DD and Snape /Re: Regressed Harry

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 163189

Alla wrote:
<snip>
> 
> Oh, and  somebody else could have been there, really. I mean, 
> another potion master or Dark Arts teacher? I don't think I need to 
> bring up every time that I understand story based reasons for Snape 
> being there, but  if DD hired somebody else, why not?

Carol responds:
I'm not quite sure what you mean here, so forgive me if I'm
misinterpreting your words. It's possible that another Potions master,
Slughorn, at least, could have whipped up Veritaserum, Mandrake
Restorative Potion, and even the tricky Wolfsbane Potion on demand,
but what other DADA teacher could have stopped the Dark curse that
destroyed DD's hand or prevented the curse on the opal necklace from
killing Katie or saved Draco from Sectumsempra? Even Ron owes his life
indirectly to Snape because of that first lesson on Bezoars (which the
HBP's Potions book brought back to Harry's mind). And, of course, DD
needs Snape around for other reasons, ranging from watching over Harry
when he wanders the corridors at night to spying on the Death Eaters.
No one else can do what Snape does. No one else has his background or
his particular talents. You don't fire someone who is such an asset,
even if talented DADA teachers (and perhaps Potions masters) weren't
such a rare commodity. Try taking Snape out of the story and see where
Harry and his friends would be. Well, Hermione wouldn't be, but Harry,
Ron, Katie, and possibly Dumbledore would. (Draco wouldn't have needed
to be saved because Harry wouldn't have been there to use
Sectumsempra, and DD wouldn't have known that Draco was planning to
kill him because Snape wouldn't have been there to tell him.)

> Alla:
> 
> Huh? Huh?  So, when eleven year old comes to class and thinks he 
> comes to learn potions what he really comes to learn is how to deal 
> with bastard?
> 
>Carol responds:
Harry and the others are also learning Potions, as their OWL scores
testify. And thank goodness Snape taught Harry about Bezoars!

> Alla:
> 
> LOLOLOL. Okay, that is your privilege to think that.   Why would her 
> editor even bring that to her attention? Even if he did, in her 
> worlds werewolves are not quite what they are in folklore, no?
> Somebody told me that these Horned creatures do not even exist in 
> the UK( cannot guarantee the accuracy, but this guy is pretty much 
> Hermione type, should convince you ;)), so  why should it be obvious?
> 
> Personally, I saved Neri's post in my all time favorite posts and am 
> just going to refer people to it it every time this question comes 
> up. To me it is absolutely clear that JKR decided to make them toads
> and for crystal clear reason as well.
> 
> I don't think it is ambigious for her. I mean "toads" and "toads". 
> That was the first thing that came to the mind of almost all of my 
> colleagues. Thanks for the morning laugh, Pippin.
> 
Carol:
 I live in a state where horned toads are native and common, so I
simply read the "horned toads" thing as an error on JKR's part,
especially after reading "frog guts." Not only does she not know that
a horned toad is a lizard, she doesn't know a toad from a frog! I
thought perhaps there was some folklore explanation, some creature in,
say, Greek mythology that was called a horned toad, just as the
mythical salamanders in JKR's books are fire-loving reptiles instead
of water-loving amphibians. I couldn't find any such beast; the only
horned-toad-related myths are those of Southwestern American Indian
tribes such as the Navajo or Hopi, and I doubt that JKR is familiar
with their mythology (though I could be wrong). At any rate, toads
(and presumably frogs) are common potion ingredients, and Snape's
detentions usually involve unpleasant potions-related work that he
would have to do himself if he didn't get a student to do it. Oddly
enough, even in HBP, he has Potions-related detentions, having Harry
sort rotten Flobberworms from good ones. (Maybe he's still brewing
potions for DD even as DADA teacher?) Everybody has to do unpleasant
things in life (Carol grits her teeth thinking about balancing her
checkbook after all the Christmas expenses and doing income tax in a
month or two). It's a basic life lesson. And detentions are *supposed*
to be unpleasant for their deterrent effect. We don't see any trauma
on Neville's part after that particular detention. The trauma in his
life comes from long before, courtesy of the Lestranges and Barty
Crouch Jr. (the latter of whom traumatizes him again by Crucioing the
spider in front of him).


