good and bad slytherins/Disappointment and Responsibility

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 175397

Judy wrote:
> The one exception is when he threatens Trevor the Toad. I know a lot
of Snape-haters put a great deal of emphasis on the scene in PoA where
Snape feeds Neville's potion to Trevor, but I've never been very
affected by it. I guess it's partly because I have a hard time seeing
myself getting attached to a toad (although I love animals in
general), and partly because I always assumed that if Neville was so
scared of Snape, Neville wouldn't have brought Trevor to class, and so
the whole "Snape threatening to poison Trevor" thing always struck me
as a bit of a plot hole. (Montavilla47, I did love your "You keep your
toad in your room" line!) <snip>

Carol responds:
Just to add a point that I think a lot of people have missed with
regard to this incident: the potion that Snape feeds Trevor is not a
poison but a Shrinking Solution, and Snape, having seen Hermione
helping Neville to get it right and that the potion is now green
instead of orange, knows perfectly well that Trevor won't be harmed
when he feeds it to him. And he has the antidote, as usual, in his
pocket to restore Trevor to his normal form afterwards. Snape does not
even mention the word "poison" until after he has seen the potion. He
merely says, after pointing out the steps that Neville got wrong,
"Longbottom, at the end of this lesson, we will feed a few drops of
this potion to your toad and see what happens. Perhaps that will
encourage you to do it properly (PoA Am. ed. 126).

Yes, he's trying to scare Neville into following directions, both to
undo the mistakes he's pointed out regarding leech juice and rat
spleens (126) and in future lessons. No doubt he's tired of melted
cauldrons and general ineptitude. And, yes, it wasn't very nice to
resort to threateing to test the potion on Trevor, but as snape
himself says, "What do I have to do to make you understand,
Longbottom?" (126). 

Snape is using psychological coercion since point deductions and low
marks haven't worked. But there was never any danger to Trevor, and
Snape knew it.

Carol, imagining Trevor escaping from Neville and jumping into a
cauldron of bubbling potion and wondering what Neville was thinking in
bringing him to that class in the first place