Draco's potion making skills.

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 153141

Jennifer Choi wrote:
> 
> > based on the idea that only one or two kids get an O each year,
there would only be say one new healer and one new aurorer each year; 
> 
Eggplant responded:
> And McGonagall told Harry that it had been several years since
anyone was picked for auroer training; they only take the best of the
best.

Carol notes:
Tonks, who is no genius so far as we know, must have received an O in
Potions in order to be admitted into Snape's NEWT Potions class, and
NEWT Potions is a requirement for becoming an Auror. If Tonks can get
an O, so can the Ravenclaws in Slughorn's class, the three or four
brightest Slytherins, and hard-working Ernie Macmillan, who spent a
minimum of seven hours a night studying for his OWLs.

And the fact that the ten students other than Ron and Hermione all had
their books and supplies, with no advance notice that students with an
E could get into NEWT Potions, indicates strongly that all of them got
O's.

As for Hermione not receiving an O in DADA, she and everyone else had
lousy DADA teachers for most of the first five years. Lupin taught
them to deal with minor Dark creatures, but Hermione never did learn
to deal with a Boggart, failing that part of Lupin's end-or-year exam
and perhaps failing it in her OWL as well. That would be sufficient to
keep her from earning an O on her OWL.

Harry has the advantage, if it can be called that, of directly
confronting everything from Dementors and Death Eaters to Voldemort
himself. Hermione has only the spells she has learned and practiced
under Harry's instruction in a safe setting--nothing like the
instruction she would have received with proper DADA instruction for
five years. Even a highly intelligent student like Hermione doesn't
get O's in everything. Witness her failure at Divination. (I'll bet
that Luna gets an OWL in Divination, assuming that the exams for her
year are actually held, but Hermione's brain doesn't work that way.)

And if that's not sufficient to explain why only one person, Harry,
received a DADA OWL, I think that JKR wants to set her hero apart, to
make him better than Hermione (as she says herself) at the one subject
that's crucial to his fight against Voldemort. Maybe that's not
realistic, but it's the way JKR wants it to be.

Carol, noting that it's also unrealistic for Harry, who's taking only
eight subjects, to witness five of Umbridge's inspections (two for
COMC) when a random sampling of different years and different Houses
would be more probable, but the plot requires us to see Umbridge in
action on those occasions and the only way to do that is to have Harry
witness the inspections