Lupin as a teacher/Snape as teacher

[Sherry]

No: HPFGUIDX 138728

Houyhnhnm102 wrote:

> Why carry out this lesson in the staff room?  Lupin didn't take Harry 
> to Filch's office for the patronus lessons. Why not remove the 
> boggart to a classroom?
> 

Lupin tells his class that the boggart "moved in yesterday afternoon,
and I asked the headmaster if the staff would leave it to give my
third years some practice." (p. 133, US edition)

By "leaving it," he means "leaving it in the wardrobe." (I think that
 driving boggarts out isn't an unusual or difficult spell for the
professors, but one can't control where the boggart appears next.)
Moving the entire wardrobe would be inconvenient, at best, for the
faculty and staff.

> Lupin marches his entire class into the staff room during what just 
> happens to be Snape's free period.  Snape reacts churlishly because 
> his territory has been invaded (Students aren't allowed in the 
> teachers' lounge at my school under any circumstances).  Lupin 
> retaliates by choosing Neville to demonstrate the riddikulus charm.
> 
Teachers' lounges at my schools as a student and teacher were also
normally off limits to students, but teachers were still expected to
control themselves, not indulge in churlish behavior toward students.
Harry thinks "it was bad enough that [Snape] bullied Neville in his
own classes, let alone doing it in front of other teachers."
Personally, I think both were equally bad.

> If Snape had chosen another student to bully in front of Lupin, would 
> Lupin have picked that student instead of Neville.
> 
Yes! Rather than pretending to ignore Neville and pass him over, Lupin
leads him to a success, giving Neville a shot of confidence that he
DOES have magical ability. He didn't know that this student would be
more frightened by Snape than by anything else in the world, but
fighting a boggart means confronting one's greatest fear. If Snape was
Neville's greatest fear, that's the illusion he has to work with.

> Lupin didn't have to turn Snape into an old woman.  He could have 
> suggested something less humiliating.  The lesson is a set-up from 
> the get-go, IMO.  
>
I don't think Lupin had that planned--he didn't know what Neville
would find amusing. Remember, he mentioned not just any old woman, but
Neville's grandmother. Her son was one of his schoolmates, so he'd
probably met her and knew how intimidating she could be. He may well
have been thinking along the lines of a confrontation between a
protective grandmother and the intimidating boggart.  But when Neville
was intimidated by even the mention of his grandmother, he got the
idea of mixing the two to produce a comic image. 
 
> I know this scene has been argued over before.  I guess what caused 
> me to think of it again is the fact that so many of the threads 
> lately have dealt with the nature of good and evil.... Evil having
its genesis, not in superbads like 
> Valdemort and Grindelwald, but in the petty sins of commission and 
> omission carried out by "good" people.

Dolores Umbridge in OotP is an example. Dumbledore points her out to
Harry as a reminder that Voldemort is not the only source of malice in
the world.  
> 
> Why [should Lupin]
> not just make a decision to take the boy under his wing for the whole 
> term?  

Snape made a habit of ridiculing Neville very publically in front of
fellow students, and in this case another teacher. Lupin's response
was a public encouragement of Neville's power. Like you, I would avoid
a public denegration of a fellow teacher, but Lupin couldn't choose
Neville's greatest fear. He couldn't ask Neville to "Choose something
else"--that would have made it impossible for him to work the spell.

In general, I get the impression that JKR may base some elements of
Hogwarts culture on 19th and early 20th century school practices,
rather than contemporary ones. I've read, for example, that corporal
punishment was common at that time.  Filch's remarks in OotP give the
impression that it was used at Hogwarts until recently (I wouldn't be
surprised if it was first banned under Dumbledore's administration). 

Just my wandering thoughts...

Amontillada