HBP's potions discoveries - why keep them secret?

[deborahhbbrd]

No: HPFGUIDX 140628

bocadetomates wrote:
> Has anybody ever wondered why the discoveries a schoolboy (an
> exceptionally gifted one, granted, but yet a schoolboy) made twenty
> years ago about better ways of making well-known potions haven't 
> found their way into the "official" potion-making guidelines (as 
> Hermione calls them)? 


Deborah now:

Snape the schoolboy, handing his improved potion formulae/methods to
his  teacher - who must by definition be less competent than himself?
Can you see it? Nor can I.

Snape the teacher, however, could well share a particularly odd and
nasty characteristic with many Muggle teachers I've had as colleagues
down the years (OK, OK, down the decades): being just downright
possessive about his own methods, lesson plans, worksheets, sure-fire
test and exam questions ... you name it, they hang on to it like grim
death. My feeling has always been that if it works for the kids I
teach, then it'll probably work for Mrs X's class as well, and since
our mutual purpose is to teach children to our best ability, Mrs X is
more than welcome to my stuff. And she gets it. But more often than
not, I don't get hers. Weird, but it fits into my mental picture of
Snape. Not a sharer. Not a generous man. Whatever else he may be ... a
bit of an Eeyore, actually, with that attitude of "if people could be
bothered to know the Real Me they'd be impressed but as it is, I won't
tell; it's their loss".

Deborah