The book that belongs to the HBP

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 168497

Tandra wrote:
>
> Ok so I'm reading HBP for the 3rd or 4th time and why this just hit
me I have no clue....but seriously how much older than Harry is Snape?
Why is it the school is still using the same textbook one of the
professors would of had in their day? LOL It can't be that much
different in the Wizard world than the real world. A book that is what
maybe at least 30 years old, still being used?! I just find that
odd...no one else on this? :-)

>
Carol responds:
Snape is about twenty-one and a half years older than Harry (JKR said
that he was 35 or 36 as of GoF when Harry is 14 and his birthday is
January 9 compared with July 31 for Harry). 

It seems to be the teacher, not the school, that chooses the textbooks
(note that the DADA text changes almost every year). If Snape uses a
textbook at all for his NEWT Potions students (and we usually see him
casting the directions onto the board rather than assigning potions
from a book) it's probably not the same book he used as a student,
which he knows to be out of date. (Possibly he uses his own improved
versions of those potions.)

It's Slughorn, not Snape, who's chosen to use a fifty-year-old
textbook in HBP. (Whether a better book is available, we don't know.)
Slughorn taught both Tom Riddle some fifty years before HBP (about the
time that the Libatius Borage book was published) and Severus Snape
some twenty years before HBP. Since Severus seems to have used the
same then-thirty-year-old textbook for NEWT Potions that Harry is
using, it would seem that Slughorn has used that same book since it
came out--that is, he used it till he retired and Snape took his place
as Potions master, and he can't be bothered to see whether a more
modern textbook has come out now that he's out of retirement.

If no new book has come out, maybe it's because the MoM's requirements
for the Potions NEWT haven't changed in fifty years. Or maybe a new
book has come out but Slughorn prefers to use the old one because it's
familiar and comfortable, just as he still loves candied pineapple, or
whatever that sweet is he's so fond of. As for Snape, the book he used
as a student isn't necessarily the book he uses, if any, as NEWT
Potions teacher. My guess is that he uses the same potions that are in
the Borage book, with perhaps a few additions, but casts his own
improved potions on the board (as he also seems to do in his non-NEWT
potions classes). HRH occasionally consult a book for a Potions essay,
but they don't seem to use one in Snape's class (in contrast to
Slughorn's).

Carol, hoping that post-DH Snape will get a chance to write some badly
needed improved textbooks for Hogwarts students