many replies to many posts from many people, ALL SPOILERS

[mt3t3l1]

No: HPFGUIDX 135908

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)" 
<snip> I got
> so tired of hearing how brilliant Snape was to write in his old
> textbook that I developed a theory that his mother or other 
wizarding
> relative was a Potions expert and leafed through his Potions 
textbook
> stating corrections on the recipes and the kid hastily wrote them 
all
> down from dictation and thus, like Harry, appeared to be an extra-
good
> Potions student due to outside help. 
> 
> I can think of only two reasons for writing 'just shove a bezoar 
down
> their throat' in the antidote section. Once is that Snape's tutor
> wrote it down for Snape to use in class or in life, and the other is
> that the book magically wrote it down for Harry to use in class. I
> mean, it makes no sense to me that Snape would write that down for 
his
> own use -- it is the sort of thing that one can REMEMBER, not like 
the
> detailed corrections to recipes.

My take on this is that Snape's mother probably made many of the 
annotations to the Potions textbook. It was originally hers, after 
all. This would also explain why Hermione thought the notes had been 
written by a female. This doesn't mean that Snape is a potions 
dunderhead, just that he wasn't the first in the family to make 
creative modifications to the recipes in the book.

As for the "just shove a bezoar down their throat," that sounds like 
something you would write in the margins while listening to an 
endless droning lecture on fashioning antidotes. It's not written as 
a personal reminder, it is written to vent frustration.

Just one more observation. The title "Half-Blood Prince" may have 
been an affectionate nickname Snape's mother used for him. It 
combines a slight put-down with a veiled compliment--the sort of name 
that would be used just between the two of them. Snape probably 
didn't mean to have it become public knowledge, but scribbled it in 
the book because the book was a physical reminder of the mother who 
loved him.

Merrylinks