Chapter 29, Career Advice - Broken Potion

[Dan Feeney]

No: HPFGUIDX 117300


Nora:
> But the two situations, in literary terms, are really not the same
thing as they're not serving the same purpose.

Pippin:
> > If it's so unimportant, why do we keep talking about it.... We 
> > don't need more confirmation of Snape's malice, just like we 
> > don't need more confirmation that he loves potion-making. And if 
> > we did, you would put it at the beginning of the scene not the 
> > middle or the end. There's gotta be something else going on.

Potioncat:
> ...it was also obvious that Crookshanks ate Scabbers, but he 
didn't.  

> Of course if Snape wasn't such a jerk all the time, Harry wouldn't 
> misjudge him so often.

Dan:
Well, there are many times in the books where Snape delivers ghastly 
throwaway lines, like the infamous "I see no difference." Now, aside 
from the implication in this that Rowling is, well, perhaps 
compromising us, when we chuckle, cringe or whatever at that line, in 
preparation for some projected so-called "moral" judgement she may 
hand down, sometime (though I personally doubt she will let us off 
that easy, reducing the books to some little package), the line has 
no other possible point than, well, getting back at the Know-It-All. 
Unless...

Well, unless Snape has some special characteristic of sight, 
something related to legilimency, say, that perhaps he sees only 
people's patronii, or sees them through their patronii, or something 
complicated and demanding on plot like that. Even then, however, the  
throwaway insults ask no analysis, only that we marvel, with perhaps 
bemused wonderment, at Professor Snape's sheer nastiness.

What is different about the potion and the "whoops" is the 
implication for Harry's marks. But then, who's to say Snape didn't 
really have a chance to mark it anyway, before the accident? Maybe 
he's being mendacious about that!

But what really strikes me in this scene, is how helpful Hermione was 
to Harry, when she had just told Ron to "takes notes for a change." 
She volunteered to vanish the rest of his potion.

With friends like this, who needs enemies?

Dan