How HBP could have interwoven into CoS (Was: Re: Eileen Prince)

[dungrollin]

No: HPFGUIDX 156378

JD:
It's also easy to see how the logistics of the Sectumsempra scene 
could be transposed 4 years earlier. It takes place in a bathroom 
and features Moaning Myrtle, both key parts of Book 2. In this 
alternate version of Book 2 I don't thing Draco would have been 
talking to Myrtle about his isolation (I think that is part of the 
Unbreakable Vow strand, not the Half-Blood Prince strand). He may 
have been snooping on Harry.

Dungrollin:
Indeed, I think you're absolutely right. (Lovely carefully thought-
out post, btw.) I suspect she'd have had Draco snooping around 
looking for the Chamber or the Heir, or figuring out when Myrtle 
died and talking to her about both. But I also think the HBP strand 
was *replaced* with the "Harry suspects Draco's the Heir, and 
Hermione plans the Polyjuice affair" thread. So rather than have 
Draco lead Harry to the location of the Chamber she decided to let 
him figure it out for himself, eventually.

>Dung previously (156317): But I'll bet you a box of Honeydukes Best 
that it wasn't originally going to be a potions book, I bet it was 
going to be a DADA book. Snape would have been suspicious 
immediately if Harry had started doing brilliantly in potions right 
under his nose.

JD: I don't think it could have been a DADA book because Lockhart 
was that year's teacher and assigned all his own books. Eileen 
Prince couldn't have had a 50 year old Lockhart book, could she?

Dung again:
That's something I think which could have been changed relatively 
painlessly.

JD:
In addition, Harry didn't get practical DADA lessons until third 
year. A DADA book with hand-written hints and tips helping Harry 
excel in class would have been useless when Harry spent second year 
DADA answering quizzes about Lockhart's favourite colour, writing 
poems about Lockhart's achievements and pretending to be a werewolf 
so Lockhart could re-enact his triumphs.

Dung:
To be fair, Lockhart tried to start out with the practical on the 
Cornish Pixies, but gave it up when it was a bit of a disaster. We 
mustn't forget that she may have started out with Lockhart as a 
slightly different character in the first draft; moving the HBP 
plotline may have freed up Lockhart's character so he could be a 
bit more extreme, more vain, more egoistic.

The difficulty in working this stuff out is that JKR hasn't told us 
why *she* thought the HBP plotline fitted better in HBP, and she 
undoubtedly moved it for a (or for a number of) very good 
reason(s), so everything we come up with has to be slightly wrong, 
has to not quite fit the story as we know it.

JD:
I like the irony of Harry excelling at Potions right under Snape's 
nose.

Dung again:
Snape never taught from the text book, he only ever wrote 
instructions on the board; I've lent out my copy of PS so I can't 
check to see whether he did the same there. I do remember the text 
book they had in first year was One Thousand Magical Herbs and 
Fungi, which suggests it was a book of the properties of potions 
ingredients, not that it was a book of potions recipes, which would 
make having extra tips difficult. Not impossible though, I'll grant 
you that. I think many people (after HBP) think that Snape was 
putting his own improved recipes on the board, as do I, so having 
his old potions book wouldn't have helped in his class; which is 
why I think it was a DADA book originally. It could also have been 
a Charms or Transfiguration book, but with Snape's love of DADA, I 
think that fits better, and would have been another 'clue'. It 
would make sense that he scribbled his invented hexes in his DADA 
book, rather than in his potions book, too.

Dungrollin