Snape's potions book (was Re: Who needs Harry?)

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 182383

The List Elves will have their little joke, but we'll post on Snape,
anyway, won't we, Potioncat?

Potioncat wrote:

> But it crosses my mind, what would have been discovered in Professor
Snape's office and quarters after his death? Surely he had notes?

Carol responds:

I think he kept all his potions improvements in his head (which is why
he didn't need that old book and could cast the Potions instructions
on the board with a flick of his wand), and all that an investigator
would find is some old lesson plans for Potions, written when he was
twenty-two, and for his year as DADA instructor (I think he would also
keep those in his head after the first year), some essays that he
never finished marking (his year as DADA teacher ended rather abruptly
and unexpectedly), and maybe a few scribbled notes for new spells if
he was still inventing them as an adult. They might find some old
Daily Prophets with certain articles circled, as well. <g>

OTOH, judging by his old Potions book, he was not averse to writing in
his books, and his marginalia would be very interesting. Maybe they
could find his marked-up copy of "Magical Drafts and Potions" by
Arsenius Jigger, the seldom-consulted Potions book assigned in Harry's
first year (and presumably used until NEWT year since Snape never
assigns another one). Snape's versions of the potions in that book
were probably better than Jigger's, or he'd have had the students work
straight from the book, as Slughorn did with the NEWT text, "Advanced
Potion Making" by Libatius Borage (the fifty-year-old textbook that
he'd used since Eileen Prince's time, and which the teenage HBP so
dramatically improved).

Anyway, it's a sad loss. Too bad that Snape himself never retrieved
the book. Or maybe he did--Harry doesn't open the cupboard to see if
the HBP's book still there when he finds the diadem. He only looks at
the statue of the warlock wearing the dusty wig with the diadem/tiara
on top. After all, the book was Snape's, and he doesn't yet know that
Snape is a good guy, not to mention that he's dealing with Crabbe at
the moment and concerned with retrieving the Horcrux. He could have
opened the ROR searching for his book and looked right at the diadem
without knowing what it was, just as Harry walked right past the
Vanishing Cabinet that Draco was working on the year before.

Carol, wishing that Yahoo!mort hadn't chosen to act up on this April
Fool's Day