[HPforGrownups] Potions, A Dark Art?

[Jennifer Boggess Ramon]

No: HPFGUIDX 32014

At 9:34 AM -0500 12/20/01, alexpie at aol.com wrote:
>
>Do potions necessarily fall under the Dark Arts?  The potion prepared by
>Snape for Lupin was certainly not dark, nor was the sleeping draught
>administered to Harry in the hospital wing.

Potions, as a general subject, would no more be dark than Herbology 
(a related discipline).  You have to be very careful what you're 
doing, or you might end up with poisons instead - but the brews 
themselves are morally neutral, just as one can use bubotuber pus to 
blister or heal.

Now, deliberately brewing poisons might well be considered a Dark 
Art, but clearly Transfiguration, Herbology, and Charms all have 
their dark uses, too.

>I think the meaning of potions
>may be in how you see them--a metaphor for Snape, perhaps?

I was thinking that it was more an expression of the famous subtlety 
that Snape so admires in the subject . . .

-- 
  - Boggles, aka J. C. B. Ramon			boggles at earthlink.net
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