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

[Ceridwen]

No: HPFGUIDX 163231

Jen: 
> I don't read Harry feeling cocky in this passage. He talks about 
being able to perform better in potions without Snape's 'taunts and 
snide remarks', something he thinks about again during OWLS and which 
appears to have at least a grain of truth given his 'E' in OWLS. Then 
he mentions feeling satisfied about 'scraping an E'--not a statement 
of overconfidence. Harry doesn't say something like, "any other 
teacher might give him an 'O' but Harry just hoped to scrape an 'E' 
with Snape." A phrase like that would place the blame for his grades 
soley on Snape instead of Harry recognizing he
plays a role as well. Instead Harry feels satisfaction that he can 
actually do well in potions when Snape is ignoring him and hopes that 
fact will translate into a better-than-normal grade (which is 
idealistic given how angry Snape is, but I don't read it as a cocky 
attitude).

Ceridwen:
I still read it as cocky.  Not that cocky is a bad thing, it's a 
normal teenage thing.  And Harry had a very good chance of turning 
out to be too timid and unsure of himself because of his treatment by 
the Dursleys to think his being a normal teenager is bad.

If I gave the impression that I thought he was cocky about his 
potential mark, I should apologize.  That isn't what I meant at all, 
though I think this is where the cocky came from.  I expect that he 
did do well, and that he would have at least scraped an E.  This 
cocky was well-earned!  It has been said in the books that Snape's 
classes do well in their O.W.L.s, that they perform above grade 
level, so it would be in line with the rest of canon that Harry did 
well.  He has taken Potions for four full years, and now nearly five 
years, so he should know a decent potion from one that will earn bad 
marks.

But, as I mentioned in another thread, there are times when we do 
well, when we think we've outdone ourselves, we've told off that 
annoying person, we've exceeded our teacher's expectations, we feel 
flushed with success...

...then we turn around and walk face first into a door.  All of our 
pride goes out the window: we feel foolish; we look foolish; the 
annoying person who has just had the best piece of our mind that we 
could give them, is now laughing at us.  This aftermath is from 
overconfidence, or cockiness.  We can do no wrong?  Ja, sure, you 
betcha.  The Gods strike us down.  We walk face-first into a door.  
Or misspell on a message board.  Or drool (okay, kidding about the 
drool, unless we've just come from the dentist).  Some sort of 
pinprick to deflate us, happens.

Harry is still young enough that he hasn't had many experiences like 
this.  Adults begin to feel cautious, to "wait for the other shoe to 
drop", to expect something to ruin the perfection of what just 
happened.  For Harry, it is possible that, flushed with his victory, 
he incautiously set the flask too close to the edge of the desk - 
maybe other flasks were in the way of putting it front and center, 
maybe he just put it down wrong.  But, this was the other shoe 
dropping, the Divine reminder that pride goeth etc., etc.  All of his 
good work, splattered on the dungeon floor.

Jen: 
> Whether Snape non-verbally pushed the vial off, physically did so 
or Harry simply didn't set the vial securely on the desk, Snape's 
remark and grade were the moment Harry had been waiting for, a 
payback he knew was coming for the Pensieve incident. It's hard to 
believe Snape would have accepted a second bottle from Harry and 
reversed his decision if Hermione hadn't cleaned up the rest of the 
potion. We'll never know but Snape doesn't have this kind of track 
record with Harry in Potions as Neri pointed out when looking at the 
incident of the first zero Harry received.

Ceridwen:
I have to agree that Snape may not have taken another sample from 
Harry.  But, we'll never know for sure.  He was certainly delighted 
at the outcome, he could have gone either way, accepted another 
sample because he was in a good mood, or not accepted it because 
Harry had his chance and blew it.  And yes, Harry was waiting for a 
pay-back from the Pensieve incident, but is it what he got?  He 
certainly thinks so, the air is cleared, at least of that 
expectation, so maybe Harry does have a form of the Other Shoe in his 
mind, only he attaches it to other people, not to Divine Intervention 
or cockiness on his own part.

I personally don't think Snape would have purposely had any 
interaction with Harry at all,  because of the Pensieve incident.  He 
ignored Harry all through the class.  He was not hanging on him more 
than usual, he was avoiding Harry, which makes me think he did not 
want anything to do with someone who saw that memory.  He was 
embarrassed and exposed.  Why purposely do something to force himself 
to interact with Harry at all?  He could mark the potion in private 
and return the mark without personal interaction.

Now, Snape is ambiguous.  Sometimes, he does things that I would 
absolutely do myself in similar situations, sometimes he acts 
differently.  Therefore, I can only speculate based on what I would 
do.  I refer to Potioncat:

Potioncat:
> It's so clear to some of us that the flask fell and just as clear 
to others that Snape broke it. To a certain extent, both sides think 
the other side is stretching things to make their view fit. I think 
both sides have very good supporting arguments. So while I have my 
opinion, I really think we simply don't know what happened.

Ceridwen, who hopes she hasn't made things muddier, and who has a 
hard time waiting for DH!