Different values of Snape/ Re: House elves

[Aleta]

No: HPFGUIDX 181051

Carol:

> Fully intends to kill the toad? Happy to kill it out of spite? Can you
> cite canon, please?

Aleta: Perhaps I should have made clearer that I was stating my
interpretation of the events in the book.

Carol:
> He only says that he'll feed the shrinking Solution to the toad to
> test it at the end of the class. Only after he has seen Hermione
> helping Neville and is perfectly aware that the potion is green (as it
> should be) and not orange does he suggest that "If he has managed to
> produce a Shrinking solution, it will shrink to a tadpole. If, as I
> don't doubt, he has done it wrong, his toad is likely to be poisoned"
> (PoA Am. ed, 128).

Aleta: Actually, he (as you state later) threatens Neville with
feeding the potion to the toad earlier in the class period, when the
potion is in fact the wrong color.

Carol:
> It seems to me obvious that Snape would have made no such remark had
> he not known that the potion was made correctly. Nor do I think that
> the potion, even if made correctly, would have killed Trevor. Can you
> imagine the reaction of all the Gryffindor students, complaining to
> their parents and Dumbledore?

Aleta: I think you meant to say "even if made incorrectly". :) Perhaps
not. None of us knows for certain.

Carol:
<SNIP>
Instead of having the desired effect (Neville repairing his
> own potion), this threat results in Neville desperately getting help
> from Hermione (for which Snape, having told her not to help him,
> understandably deducts points).

Aleta: He doesn't actually tell her not to help Neville.  What he says
is "I don't remember asking you to show off, Miss Granger" (page 126,
PoA, Amer. ed.).  This could of course be interpreted to mean that he
doesn't want her to help Neville, but what she does is coach Neville
with instructions; she does not do it for him.

Carol:
> But just as Snape has an antidote to the Shrinking Solution in the
> pocket of his robes (128), as he always had an antidote to the potion
> of the day (as we see from the very first Potions lesson), he also has
> access to bezoars and antidotes of all sorts in his "stores." So in
> the unlikely event that the toad had been poisoned (which Snape never
> actually said would happen, only that it's "likely" when he knows full
> well that it isn't), he would have been able to cure it as easily as
> he restored it to its normal self after trickling a few drops of the
> Shrinking Solution down its throat.

Aleta: That's a good point.

Carol:
> May I ask what you think would have been accomplished by Snape's
> actually poisoning the toad? Surely, that would not have accomplished
> his stated goal of getting Neville to understand the subject and
> follow directions.

Aleta: I don't. I think Snape was being nasty, as usual, to a
Gryffindor student having trouble.  Crabbe and Goyle are reportedly
very stupid, and yet we never hear of Snapes's threatening (with or
without legitimacy to the threatened actions) them or other students
of Slytherin.

-Aleta