Lying and Cheating & Potions!Genius....

[M.Clifford]

No: HPFGUIDX 165511


**Lying and Cheating**


Carol, who still doesn't approve of Harry the Hero stealing someone
else's glory, which has no connection in *Harry's* mind with the war
against Voldemort, but fearing that DD and JKR might justify it for
exactly those Slytherinish reasons

Valky:
LOL, I think we were warned about this, and if it eventually does
happen we weren't conned.
Harry would have done well in Slytherin, The Sorting Hat, I assume,
still stands by that statement. It's part of who Harry is, the Hero of
this story is no sanctimonious form of better, and in fact has certain
things in common with, the villains. Isn't that part of the larger
appeal of the series?



Magpie:
I don't think it is "drawing the line." I think it's describing what
Harry is doing. If you mean that Harry hides the book after
Sectumsempra in order to protect his reputation, I never said that
he did.


Valky:
Actually I meant hiding the book as in changing the covers so that
Slughorn wouldn't know he was keeping the old book, and then later not
correcting Slughorn when he raves about Harry's performance by
saying... "Well you see sir, The text book that you gave me is full of
interesting secrets, notes and tricks of the trade and I swapped the
covers so you wouldn't know I still had it." 

Why he hides these secrets is because he'd lose the only book that
he's ever been interested in learning from. The only thing he feels he
is really able to learn anything from beside Dumbledore, and maybe
Hermione (who he notes is so busy studying for her own NEWTs that
she's not even able to be the fount that she used to be), in this
year.  He can't understand McGonagall any more, Snape is teaching the
subject Harry usually loves the most so that's basically ruined for
him, Slughorn's Potions methods are ultimately the inferior ones,
profoundly demonstrated by the notes in the Snape's old text; It *is*
in Harry's mind that this book is his opportunity to get better at
magic in a situation otherwise not conducive to that purpose at all.  

  

Magpie:
I think he hides the book so that Snape won't take it away.
Once he hides the book he no longer uses it in class. Having the
book was never dependent on faking his reputation in Potions or
covering it up.


Valky:
No, that's true, but using the book in class isn't necessarily
dependent on Harry putting no effort into learning from it, as I
mentioned before. It does follow that he would have missed Golpalotts
law by learning from the HBP text notes instead of other texts,
because the HBP text has no notes on Golpalott. It doesn't follow that
not knowing Golpalotts law means he isn't attempting to learn and
understand what he *is* reading in the HBP text. 

To some degree, it's plausible that his reputation isn't entirely
faked, using the book, notes included, as his study text and in class,
isn't dependent on him totally faking the knowledge and ability he
arrives at through it.   
 


Magpie:
When push came to shove he chose protecting the
book over doing better than everyone else in class. Harry's never
forced to accept specific praise he himself knows is undeserved.
I have acknowledged that Harry has an intent to learn from the book.

Valky:
Well yes, he can re-replace the text book and have a second one to use
in class or ignore the notes.. which just seems to defeat the purpose
of having them. He chooses to practice the hints and study the tips
and techniques in Snape's notes. And who knows anyone of those hints
or tips could be just the thing to know when he is up against
Voldemort. I don't think it's quite right or fair to expect from Harry
actions which bear out that he has the luxury of time and an unimpeded
focus in which to progress his knowledge like an average student, that
is someone elses life, not his. 

The way I see it is that Harry is rushing things, trying to squeeze
everything he can out of a short moment between now and his ultimate
showdown with Voldemort, testing the HBP's Potions notes under the
supervision of a competent teacher is actually one of his wiser
decisions in doing that. Although he's not forced to accept the
reputation, allowing it to be makes for expedient progress, and that's
what matters to him doesn't it. It's pretty obvious he does not regard
a reputation for brilliance even nearly as highly as the people around
him do. Take Dumbledore's Army for an example; when his list of
triumphs was stated to him he blushed furiously and took pains to
point out to the group that a reputation didn't represent a better
wizard, when it came to the crunch he had scraped by on his gut
instinct and some luck. Not really aware that had given him such a
reputation for Dark Arts defense, he was simply shocked to learn that
people had assumed as much from his accomplishments. 

 

Magpie:
That says nothing about reputations false or otherwise.

Valky:
I think that's true only in the limited context we were talking about
before, and I think that context becomes unfair on Harry when it is
indulged too adherently, NEWT results are hardly the centre of his
universe. 



Magpie:
Regardless, his point here is "Shut
up Hermione, I want my book" not "Shut up, Hermione, you're just
jealous that I'm better at Potions than you are because the Prince
has taught me so well."


Valky:
But there definitely is some of the latter alternative in the dynamic
nonetheless because Harry has offered to share the text notes with
Hermione, she might actually have gotten even more out of them than
Harry could, but she refused on the grounds of her suspicions about
the book's nature.


Magpie:
Harry still knows that he's lying by ommission whenever Slughorn
says exactly what Harry is doing and what Harry is demonstrating.
And that's not some huge crime that's worse than murder. But I don't
understand why it's being denied as if it's insulting to Harry crazy
talk either. That's what I don't get.


