CoS. Question regarding Snape mentioning polyjuice and book name with formula.

[potioncat]

No: HPFGUIDX 125574


 
> vmonte: 
> Snape doesn't show the students how to make the potion, but he does 
> tell them where they can find the potion, interesting.

Potioncat:
At one time, I thought Snape did this on purpose. To nudge the Trio 
on. I'm no longer so sure. Afterall, Polyjuice does turn up on the 
OWLs so it was part of the cirriculum. I wonder why a potion that's 
in a restricted book would be on the OWLs anyway?

But it has set up two events. It throws everyone off when Snape 
interrogates Harry about polyjuice ingredients in GoF. He already had 
reason to suspect Harry but we were all wondering why he brought it up
two years later until we found out about Crouch!Moody.

Secondly, it sets it up that Hermione will pick up on anything said 
by a professor. So Snape can assign the werewolf essay knowing that 
one of the trio will learn from it. I'm not sure it had the effect he 
wanted. Of course, I'm not sure if he was trying to reveal Lupin or 
to protect the trio.
> _______
> vmonte:
> Damp-spotted? Am I reading this wrong? Shouldn't it read dry-
spotted? 
> Did someone else recently use this book, getting some of the pages 
> wet? If so, who? 

Potioncat:
The book is restricted but is available to NEWT level Potions 
students. Everything else in the book sounded pretty terrible! Good 
question. I wonder if it will come up later?
> __________ 

 vmonte:
> So, if Snape knew, why didn't Harry get in trouble?

Potioncat:
Well, most likely Harry was feeling guilty and a little afraid and he 
thought Snape knew. Snape certainly suspected! As I said, at one time 
I thought Snape knew too. Now I don't think so. But again, by 
suspecting them this time, it set him up to suspect them the next 
time the ingredients went missing.

It seems JKR tosses out as many red herrings to the residents of the 
books as she does to us.
Potioncat