Observation on potions; and: is this a mystery?

[Bart Lidofsky]

No: HPFGUIDX 168433

Combining topics to keep my own posts down, as both are short:

In culinary circles, there's a saying: bakers make good chefs, but chefs don't make good bakers. This is not a truism, but based on the fact that bakers have to deal with much smaller margins of error than chefs do. A chef can experiment, add a bit of this and a bit of that, make allowances for temperature and time, but if a baker strays too far from the recipe, it's not just a less than perfect result; it's often a disaster. I see potions as like baking. Minor variations can be made, which may even improve the product, but if you don't know precisely why you are not following the instructions, the result can be a disaster. There's an old carpenter's saying: Measure twice, cut once. This appears to be at least doubly true in potions. 

Now for the unrelated possible mystery: Is anybody else here puzzled by, when Harry repeats Hermione's observations on Umbridge to Minny the Cat, Minny replies (I don't have the exact quote, but this is pretty close): "At least you've been listening to Miss Granger." 

How does Minny know that this came from Hermoine? Maybe Herminny is closer than we think to our Minny? 

Bart