Broken potionvial WAS: Re: Bad Writing? (was: JKR and the boys)

[wynnleaf]

No: HPFGUIDX 163184


> > Potion"TheWall"Cat
> The real debate ought to be, why do we read this passage so 
> differently? The actual truth is, JKR gives no hint at all that 
> anyone broke the flask. She has the flask break out of sight. She 
> shows Draco and Snape gleeful about the broken sample and Hermione 
> apologetic about the evanescoed potion. So, for some reason, she 
> chose not to show the reality. Does she have a reason for the 
> ambiguity? Did she even expect anyone would question what happened?

wynnleaf
JKR's intent is, to me, the most interesting part.  Your comment "did
she even expect anyone would question what happened?" is even there a
question -- because your question implies that she would expect most
people to *assume* that they "got" what happened.  Was she
intentionally ambiguous?  If so, for what reasons?  Some people would
read it as the vial falling accidently, others that Snape dropped it.
   Did she desire her readers to have different views of what really
happened?  Or did she simply leave out the clarifying parts by mistake?  

I had completely missed the fact that no one speaks of the vial
breaking as though Snape did it.  Surely if JKR had intended her
characters to think Snape did it, she'd have had some sort of
responses from them about how mean Snape was to drop it.  

But if she wrote this ambiguity on purpose, while Snape actually never
dropped it and the characters don't think he dropped it, then she must
have been attempting to mislead readers into thinking Snape is even
more mean than her characters think.  

I'm now inclined to think she simply left out the clarifying parts by
mistake.

> 
> And, really, isn't blaming Snape for breaking the flask a little bit 
> like Snape blaming Harry for stealing ingredients from his private 
> potions locker? (GoF)

I get your point here and in general agree, although not with your
specific example.  Snape, after all, *knew* that Harry had stolen
potions ingredients in the past, and he also saw Harry use the gilly
weed in the second task.  So his conclusion that Harry stole
ingredients is quite rational.

When I first read about the vial breaking, I assumed Snape dropped it.
 But really, I didn't have nearly as much "evidence" to go on as Snape
did in thinking Harry stole ingredients.  I had not previously read
about Snape destroying a student's correctly done work out of spite,
and then allowing the zero marks to reflect on their grade.  

I think it was primarily in the writing of the sequence of events. 
The reader assumes if the vial fell by accident, the narration would
say so.  Snape's "whoops" seems to connect him to the event and
without any other connection to a cause for the falling vial, the
reader can't help but think Snape was the cause.  

wynnleaf