Broken potionvial and Harry expectations WAS: Re: Bad Writing?

[Jen Reese]

No: HPFGUIDX 163346

Pippin:
> Harry knows there's something wrong with the system, and he
> knows that fuming about Snape isn't going to change it. Frankly
> I'm not sure that he'd want to change it, since he laps up 
> teacher favoritism whenever he's "lucky" enough to get it. 

Jen: If anything I'd say favoritism of whatever flavor brings out the 
worst in Harry, not that he laps it up.  He has no problem with 
teachers like McGonagall, Flitwick or Sprout who try to treat 
students with some modicum of fairness and grade according to 
performance.  He accepts what he gets and moves forward. 

If Harry liked favor so much he'd try to change the way he operates 
with Snape and Umbridge, the two teachers who openly dislike him and 
treat him unfairly.  Likewise, he'd take more advantage of the 
situation with Slughorn by going to every Slug Club meeting to 
further his good grades and for his future prospects and suck up 
every opportunity rather than keeping Slughorn mostly at arm's length 
until Dumbledore sets him the task of the memory.  I don't think it's 
Slughorn's praise he cares about, it's the secondary gain like 
watching Hermione and Draco fume in Potions for once at 
the 'unfairness' of the situation, and winning the Felix, and finding 
he's halfway decent at Potions with the Prince's directions.  Not a 
great potion-maker, but not an 'abysmal' one, either.

None of those motives are particularly good, they just seem like the 
motives of a typical teenager reacting to adult unfairness on both 
ends of the spectrum.  


Pippin:
> You compare Snape to an anti-Semite. 


Jen:  I didn't read Alla te be saying this at all, she was talking 
about unfair grading and pointing out the cause in her particular 
situation which doesn't have anything to do with the reason why Snape 
acts unfairly toward Harry.  (Hope I'm not misinterpreting you, Alla).

> Pippin:
> Well, that's it, you want a different story, because in this story, 
> if DDM!Snape said goodbye to Hogwarts he'd be dead along with a lot
> of other people. In this story, some of the people who are putting
> their lives on the line to oppose a genocidal murderer are, 
> unfortunately, guilty of discrimination themselves on a lesser 
> scale and not at all prepared to see the error of their ways.  
> Life's not simple.

Jen:  There are two levels at work here, one is the level of Harry's 
life as the Chosen One and one is the level that Dumbledore 
desperately wanted for him to the point of carrying Harry's burdens 
for him for a number of years:  A Harry who could have some semblance 
of a normal life with friends and studies and Quidditch and all the 
things that another kid could have.  Not everything Harry learns has 
to do with the quest to oppose the genocidal murderer.  Some things 
are more mundane and ordinary and are the struggle of all kids to 
become independent adults.  

That's the level Harry is operating on when it comes to his teachers, 
and that's what Dumbledore thinks too, or he would bring these 
problems to light in terms of how Harry's views are interfering with 
his ability to defeat Voldemort.