Identifying with Muggles in Potterverse

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 158184

zanooda wrote:
> > And what about Harry asking the Fat Lady "Quid agis?" OK, it may
be a well-known expression, but still, do you see many teenage boys
going around using Latin unless they were exposed to it somehow?
> 
> Magpie:
> I think I assumed "Quid agis" was the password and the joke was that
she could also tell him to go inside to find out...?
> 
> -m
>
Carol responds:
I'm pretty sure that Magpie is correct here and the Fat Lady's
response to "quid agis" is another of JKR's little jokes (which Harry
didn't get). Unlike Teen!Snape, who would have had to know at least
some Latin to invent spells like Levicorpus, its counterspell
Liberacorpus, and Sectumsempra, Harry clearly doesn't know Latin or
he'd have figured out what these spells do before he used them, and
he'd never have considered using Sectumsempra on McLaggen to find out
what it did.

I think that Severus Snape (who seems able, like Hermione, to remember
everything he reads) must have taught himself Latin at an early age.
It certainly isn't part of the Hogwarts curriculum. We know the twelve
subjects in which Percy and Barty Jr. got their OWLS:

Potions
Transfiguration
Charms
Herbology
DADA
History of Magic
Care of Magical Creatures
Divination
Astronomy
Ancient Runes
Arithmancy
Muggle Studies

That's all there is, except for extras like Flying for first-years and
Apparition for sixth-years.

Carol, thinking that young Severus would have done well at
nineteenth-century Eton