Dementors

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 146881

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "agdisney" <agdisney at m...> wrote:
>
> Andie:
> I was wondering if JKR ever mentioned how Snape would deal with 
> dementors.  In POA Harry drives the dementors away before Snape
> arrives & takes him & Sirius to the castle.
> In HBP Harry is working on an essay for Snape on the best way to
> tackle dementors but he knows that he will receive a low mark
> because he didn't agree with Snape's way of doing it. pg 448 US.
> 
> Is there a difference in how a Dark wizard communicates with dementors?
>
Carol responds:
Like everything else we learn about Snape in HBP, this tidbit is
ambiguous. It may lead readers predisposed to see Snape as a Dark
wizard to see it as additional evidence that he's a Voldie supporter
(or, at best, OFH!), but as I'm predisposed in the opposite direction,
I see it differently.

First, we know that the ability to cast a corporeal Patronus is rare,
especially among school-age witches and wizards. It's one thing to
cast a Patronus in the ROM among friends and quite another to do it
against a Dementor who's in the process of sucking out your happiness
and filling you with coldness and despair in preparation for the
"Kiss" that will suck out your soul. Even Harry couldn't do it in PoA
when he was on the ground with Sirius Black. He could only do it from
a safe distance after he had time-traveled (and had already seen
himself casting a corporeal Patronus). And he, unlike the other
students, had practiced using a Boggart that just happened to turn
into a Dementor, a convenient educational aid that the others didn't
have access to. Granted, he cast a Patronus (with great effort) on
Privet Drive, but only because he already knew he could do it. It's
most unlikely that Hermione or Ron or Neville could cast a Patronus if
they were alone and confronted by a Dementor or two. And the other
DADA students, those who had not been in the DA, would not know how to
cast one at all. The whole process of casting a Patronus Charm, which
requires first thinking of and focusing on a happy thought when the
Dementors are after just that--your happiness--makes it
extraordinarily difficult to cast properly just at the moment it's
most desperately needed.

Snape, whom we discover in HBP really does know a lot about DADA,
including the healing incantation that saved Draco from the Sectum
Sempra Curse (is the countercurse his own invention like the curse
itself?), may well know another means for dealing with Dementors. (I'm
quite sure that he's safe from them because he uses Occlumency to
block his emotions.  Maybe Occlumency is the other means that he
suggested.

At any rate, given the complications and difficulties involved with
casting a Patronus against Dementors, learning another means of
protection would seem advisable. And if anyone would know such a
means, it would be Snape.

Harry dismisses Snape's anti-Dementor lesson because he knows how well
the Patronus works for *him* and because he hates and distrusts Snape.
But it may be that, like the bezoar Snape mentioned in Harry's very
first Potions lesson, this alternate method (which Hermione will
certainly remember) will come in handy in Book 7, most likely for Ron
or Hermione. In fact, I'm quite sure that it will, or JKR would not
have dropped it into the text of HBP.

Carol, too aware of JKR's capacity for misdirection to take Snape's
"darkness" for granted in HBP or elsewhere