Bathroom Scene - A Different Perspective.

[eggplant107]

No: HPFGUIDX 165182

 "justcarol67" <justcarol67 at ...> wrote:

> canon says that the detentions are for
> being a liar and a cheat, as I just demonstrated. 

WHAT?! You have demonstrated no such thing. Sure, Snape suspected
Harry was lying, but he could prove nothing.

> Harry *couldn't* make better potions than the textbook. 

If he couldn't make better potions it is beyond dispute that he found
better ways to make those potions.  Absolutely beyond dispute.

> Harry's getting credit for someone else's work just
> as much as he would be if he wrote an essay 

That is quite simply baloney. There is not a single chemistry
professor on planet Earth that would not praise a student to high
heaven who had found (and I don't care how he had found it) a way to
perform an experiment that was superior to the way the textbook
described. I can't emphasize that enough, HE WOULD BE PRAISED!  
 
> Draco's tears do much the same thing for him
> as Narcissa's did for her in a later scene. 

Draco's tears might have made me feel more sympathetic toward him if a
fraction of a second later he hadn't tried to torture Harry. As for
Harry dehumanizing the Death Eaters, well yes there is some truth to
that, but if you are in a war you will kill people, and to keep your
sanity dehumanizing is something you must do. In every war good people
do horrible things.  

>  He's expecting pain, excruciating pain, which he knows will be
> short-term as it was with Voldemort (this is Draco Malfoy,
> after all) but nevertheless does not want to feel again. He's
> not expecting to end up in the closed ward with the Longbottoms. 

I don't understand your point. Is Harry supposed to think in the 20'th
of a second he had to think about it that "Maybe this spell won't
drive me insane, maybe it will just cause pain so enormous I will want
to die, so when I try to defend myself I should take every precaution
I can think of to make sure that my torturer is not harmed in any
way". That's just nuts.

 Eggplant