Age, integrity, and the potions textbook

[ahsonazmat]

No: HPFGUIDX 135117


 hekatesheadband said :
> I agree with this wholeheartedly. I'm a denizen of the geeky 
> academic world myself, so I just find myself wanting to shout at 
> Snape: If you care so much about the "noble art and subtle science 
> of potion-brewing," why don't you act to ennoble it further! How can 
> someone who claims to care so much about potions make the core of 
> his curriculum the following of instructions he knows to be 
> inadequate? Granted, he may have wanted students to experiment for 
> themselves - but with the way he berates them for failure when they 
> do deviate from the book's directions, how can he expect that they 
> would ever dare it? 

     Just wanted to bring up the possibility: before Book 6 we didn't 
know about Snape and his prodigious potions-innovating skills. But we 
did note that he always wrote the instructions for potion-brwing on 
the board. I recall this from past canon where Harry had missed a 
step, which he saw written on the board. So it is possible that Snape 
_does_ give his own instructions on the board? I mean, we seem to be 
assuming that what he writes on the board is what is written _word for 
word_ in the text. Maybe it's not? Do we have a point of reference for 
this? Could it be possible that the instructions on the board are his, 
as he would have writtein in his own textbook? Personally, I could see 
Neville having problems with _either_ set of instructions, the book's 
or the HBP's.

        - Ahson