CHAPTER DISCUSSION: Chapter 26: Seen and Unforeseen

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 113070

I (Carol) wrote:
> > Like Harry and Ron, she has at least two classes, Potions and Care
of Magical Creatures, with the Slytherins, and the Potions classes
have been going on for five years. Whether Hagrid has addressed Theo
by name or not (no pun intended), Snape almost certainly has, and
Hermione, being the observant person she is, almost certainly would
have noticed it. And as you say, she may have other classes with
Theo--arithmancy, maybe. I doubt that he'd take Muggle Studies. In
fact, she may have known his name since the Sorting Ceremony in their
first year, but simply not had a reason to mention it before. (As for
Ron and Harry not knowing him, it's amazing that they could be so
unobservant.)
> 
> Geoff responded, somewhat mysteriously:
> This suggestion doesn't open another conspiracy theory for me. When
I was at school as a teenager, I was in a school of 500 boys. I 
> obviously had a small group of friends with whom I hung around but 
> outside that, there were school societies and you picked up names 
> from other people in conversation, an example along the lines 
> of "Well, X in class 4T is good at.."  "Who's X?"  "The guy othe 
> there with the blond hair." And so you get to know who quite a number 
> of other pupils are without actually knowing them as acquaintances.
> 
> I suspect that Harry and Ron might know students by sight or name 
> whom Hermione didn't recognise.

Carol again:
It doesn't open any conspiracy theory for me, either. I just think
that it's odd that Harry and Ron, however limited their contact with
non-Gryffindors outside of class, would not know the name of a student
they've had Potions with for almost five years and Care of Magical
Creatures with for almost three. (It's not at all odd that Hermione
would know. She pays attention to everything and has an excellent
memory.) It's particularly odd, if you believe as I do that each House
in Harry's year has only five boys and five girls in it, forty
students in all, that Harry wouldn't be able to identify the two
Slytherin fifth-year boys not in Draco's immediate circle as Theodore
Nott and Blaise Zabini. (Or maybe he does know Blaise's name, since
it's given in full during the Sorting Ceremony, but we really have no
other evidence that Harry can identify him.)

For any newbies on the list, the evidence for the small class numbers
is in SS/PS (flying lessons with twenty brooms total for the
Gryffindors and the Slytherins), CoS (about twenty earmuffs total for
the Gryffindors and the Hufflepuffs), and PoA, eight boggarts in all
(not counting Lupin's), with Harry's and Hermione's not revealed,
which would make ten students in the class.

It's no mystery at all why Hermione would know Theodore Nott's name in
those circumstances. I suppose Harry is too preoccupied with other
matters to pay attention to the quieter students, and maybe Ron is
just oblivious to matters that don't immediately concern him. But I
knew the names of every kid in all my classes after roll call on the
first day in elementary school and junior high. (High school doesn't
count because I knew them all already and in college, I confess, my
mind, too, was on other things. But twenty students total in Snape's
Potions class? Surely he's called on Theo Nott or mentioned him as
either succeeding or failing to get the potion ingredients right at
some point in the five years that Harry and Theo have been in class
together.

No conspiracy theory here. Just wondering how he could not know Theo's
name.

Carol, with apologies for going into detail here, but I was mystified
by Geoff's response