Why Didn't Dumbledore Hear the Basilisk?

1. Dumbledore doesn't generally gallivant all over the castle. He's a Headmaster - he sits in his office, does research, has meetings, or goes to the Great Hall. I don't recall him being mentioned anywhere in the Castle outside of his office or the Great Hall unless he was directly responding to a specific emergency (usually including Harry).

2. The basilisk doesn't seem to be running all over the castle. Harry only hears it once in a while, and he hangs out near the girl's bathroom (aka Basilisk Station) a lot.

My only answer is that Dumbledore would not often go walking around the castle. He had his business with the Order and such, and it would be kind of creepy if he kept going near the girls' toilet just to fully understand the basilisk.

Tom Riddle was the heir of Slytherin, therefore he could control the basilisk; When Voldemort tried to kill Harry Potter, he failed and instead unwittingly created the horcrux in Harry - Meaning that part of the Slytherin heir was transferred to Harry. This is why Harry got the brother wand of Voldemort's, why Harry can speak parseltongue, why Harry can hear the Basilisk, and why Dumbledore cannot. I'd be willing to bet that Tom Riddle could also hear the Basilisk in the walls when he was at Hogwarts.

Parseltongue is a magical language that snakes understand - and, conversely, a Parselmouth understands snakes. But nothing says it is the same language, just that Parseltongue is made of hissing sounds. It could be be that someone who is not a Parselmouth can learn to understand Parseltongue, but not snakes, if it isn't the same thing.

Why didn't Dumbledore hear the Basilisk during the events in Chamber of Secrets?

I think the basilisk is conscious as to whom is it talking to. I doubt the basilisk would want to talk with Dumbledore.

Also note that, at that moment, the basilisk was most likely just following orders: And to be honest, I don't think that Tom Riddle would like having it speak with Dumbledore.

So, how can I prove that the basilisk is indeed conscious of who is hearing it? Well, let us be realistic here: what kind of being speaks up alone things like "Kill... KILL...!!!" - no, it must be talking to someone. So it is indeed conscious.

Harry heard it because he happened to be in the right place at the right time ... or the wrong place at the wrong time depending on your outlook. I think it is all down to chance whether it could be heard with someone with the ability to understand it - the chance being that you are near where it is when it's speaking!

One can learn to imitate the sounds of Parseltongue, and one can learn to understand another human who is speaking Parseltongue. What one can't learn, because it's an ability you're either born with¹ or not, is to hear snakes speak. (In this sense, "Parselmouth" is a bit of a misnomer: it should be "Parselear" or some such.)

For example, in the scene where Harry and Draco are dueling and Harry speaks to the snake, it's clear that the other students only heard Harry speaking in the strange hissing language; to the extent that they heard the snake make any sound at all, it didn't sound like a language to them -- it was just the noise of the snake slithering on the ground or whatever.

Dumbledore couldn't hear the basilisk because he wasn't a Parselmouth. If he heard any noises, they would have sounded to him like the pipes acting up, not like a snake speaking, because he wasn't born with the ability to hear snakes speaking.

_{¹ OK, OK, so technically Harry wasn't born with the ability, he just acquired it from someone who was. Point is, it's a talent you can't acquire via learning.}

There is no real indication that Dumbledore understood Parseltongue in Book Two, so it is possible he didn't know it then. Given that J.K. Rowling indicated that it could really only be taught by an existing Parselmouth, it is entirely possible that Albus "lifted" it via Legilmency from Harry or Morphin once he realized that he was going to need it for the memories in Book Six. (Or had Harry teach it the hard way at some point during the school years off-camera, however, this seems less likely to me given that it probably would have received a mention.)

We have already eatablished that it is likely that Dumbledore could probably somewhat recognize parseltongue & therefore probably speak it somewhat through mimicking. However, it is likely that he couldn't hear the basilisk the way Harry Potter did because Parselmouth(should be parselEar) is what is required to hear the snake's language and Dumbledore wasn't a Parselmouth. It seems to me that Parseltongue is different and separate from the actual language snakes speak.

This was all mentioned further up and sounds completely reasonable to me. Why else would there be two different words describing the same thing? Thus the need for Parseltongue and Parselmouth.

I was thinking if harry could understand parseltongue (okay through the part of voldemorts soul attached to him) why didn't he hear it when he first/soon after got to Hogwarts. regarding Dumbledore he may have been able to learn to hear parseltongue (the books do say his reluctance to use dark magic to enhance his power) but don't the books say only the heir of slytherin could control the basilisk?

I think Parseltongue between people is simply a spoken language, but with snakes, I think it may be more of a telepathic connection. Dumbledore may understand Parseltongue but he can't speak it, so I don't think he would be able to hear it either. Only a Parselmouth would have heard the Basilisk's hissing, unless it was right on top of them, of course.

This seems to be a flaw in the writing. The way the adults handled the danger in CoS made little sense, and it's odd that Dumbledore didn't at least guess at a snake and then hunt for one (eventually hearing it as it sought victims).

I don't think the snake exited the Chamber until Riddle had control of Ginny via the diary. So neither Harry nor Dumbledore heard it before year 2 because it was not prowling around. I also think it was purely chance that Harry heard the basilisk and that Dumbledore would have heard it if it happened to be talking near him.

It does not fit Dumbledore's character that he would not have been hunting the monster down more proactively and quickly to protect his students and did not think to hunt for a snake of some kind. He seems smarter than that and book 2 made the adults seem completely reckless with the Muggle-born students' lives. They should have shut the school down the moment anyone had a clue there was a monster after students and not reopened until it was stopped.

I know it wasn't possible to find the Chamber without being connected to the Heir in some way but it would have been possible to hunt the basilisk while it was prowling around.

In book 1, Harry says he reckons Dumbledore knows most of what goes on at Hogwarts somehow, and we see that Dumbledore does explore the castle and makes himself invisible to help keep an eye on things. It's really weird that he wasn't better at figuring out that the monster was likely a serpent and that he wasn't better at hunting the basilisk while it was hunting his students. It was pure luck that some of them didn't die.

So I think it comes down to something that often happens in the HP series: Harry is allowed to face things he shouldn't have to face so he can be the hero and have an exciting adventure - not because it makes a whole lot of sense, plot-wise.