally - notice the picture at the top of the page) why the Cockatrice was eventually too unbelievable of a character for continued usage (it works for good symbol-types such as the Griffin and Hippogryff but not as well for evil symbol-types - I think in the good types, when they can give the creature a unique character that symbolizes the mysterious marriage of the elements and can also function in a unified way it works but in the evil types it is difficult to get the elements to link up and it becomes more like a "circus freak" image - both the Basilisk and Chimera classically being symbols of evil) Of Toads and Basilisks I'll discuss briefly below how I think Trevor, Black and the Basilisk, as representative of Slytherin, are related symbolically in the work (building off Pauli's excellent observation of the close connection between Trevor and Sirius in POA), but there is first a much more direct link in the actual mythology of the Basilisk. According to the wikipedia article on Basilisks they, "were supposedly born out of a rooster's egg that was hatched by a viper or toad." ASIDE: There is a real lizard called the Basilisk - and this is mere speculation on my part - but I think maybe the name being used of this lizard MAY have something to do with the fact that it can run on its hind legs, like a human ... which is sort of a direct reversal of the curse on the serpent in Genesis 3 - but this is admittedly just my own speculation. It is important to note here one subtle nuance of the material that Pauli brought up, particularly that, with Hermione's help, Neville saves Trevor from taking a potion. A while ago we commented on the nature of potions as a wandless magic and some further considerations of the serpent as "cunning" and more recently I have commented on the possibility of Helga Hufflepuff possibly playing some role in keeping Slytherin at Hogwarts as part of the school ( this is in both the post itself and in some of the later comments in the thread ... and in the other post linked just preciously to this, there are comments on why potions still exists as a class at Hogwarts). Thus, Neville not only saved Trevor from some possible physical damage but also did so by saving him from being under the influence of potions as a wandless magic, which is to say he kept Trevor from the "Basilisk side" of his own toadly nature. This is much like the fact that Harry's saving of Sirius may be a continuation of a possible saving of Black by Harry's parents: It is precisely Sirius' affinity for characters such as James and Lily that earlier in life kept him from being affected by the "Basilisk leanings" in his own familial heritage. Of Orphans and Dark Wizards In the post linked above on Hufflepuff I noted the connections of the orphan imagery and in closing here I wanted to note a few other things about it as it relates to this particular topic of the connection between Neville, Harry and Sirius: all three are orphans of a sort and all have been made such by "dark wizards." Black is the most "figuratively" an orphan - his parents were actually alive etc. But he was terribly estranged from them precisely because of the "pure-blood" bigotry so common to dark wizards. Neville is the next in that line of "figurative" because he parents do still live - but they do not live with the mental vitality that they once had and their being tortured into insanity by Bella gives him a very real pain of an orphan. Harry is of course the "fullest" orphan. I think the levels at which these 3 symbolize the orphan is directly related to what Pauli was talking about as Neville being symbolic of the same "rescuer" aspect of Harry at an albeit more subtle/secondary level, but still a real and important level with really verifiable literary connections in the text. It is kind of like the minor recurrences of motifs that fill out the major motifs in a symphony. The fact that Trevor (via the mythical lore of the Basilisk) and Black also represent the "black" stage or element indicates the important role of the one who is orphaned but turns out to be a powerful aid, in restoring unity in the stages subsequent to the black stage. Notably, the last two (Neville and Harry) were made orphans in ways directly connected to Voldy. It has been emphasized in books 5 and 6 that Voldy made the prophecy a self fulfilling one for himself by giving Harry his powers on that fateful night that he orphaned him, and this is true even to the level of this connection between Harry and Neville as rescuers, since he not only directly made Harry an orphan, but it was his hench-woman who made Neville an orphan. And I think Neville will somehow fulfill this connection in a significant way in book 7. (Think of the other connection between Harry and Neville in GOF - who did Neville take to the Yule Ball? Ginny) POST-SCRIPT I should note here that I will probably not be able to elaborate much on some of these thoughts without becoming confusing. I think that these elements (Trevor, Sirius, the black stage, the basilisk, Slytherin and cunning, potions as wandless magic, the orphan theme) are playing off of each other in the work but I am not sure it is possible to discuss it discursively in depth without going into the "a man's brain is a bomb" territory, which gets kind of jumbled. I think that the elements really do work together in the work for Rowling but my suspicion is that even she may not be able to describe how in a discursively clear fashion (although if anyone could I think it would be she, she is a very clever woman, ... or maybe somebody more adept in this particular area like J. Granger - although it must be taken into account that while Rowling is using the medieval Alchemical structure as her main structure, many of the ways she has some elements connecting and develops them is post-modern as well). I suspect that her thought processes may run something like "this just feels right" - sort of like Newman's "Illative sense."