Bullying/Snape and Neville and a bit of Harry too

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 140857

Alla wrote:
> > 
> > Oh, personall attention in a sense of turning Neville away from
Potions forever? I think it was Amiable Dorsai who so eloquently said
that because of Snape Neville has no hope of advancing in the 
> > subject which is closely related to his best subject.
 
Pippin responded:
> Now this is a stretch, IMO. There are loads of people who love
gardening but hate to cook. I'm sure there are plenty of opportunities
for herbologists that don't involve NEWT class potion-making. 
> 
> We can't even say that Neville's lack of NEWT classes in potion
making kept him from becoming an Auror, because he wasn't able to
progress in transfiguration either.


Carol adds:
The claim that most potion ingredients are plants or plant parts can't
really be supported, either. Take, for example, the recipe for
Polyjuice Potion (copied verbatim from the Lexicon):

lacewing flies stewed 21 days,
leeches,
powdered bicorn horn,
knotgrass,
fluxweed picked at full moon,
shredded boomslang skin,
a bit of who one wants to turn into (CS10, CS11)

Two ingredients are plants (one of them picked at a specific time, as
the potion maker would need to know); the remaining four are either
animals or animal parts (counting humans as animals). I also recall,
offhand, potions requiring caterpillars and stewed slugs. I'm sure
there are many more examples.

Other potions have minerals as ingredients, for example, moonstone
combined with hellebore (a plant) in the Draught of Peace. So Potions
is clearly much more than an extension of Herbology, and a green thumb
is no help if you don't have a scientific mind. Snape has both an
appreciation of precision and, as we find out in HBP, a knack for
experimentation. Neville, it would appear, has neither, and is also
nervous, forgetful, and clumsy, which is why Snape finds him so
annoying. (As I noted before, Snape pays him no attention until he
melts Seamus's cauldron--not the way I'd want to call attention to
myself in Snape's class.)

Carol