Bathroom scene /Free passes to characters

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 165166

Alla wrote:
><snip>

> Misses what opportunity? He is wet and on the floor, and IMO loses 
> the fight at this moment completely but for Sectumseptra. <snip>

Carol responds:
I'm confused here. If he could cast Sectumsempra, an unfamiliar
four-syllable spell, complete with wild wand movements, why would he
be unable to cast the more familiar and slightly shorter "Stupefy!"?
(For that matter, he could have cast Expelliarmus the moment Draco
pulled his wand and prevented the whole bloody mess.)

I keep stating that Harry does not claim to have used the spell in
self-defense. His only attempt at self-justification is to say
(truthfully) that he didn't know what the spell did, a point that
Snape ignores, probably because using a spell you're not familiar with
is about as good an excuse as mixing arsenic in somebody's tea and
claiming you didn't know what arsenic does, especially when that spell
is clearly labeled "for enemies." Harry himself realizes that not
knowing what a spell does is not a good excuse. He tells Hermione "I'm
not defending what I did!" IOW, Harry understands that what he did was
wrong, and self-defense was not a sufficient excuse when he had other
known, tried-and-true *defensive* spells. Yes, he regards Draco as
hisenemy, but, like Snape with Harry in SS/PS, he hates him but
doesn't want to kill him.

BTW, there's a reason that Hogwarts teaches DADA, *Defense* against
the Dark Arts rather than the Dark Arts per se. The staff and
Dumbledore want to train the students to protect themselves, not to
become Dark Wizards. An offensive spell is a weapon. A defensive spell
is a shield.

Alla:

> Of course I do think that Snape's favor was rather unintentional and
done because Snape was concerned for himself and Draco, not Harry :)
<snip>

Carol:
I think that Snape was primarily concerned with Draco, who was lying
on the floor bleeding and could have died. The thought of the UV may
have been in his mind, but I doubt that it was his chief motivation.
If he didn't care about Draco, he'd never have taken the Unbreakable
Vow, putting his own life at risk to protect Draco, in the first place.

As for Harry, if Snape is DDM, and I know that's a big it for you (but
not for me), he cares about Harry, too--not as a person but as the
Chosen One. He doesn't want Harry expelled, where he would be
vulnerable to Voldemort, or sent to Azkaban, where he'd be ineffectual
against him.

But whether Snape's favor to Harry was intentional or not, Harry is
very lucky he was there, just as he's lucky that Snape taught him
about Bezoars in the very first Potions lesson (as he remembers when
he reads HBP!Snape's note on Bezoars in his Potions book).

(BTW, I snipped your reference to Snape's age, but wasn't he
thirty-two, not thirty-five, in SS/PS? I think 35-36 is his age in
GoF, and he's the same age as Sirius Black, give or take a few months,
and Sirius was twenty-two at the time of Godric's Hollow, which would
make him twenty-one years older than Harry.)

Carol, wondering why Alla is responding to everyone's points but hers