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

[Jen Reese]

No: HPFGUIDX 163238

Ceridwen:
> 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.  

Jen: Hee, whatever do you mean, that's *never* happened to me. ;)  I 
understand what you're saying and think the word 'cocky' has a 
negative connotation to me, meaning something along the lines of an 
overconfident jerk.  I looked up the word in my handy-dandy on-line 
dictionary bookmarked just for deciphering and writing posts on this 
list and Merriam says: "boldly or brashly self-confident." 

Harry after he drank Felix would be an example of Harry acting cocky 
in my book.  The twins tend toward cocky and Draco comes across that 
way, imo.   But I won't argue word perception anymore:  This list 
always reminds me that word perception and overall story perception 
vary so much based on everything from personal experience to cultural 
and geographical references that it's almost as fascinating to read 
*how* a person reaches a conclusion as reading the conclusion 
itself.  

> 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.

Jen:  Hmmm, I might be agreeing with you more than I thought 
initially.  Harry does tend to expect retribution from Snape and with 
good reason from my perspective.  But this might be an instance where 
Snape was *not* planning to exact revenge in part because he expects 
Harry will be like James and spread his embarassment all over 
Hogwarts so Snape isn't drawing undue attention to himself.  If true, 
Harry saw payback whether it really happened or not in this 
particular instance because that's what he's grown to expect.

Ceridwen:
> 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.

Jen: Counter to what I said above, *if* Snape was ignoring Harry 
because he's embarassed or unsure what Harry would do and the broken 
vial was Harry's fault, why can't he keep his big mouth shut for once 
and not act so snide?  Why does the guy have to talk so much?  I'm 
with Alla on this one.  Seriously, is it because we can't hear his 
thoughts that we have to hear so much dialogue from him and much of 
it repetitive?  

Ceridwen:
> 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.  

Jen: Amen to that, sister!  I guess it's the problem of hidden 
motivation and backstory but the guy mystifies me.  Even when I make 
every effort to consider him from the angle of 'what did he do in the 
past and how does that relate to what he appears to be doing now?' I  
*still* find his characterization somewhat inconsistent from Book 1-
Book 6.  That's why it's difficult for me to believe any motivation 
or backstory will answer every question--I'm still expecting outlier 
situations that won't fit no matter how hard they are squeezed.

> 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.

Jen: The vial was pushed! Other than that I agree with everything 
Potioncat says. Hehe.

Jen, finding this thread enormously fun to read.