Valky: 
Some of it *is* insulting to Harry, crazy talk. :P As I mentioned above. 

It gets ridiculous when real life scenarios of plagarism and cheating
in a context of a fairly normal and not soon-to-be-over life are
given. Or even in the context of comparing Snape's actions and
motivations when he wrote the notes (which we don't even know) to
Harry's actions and motivations in using them. Their lives could not
have been more different. Snape was most likely plotting and planning
a long life hopefully culminating in an Order of Merlin and other
Warlock Council honours. Harry is trying to get good and get it fast
in case tomorrow is the day Voldemort comes for him. Two different
lives, two different contexts. 
 







****Potions!Genius******


>
Carol responds:
What "fact" that Severus and Lily shared "a James-less environment" in
Slughorn's NEWT Potions class? Slughorn presumably took E students
then as he does now, not just "the very best" like Snape. Are you
suggesting that Head Boy James, referred to by Lupin and McGonagall
(IIRC) as the best in his year wasn't in Slughorn's NEWT Potions class
(or the Slug Club despite his obvious talents in other classes)? I'm
not sure that 's a safe assumption, and I don't know of any canon
whatever to back it up. the closest I can find is Lupin saying that
*he* wasn't good in Potions, and maybe even he scraped an E: He's just
not a Potions genius ......



Valky:
OOps I vaguely remember it being presented as canon that James didn't
take NEWT potions, but I may have been wrong about that, mi scusi.  

But even so, you've got to admit, there is a pretty huge chance that
both a and b are true as true can be. NEWT classes are high level
classes, James having been non-spectacular at Potions, and a guy who
liked to always appear in his best light, add up to a high chance he
didn't join that class.

As for Slug Club. This is as good as Canon as far as I'm concerened.
Sirius refused the Slug Club according to Slughorn, and he and James
were attached at the hip both physically and idealisitically. No
doubt, it wouldn't matter what James was good at, he wasn't a member
of the club his best friend didn't want to be in. 




Carol:
I think it's been pretty clearly established that the HBP is Snape,
not Lily, and you seem to be trying to get as far from a
straightforward reading as possible. 


Valky:
There's no doubt the HBP is Snape. But Snape wrote the potions notes
in the text, and that just means he wrote them there, no more or less
than that in and of itself. I don't think what I said was attempting
to get away from that. 

 
Carol:
And the whole point of Harry
learning more from the HBP than he has from Snape is that he's still
learning from Snape! If he's learning from Lily (assuming that he's
learning Potions at all), then he might as well have her genes for
Potion-making, as Slughorn wrongly assumes. All the irony is spoiled.


Valky:
Oh I don't know... how about that spoiling *all* the Irony. On the
contrary, it opens up far greater ironies if Lily *is* revealed as the
Potions!Genius, from the very first Potions lesson Harry ever had with
Snape all the way to the sprig of Peppermint. 



Carol:
And Snape twice teaches his students about Bezoars (in the memorable
first lesson and again when he's "forcing" the students to learn
antidotes in GoF), so the snarky joke about Bezoars from the HBP is
very much in character for him and the stage has been set for it for
five books. (I can't picture Lily grabbing Severus's book and writing
that line in the margin in his handwriting, sorry--or his copying the
line from her. The Snape we know comes up with his own sarcastic
comebacks.) That's another irony, BTW: Ron, who hates Snape almost as
much as Harry does, owes his life to him--doubly, since the HBP's
remark jogs Harry's memory of Snape's first lesson on Bezoars.



Valky:
It's funny that you call it a snarky joke, Yes, I think it's in
character for him too. But OTOH Slughorn is distinctly reminded of
Lily when Harry produces the Bezoar. It can mean Slughorn sees what he
wants to see, or that he really does remember Lily doing something
like that, if not the exact same thing. Neither of these alternatives
is confirmed truer than the other. But if the second is true, Snape
would still write 'Just shove a Bezoar down their throats' across the
antidotes in reaction to that had he been depending on Lily's cues
during class. It's perfectly possible someone else also wrote the same
thing down in their own notes after seeing Harry do it in that class. 

Something canon that backs this idea is that Harry looks for and
expects explanatory notes about Golpalotts law in Snapes margins but
cannot find any. It *appears* that the HBP didn't have difficulty
understanding the law to Harry, but not to me. The rest of the book is
evidence that Harry was holding in his hands the very place Snape
would have written notes on this assumed understanding of the law in
NEWT potions. He wrote none, not a one. 

If Snape was taking cues from Lily in class and making a note of them
in the text book, but Lily did as Harry in the Golpalotts law class,
doing apparently nothing and then producing a Bezoar at the last
minute, it would inevitably follow - There would be no notes on
Golpalotts law in Snapes book. Surprise, surprise, there are no notes
on Golpalott's law. 


> Carol, thanking Valky for correcting her typo as she really does 
> know how to spell "concede" <blush>
   

Valky who never doubted Carol. :)