Snape's logic puzzle/ why solvable barriers?

[Amanda Geist]

No: HPFGUIDX 41435

Frankie pointed out

> Poor guy. Snape is repeatedly out-done by people he considers beneath
> him. Don't forget that Hermione solved his potions riddle guarding the
> stone when she was only 11 (SS). Can you image the teasing he must
> have gotten from the rest of the staff? McGonagall didn't invent
> chess, but Snape wrote that logic puzzle.

Ya know, I hadn't really thought about that. You're probably right. And
judging from the interactions in the staffroom scene in CoS, and
McGonagall's comment (in book 1, I think) about not being able to look
Severus Snape in the face for weeks (or whatever it was), it is implied that
he has a reasonable relationship with the other teachers. Which would
include getting ribbed about things like this. Which may be another reason
he's not terribly fond of Hermione.

On the other hand, I'm not too sure that the different barriers were meant
to stop a determined attempt. It has always seemed odd to me that the keys
to passing each barrier were there, built in. Why have the broom sitting
there, waiting? Why have the riddle there, and a "safe" potion, at all? They
seem more delaying tactics, or plot devices. In that case, they weren't
supposed to be insurmountable or insolvable, just difficult. [Actually, the
treatment of the flying keys in the Celluloid Beastie was one of the few
things I felt to be an improvement, in that the other keys became buzzing
dangers, instead of simply a cloud of placid fluttery things Harry had to
fly through.]

Someone posted earlier (and I'm talking too long ago for me to remember,
which these days is, oh, three days, but I mean some months ago) that
Hermione solved the puzzle more readily than many adult wizards would, on
some argument that logic is not the way the wizarding mind seems to operate.
Hermione, being Muggle and more inclined to think that way, did not find the
puzzle the barrier that many adult wizards would have. Is whoever posted
this thought, available for a recap? It was an interesting thought...

--Amanda, about to depart for the great Girl Scout Build-a-Bear field trip
to Austin!