The Half Blood Prince (WAS Re: Unbreakable Vows)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 165623

Ronin wrote:
> Actually, looking at this a little more carefully that's a good
point about Lily not writing a spell for enemies. But, maybe if the
notes were by both of them it would also explain why Harry doesn't
recognize the handwriting. He's thinking that it's one person and the
writing keeps changing so that it's hard to tell who's it is.
Although, he does see Snape's tiny handwriting when he sees him taking
his OWLs.

Carol responds:
All of the notes in the HBP's Potions book, both spells (which we
*know* to be Snape's) and the potions hints (which, given his reaction
to Harry as "Potions natural" at Slughorn's party and what we know
throughout the books of his skill at Potions) are likely to be his,
are in the same handwriting as "This book is the property of the
Half-Blood Prince." Therefore, they are all written by the Half-Blood
Prince, whom we know to be Snape from his "I, the Half-Blood Prince"
speech at the end of the book. <snip>

As you say, teen!Severus's hand writing has already been described for
us in OoP. In that scene, the handwriting establishes that young Snape
knows a great deal about DADA--his answers are pages longer than
anyone else's--and he's trying to squeeze everything he knows onto his
parchment, just as he's trying to squeeze his notes into the margins
of his textbook. Setting aside the possibility that his handwriting
may have changed in twenty years and that Harry is not very observant
or he'd have remembered the DADA exam and noticed the similarity,
anyone who's ever been a teacher knows that the handwriting you use to
write on the board, which you're trying to make as large and legible
as possible for the benefit of the students in the back of the class,
is different from the cramped writing you have to use to squeeze 
comments into the margins of a student's essay. Snape casts the spells
onto the board so that the students can see them and follow
directions. Obviously, his magical writing will be both large and
legible. If he wrote in his usual cramped handwriting, the students
would be unable to read it. Since the chief characteristic of the
writing in the books and the exam that unobservant Harry notices is
its size, he's unlikely to notice resemblances in the shapes of the
letters (like spiky D's) or other distinguishing qualities.

There's also the plain fact that Harry hates Snape but likes the HBP,
and is even willing to set aside his father's pureblood status in the
hope that he might be the Prince. He wants the HBP to be someone he
knows and likes, or at least someone he would like if he knew him, not
his least favorite teacher. Harry understands from the personality of
the writer and the content of the notes (and I still say that the
Hogwarts boys are more interested than the girls are in hexing people
in the hallways, except for tomboy Ginny), as well as the masculine
"Prince," that the writer is a boy, but he never considers the one
Potions genius he actually knows as a possibility, even though he's
been told that that same genius knew more curses--meaning hexes and
jinxes--than most seventh years at age eleven. If Harry could put two
and two together, he would have come up with Snape, as most of us did
by the time of Slughorn's party. But emotion, not logic, is Harry's
strong point.

At any rate, the only example of Snape's adult writing that we get in
the books is "a big, spiky D" on one of Harry's pre-OWL Potions
assignments OoP Am. ed. 309)--no comments explaining the mark--so it's
actually possible that Harry isn't all that familiar with Snape's
handwriting, at least not the handwriting he uses when he's trying to
squeeze as much information as possible into a small space. It's
interesting that, when another student delivers the message about
Snape's detentions to Harry, it's an oral message, not a written one.
(JKR can't have Harry seeing a handwritten message and either making
or not making the connection. She has to save the revelation for later
and have a reason why Harry didn't see the handwriting.)

We know that JKR sets up motifs, spells, names, etc., that will be
important later, the first instance being "young Sirius Black" in
SS/PS, preparing for his appearance in PoA. She does the same thing
with Polyjuice Potion in CoS, preparing for its crucial role in GoF.
(I'm waiting for an appearance by Ragnok the goblin, mentioned in OoP,
in DH.) So let's look closely at the description of Teen!Snape's
handwriting and compare it with the HBP's.

First, Severus in the DADA exam: "His hand was flying across the
parchment; he had written at least a foot more than his closest
neighbors, and yet his handwriting was minuscule and cramped" (OoP 641).

Now, the HBP's: "Harry bent low to retrieve the book, and as he did
so, he saw something scribbled along the bottom of the back cover in
the same small, cramped handwriting as the instructions that had won
him his bottle of Felix Felicis, now safely hidden inside inside a
pair of socks in this trunk upstairs. 'This Book is the Property of
the Half-Blood Prince.'"

No one but the HBP himself, Severus Snape, would write that note. The
instructions for improving the Draught of Living Death, the potion
hints that won the Felix Felicis for Harry, are in the same
handwriting, Teen!Snape's. Conclusion: The HBP, Snape, wrote the
Potions hints as well as his own invented spells. (No one, I hope, is
claiming that Lily wrote "Sectumsempra (For Enemies)" in the margins
of the HBP's book, or that the spells are hers.)

The similarity between the "minuscule and cramped handwriting" of the
exam and the "small, cramped handwriting of the inscription is too
marked to be accidental, especially the word "cramped." No one else's
handwriting is described, only Snape's. There has to be a reason, and
the logical reason is that JKR is setting up both Snape's heretofore
barely suspected DADA expertise (we've always known he was brilliant
at Potions) and describing his handwriting to us as a clue.

Hermione's jealous contention that the writing looks like a girls' is
a red herring, clearly disproved not only by Snape's identification of
himself as the HBP but by the virtually identical descriptions of the
handwriting.

Slughorn's contention that Lily was a Potions natural makes it
probable that she and Severus were both in NEWT Potions, but to leap
from that probablility to her writing his notes or their being Potions
partners is not supported by canon. Hermione and Draco both got Es in
Potions, but we never see them working together. Nor is there such a
concept as "Potions partners" that I can see. Hermione works alone in
HBP, as do Harry, Ron, Ernie, and presumabley Draco and the others.
Severus and Lily were in different Houses. They'd already had their
"Mdublood"/"Snivellus" spat. I can't see them working together for any
reason, particularly outside of class, where the research had to be
conducted. The only reason to bring in Lily is to give Slughorn a
reason for believing that the "brilliance" is Harry's own and to give
Harry a means of acquiring the memory from Slughorn, the old Potion
Master's rose-colored view of a girl for whose death he feels
partially responsible.

To suggest that Snape is not responsible for the Potions hints is to
rob him of credit where credit is due just as Harry is doing by
allowing Slughorn to think that the improvements are his. Harry is
learning from Snape without realizing that he's learning from Snape
and identifying with Teen!Severus without realizing that he's
identifying with Teen!Severus. That's the whole poing. 

Carol, who still does not understand the compulsion on the part of so
many posters to rob Severus Snape of credit for the Potions hints when
we've known since Book 1 that he's brilliant in the subject