  
> > Alla: 
> > > And that was repeated many times, but having the teacher as your 
> > > boggart seems rather strong personification of the child's 
> distress.
> > 
> > Pippin:
> > I ask again, why is this significant when Hermione's boggart is
> > also a teacher? 
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Huh? Because Hermione was afraid of failing? 
> 
Carol:
Nevertheless, McGonagall is the personification of Hermione's Boggart.
But consider how ridiculous Hermione's Boggart is. How likely is she
to fail all her classes, or even a single class? The other Boggarts of
the third-years in PoA, mummies and eyeballs and the like, are basic
childhood fears, "bogeys" in the sense of specters or phantoms--the
monster in the closet or under the bed. Fear of a teacher, any
teacher, is also a childhood fear. Neville gets past his fear of Snape
by making him look ridiculous. He now needs to deal with real dangers
like Bellatrix Lestrange, not imaginary ones like sarcastic,
point-deducting teachers. (Even Harry's fear of Dementors, which
really are dangerous, is temporary. He now knows how to deal with
them. I don't know what his Boggart is now, but if it's still a
Dementor, it's only because he's still afraid of fear itself. It
certainly isn't Snape. Perhaps it really is Voldemort, as Lupin
supposed back in PoA. I would be very surprised if most people's
Boggarts didn't change as they matured. Imagine seventeen-year-old
Dean still afraid of an eyeball.)


> Alla:
> 
> And narrator through Harry also tells us that Snape had a gift for 
> keeping class quiet, does not sound to me that he had any reason to 
> dislike Snape. When I was in school if I thought about teacher that 
> way, that everybody listened to him, I usually thought that teacher 
> was cool and subject was interesting, unless of course teacher would 
> have done something horrible to me later on. ( Did not happen :))

Carol:
It's not a matter of the narrator liking or disliking Snape. He or she
is reflecting Harry's perspective. And the first thing Harry notices
is Snape's gift for keeping the class quiet--before Harry has reason
to dislike Snape beyond Percy's remark that Snape favors the
Slytherins (about whom he's already formed unfavorable impressions
relating to Draco and certain remarks by Hagrid) and his own mistaken
impression that Snape made his scar hurt. Perhaps we would benefit
from looking at such straightforward statements about Snape, the ones
that seem least biased by Harry's pov. (The narrator, unlike, say, the
narrator of a Jane Austen book, has no opinions of his or her own. Any
opinions or interpretations in the narrative portions of the HP books
are those of the pov character or characters, as in the early portions
of "The Riddle House" in Gof, where the narrator is reporting from the
pov of the Little Hangletonians.)

So we're seeing Snape as a new teacher from Harry's (slightly
prejudiced) pov, just as we first see McGonagall and others. (Bear in
mind that Harry thinks McG is going to beat him and that Wood is some
sort of stick used for that purpose.) It's difficult, with Snape set
up as the pseudo-villain of SS/PS, to let go of impressions of him
established by that book, especially if the reader has had a mean or
sarcastic teacher whose personality is projected onto Snape. But I do
think we can look past Harry's pov to things that he notices but
doesn't interpret--or things he doesn't see but thinks happened (like
Snape supposedly deliberately opening his mind to Voldemort or Snape
being responsible For Sirius's going to the MoM and therefore for his
death).

Of course, Snape really is unpleasant, at least to Harry (he's
pleasant enough to McGonagall when she returns from St. Mungo's), but
we need to look beyond that, to things like his showing his Dark Mark
to Fudge or gripping the chairback in CoS when he hears about Ginny
being taken into the chamber or sending the Order to the MoM to save
Harry and friends. We simply cannot trust Harry's pov, and therefore
the narrator's statements unless they're recording a straightforward,
uninterpreted action, regarding Snape. (There are other instances of
the unreliable narrator as well, of course. Consider the initial
descriptions of Thestrals as "horrible horses.")

Carol, who thinks that Snape's value to Dumbledore far outweighs any
momentary hurt feelings or injured pride that students may experience
in Snape's classes (and they need to get over such sensitivity,
anyway, if they're going to survive in the grown-up world, whether WW
or Muggle)