Harry and Potions (Was: Bathroom Scene - A Different Perspective)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 165208

Quick_Silver wrote:
> Actually this touches on something that I've been wondering about
for a while...how good is Harry at potions?
>
> See most people seem to be coming down on the side of Harry stealing
everything from Snape's book and taking credit for it (which is
totally true IMO) but I'm not convinced that that is the whole story.
The whole point of the HBP potion's book is to highlight the
connection between Snape and Harry...indeed both HBP and OotP contain
hints of the similarities between the two. The writings in the HBP
book contain potions improvements and spells that seem to DADA in
nature. Now we're told by Hermione in HBP that Harry and Snape sound
mighty similar when the talk about DADA. Since the other pillar of the
Half-Blood Prince seems to be potions, at least in my opinion, for the
Harry/Snape duality to continue it seems reasonable to assume that
Harry actually does have some natural talent in potions.
>
> Even after Harry hides the HBP book and is unable to use it in class
Harry states that his work "suffers accordingly"...if JK wanted Harry
to be a total fraud at potions why not say that he dropped to the
bottom of class (which is where he was at when he entered it)?

Carol responds:
Thanks for taking this thread in a new direction. I'll just say that
Harry was never *bad* in Potions: he managed to earn an E on the OWL
despite being frequently sidetracked and often skipping steps because
he's not paying attention in Snape's Potions classes. I don't think
that Harry could ever have been a Potions genius like
Teen!Severus--he's not inherently logical or scientifically minded or
patient enough to spend hours in a Potions lab after hours finding out
what happens when you add a peppermint leaf to a particular
potion--but he could probably have earned an O if he'd paid attention
in Snape's classes and followed directions carefully--as Ernie
Macmillan and the various Ravenclaws and Slytherins did. But he hated
Snape and was always distracted in his Potions classes, and his
failures no doubt caused him to lose whatever natural interest he
might have had in the subject, whereas his unexpected--and
unearned--success in Slughorn's class suddenly stimulates his interest.

I'm not sure that he actually learned anything about Potions from the
HBP (in contrast to learning some useful or amusing spells and one
dangerous curse)--certainly, he still doesn't understand the theory
behind Potions and isn't likely to start inventing potions
improvements of his own--but he certainly gained an appreciation for
Bezoars and possibly a respect for the subject itself that he never
had before. I don't think, however, that the new interest will last
now that he knows who the Half-Blood Prince is, nor do I think he'll
ever appreciate the delicious irony that he was learning more in both
Potions and DADA from the Half-Blood Prince (Snape) than he ever did
from Snape! What's important, IMO, is his appreciation during HBP of
the Prince's genius, his feeling that this unknown boy was his friend
and helper (while, at the same time, he was taking credit for his
"friend's" efforts!). Like the Pensieve memory, the HBP's Potions book
took him a step closer to understanding and empathizing with the
teenage Snape, with whom, as you say, he has much in common, only to
be undermined by unanticipated events--Sirius Black's death, for which
Harry wrongly blamed Snape, and the eavesdropping and murder of
Dumbledore, for which he has much more reason to blame Snape but about
which he has yet to learn the full truth, as do we.

To return to Harry and Potions, at the end of the year, without
the HBP, he's exactly where he would have been all year long if he'd
been following Libatius Borage's instructions rather than
Teen!Severus's: behind most of the rest of the class, the O students
and Hermione in particular, but perhaps ahead of Ron, his lone fellow
E student. As you say, when Harry no longer has the Prince's
instructions to follow, his performance "suffer[s] accordingly, but it
can't be too abysmal or Slughorn wouldn't blame it on being lovesick
(HBP Am. ed. 537). Harry is sure that Snape is still determined to
confiscate his book, so he keeps it hidden, but interestingly, Snape
has not told Slughorn where Harry's "brilliance" comes from, so Sluggy
still thinks that Harry is a Potions genius. Maybe the truth will out
in DH?)

Another small point: Teen!Severus's spells, with the exception of
Muffliato, which appears to be a charm, and the Dark curse
Sectumsempra, are not so much DADA spells (Harry's speciality) as
hexes (toenail hex, for example). Levicorpus I would also call a charm
since it alters the properties of an object without Transfiguring
(changing the nature of) the object. Ironically (sorry to overuse the
word, but irony is everywhere in HBP), learning Teen!Severus's spells
makes him start behaving like James, hexing everyone in sight, trying
out Levicorpus on Ron (inadvertently, to be sure), using Langlock, the
tongue-locking hex, on the helpless Filch, and considering testing
Sectumsempra on McLaggen.

I do think, however, that there's a connection between an affinity for
the Dark Arts and an affinity for its opposite, Defense Against the
Dark Arts. Snape, clearly, is skilled at both, the only expert we know
of outside St. Mungo's at healing really Dark curses and as good at
deflecting curses as at casting them (both nonverbally). So, yes,
there's a connection here: Harry's favorite subject (at least in
previous years), the one he taught other students in the DA, is also
Snape's favorite class, as we see from his detailed DADA OWL and his
(apparent) annual applications to teach DADA. Snape clearly loves
Potions as well as DADA and is equally gifted in it, but it's a
more elite, poetic passion, IMO, shared only by a gifted few students.
(Imagine a Draco not sidetracked by a mission for the Dark Lord in a
NEWT Potions class taught by a Snape not sidetracked by Harry's and
Ron's inattentiveness. Heaven for both of them? But Voldemort ruined
that pleasant prospect, and Snape is teaching DADA, for which DE!Draco
has nothing but contempt.) Snape is more than willing to take anyone
who has scraped an OWL into his DADA class, and is even evidently
giving Crabbe and Goyle remedial lessons in it, something he would
never do for Potions. One is a self-defense class, necessary for all
students at a time when the WW is threatened by Voldemort; the other
is an intellectual passion to be shared with fellow enthusiasts and in
which dunderheads are not to be tolerated.

Anyway, potions played a larger than usual role in HBP (Snape's book,
in many ways) and as Magpie, IIRC, has pointed out, the Slytherin
book, associated with water and liquids of all varieties, from
poisoned mead and the glowing green potion in the cave (a poisoned
memory, IMO) to Felix Felicis. I'm not sure whether potions have
played their part and will be largely forgotten in Book 7, or whether
Harry's new interest in Potions/potions will somehow be sustained in
spite of Snape's being the HBP and in spite of Harry's being
(probably) no longer at Hogwarts. The Draught of Living Death may well
play a role that has been foreshadowed in HBP but has not yet
materialized, but I don't think we're going to see any sign of Harry
the (supposed) Potions natural in DH.

Carol, wondering what might motivate Harry to retrieve the HBP's
Potions book now that he knows whose it is, along with the
Invisibility Cloak that he left on the Astronomy Tower