Discrepancy of skills

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 147790

Allie wrote:
<snip> Hermione Granger, most talented witch of her age, able to
perform well on both written and practical exams, able to master 
complicated spells in a single lesson, able to produce a Patronus in 
one D.A. session... achieves only an E on her DADA Owl???? <snip> 
It's not like the subject is difficult for Hermione - she masters
those spells in the same way as anything else.  So what gives? <snip>

Carol responds:
Unlike her Charms and Transfiguration classes, where she has had the
same competent teacher every year and plenty of practice in a logical
progression of classes from easy to increasingly difficult, Hermione
at the end of her OWL year has had only one competent DADA teacher,
Lupin, who focused on Dark Creatures, not defensive spells. Her only
training in DADA spells comes from a few intermittent lessons with
Harry, possibly six altogether. Possibly these lessons are enough to
make her competent but not confident, as she is in Charms and
Transfiguration (and Potions, for that matter, but it's not a
spell-casting class). But there's still the Boggart, which (thanks to
Lupin's misplaced kindness or oversight, I'm not sure which), she
never learned to overcome. Hence, the E. Granted, she's not given a
chance, as Harry is, to cast a corporeal Patronus, but that only gives
Harry a single bonus point when he's already achieved an O. I think
the fact that Hermione doesn't achieve an O under these circumstances
is perfectly understandable and helps to humanize her. 

Her E in DADA also helps to demonstrate that defensive spells are
somehow different from Charms and Transfiguration, which Hermione so
easily masters,  perhaps because they involve attacking a human
opponent rather than altering the characteristics (Charms) or essence
(Transfiguration) of an object or animal. It's one thing to put legs
on a teacup or make a cushion fly across a room; quite another to
stupefy an opponent, even a classmate, in ritual combat. I can easily
see Hermione excelling at the one and merely exceeding expectations in
the other, especially with the level of DADA instruction she's been
given in her first five years. Granted, she had no qualms about
petrifying Neville in SS/PS, but she wasn't in combat with him. (BTW,
I remember Crouch!Moody casting spells on the kids, but did he ever
teach them to cast them on each other? Certainly Quirrell, Lockhart,
Lupin, and Umbridge didn't, and she hadn't yet had a DADA class from
Snape.)

OoP Harry, in contrast, has had personal experience defending himself
against everything from Dementors (PoA) to Blast-Ended Skrewts (GoF),
not to mention Voldemort himself, that enables him to pass on some of
his skills to his fellow students, including Hermione, in half a dozen
or so DA sessions. But as both Harry and Snape point out, in their
different ways, DADA is not just choosing the right spell to shoot at
Voldemort. It has to be so ingrained into the subconscious mind that
the right defense is instinctive. And, paradoxically, only facing a
deadly enemy can create the skills needed to survive a confrontation
with a still deadlier one.

Carol, thinking that if Hermione could retake her DADA OWL after the
DoM battle and lessons in nonverbal DADA spells from Snape, she, too,
would get an O