SS/PS Passing through the guarding spells

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 129516

Linda wrote: 
> Okay, here is the quote from the book that still makes me doubt:
> 
> Harry looked at the tiny bottle.
> "There's only enough there for one of us," he said.  "That's 
> hardly one swallow."
> 
> I don't doubt they would logic it out - they aren't taking 
> chances here - but I still think that if the bottle was so "tiny" 
> that there was just a swallow's worth in there, that any missing 
> liquid would have been noticed more readily. <snip> I just picture a
very 
> small bottle, filled with just enough for a swallow in it.

Carol responds:
I think that Julie's response neatly takes care of the chessboard part
of your question, so I've snipped it. As for the potions, maybe Snape
enchanted them to magically refill themselves in case someone followed
the original intruder. At any rate, I had the same question when I
first read SS, and that's how I answered it to my own satisfaction
(after I knew that he wasn't after the stone, that is. He'd have had a
different motive for magically refilling the bottles if he were the
bad guy Harry thought he was.)

Linda wrote: 
> Okay, yes there was the troll, but that makes me wonder too.  
> Hermione said, after the chessboard, that only Quirrell's and 
> Snape's spells were left.  If this is true, then Quirrell brought 
> the troll in (which is what I figured the first time, since he was
good at dealing with them, he knew that would not be a problem for
him).  However, Dumbledore set up this whole "guarding the stone"
thing, so he must have known what each teacher contributed.  So if 
> he knows Quirrell doesn't have a problem with trolls, wouldn't he
have been suspicious of Quirrell's "sprinting into the hall" with 
> a look of "terror" on his face on Halloween, and then sinking to 
> the floor in a "dead faint"?  Surely if you personally brought in 
> a troll to guard something, you don't freak out like that because 
> of one.

Carol responds:
Excellent point that I don't have an answer to. But certainly *Snape*
was suspicious of Quirrell's feigned terror, so he must have known
about Quirrell placing a troll as a barrier to the stone and spotted
the inconsistency in his behavior. Maybe as you suggest in the
paragraph I snipped, Snape did express his suspicions to Dumbledore
and let him know that he (Snape) was watching Quirrell. But it's also
possible that Snape wanted to deter Quirrell on his own, a way of
proving his loyalty to Dumbledore and receiving DD's approval, maybe.
Minds are complex, as Snape himself states, and I don't pretend to
understand his. (I don't doubt his loyalty or his courage, but his
wisdom in this instance seems questionable.)

Carol