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

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 163190


wynnleaf srote: 
><snip> 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.
<snip>
> 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.  

Carol responds:

But not all readers have that response. I *did* notice that the
characters, even Harry, are angry with Snape for the unfair point
deduction, not for supposedly dropping the vial. So I *didn't* suppose
that he dropped the vial, only that Harry accidentally dropped it and
Snape gloated as Draco laughed. And, of course, there's the additional
circumstance of Hermione's Evanescoing the potion, which Harry *is*
angry about. (Darn busybody! Would she please quit "helping" everyone!)

I think this incident is yet another piece of misdirection on JKR's
part, of the type we first see with Snape seeming to cause the pain in
Harry's scar. If Harry doesn't actually see something, we can't assume
that it happened. And even when Harry or some other character really
sees something, whether it's the Muggles "seeing" Sirius Black murder
Peter Pettigrew or the Hufflepuffs "seeing" Harry sic the snake on
Justin Finch-Fletchley or Harry "knowing" that Snape is going to
Crucio him into insanity when it's not even Snape Crucioing him, what
appears to be true isn't necessarily true. And if the senses aren't a
reliable guide, what can we say about things that occur behind Harry's
back? Did snape really throw a jar of cockroaches or did it explode as
the accidental result of Snape's anger? Who cast the Petrificus
Totalus that froze Fenrir Greyback?

Whether these events are explained or not, they illustrate JKR's knack
for making us think that things have happened that may not actually
have occurred in the story.

Carol, still sure that Harry's hand slipping when he put the vial on
Snape's desk is at least as likely, or more so, than Snape's dropping it