HBP's potions discoveries - why keep them secret?

[bibphile]

No: HPFGUIDX 140709

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "bocadetomates" 
<kat.rohts at g...> wrote:
> 
> bocadetomates:
> "This separation from his spellbooks had been a real problem for 
> Harry, because his teachers at Hogwarts had given him a lot of 
> holiday work. One of the essays, a particularly nasty one about 
> shrinking potions, was for Harry's least favourite teacher, 
Professor 
> Snape, who would be delighted to have an excuse to give Harry 
> detention for a month."
> So apparently Harry needed his potions book (the one from first 
year, 
> I guess) to do his homework. Of course, this doesn't contradict 
Snape 
> writing his own instructions on the blackboard.
> 

I'd forgotten about that.  I only looked up the book list for each 
year.  Of course, it's also possible that Harry needed "One Thousand 
Migical Herbs and Fungi."  The titale makes it sound like it has the 
magical properties of plants and not formulas and we know from SS/PS 
that it's sometimes used in potions.  But you could also be easily 
right about Harry still using the old potions book.


> As for the calculation of all the "Outstanding" people in Harrys 
NEWT-
> class:
> This might be an oversight of mine, but do we really *know* they 
all 
> had O's in their OWL? Harry for one didn't. I thought that maybe 
some 
> of them realized a bit quicker than Harry that with Slughorn as a 
> teacher they could take NEWT potions with an E, too.
> 
> Of course, these are purely mechanical issues, but it didn`t seem 
to 
> me that the potions NEWT group was larger than the other NEWT 
> classes, indicating an overproportional success of the students at 
> potions.
> 

It's not certain.  It's just that all ten other students already had 
their books.  So either ther other Heads of House informed their 
students earlier that Slughorn would be the new potions teacher and 
would accept students with E's or they all had O's.  The class 
didn't seem any larger than the other NEWT classes, but that doesn't 
mean there weren't more O students.  The stdents don't like Snape.  
It's entirely possible that many eligable students decided not to 
take potions before they knew Slughorn would be teaching it or grew 
to not like the subject at all because of Snape.  Or, like you said, 
some of the students could have E's.  It just seems odd to me that 
they would knowin advance that E students could take the class and 
Harry and Ron wouldn't.