Teachers WAS:Re: SPOILERS: School Books

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 184245

Pippin wrote:
> 
> JKR said she'd always had a desire to write "Fantastic Beasts", even
before she was asked to create something for Comic Relief, so I could
believe that she started saving some information for it as early as
PoA. <snip>
>  I admit, overconfidence as an explanation of Snape's blunder works
equally well for JKR. But AFAWK, Snape has no reason to make mention
of Mongolia particularly, and JKR does -- it's a funny name, like St
Mungo's. In any case, it's a bit silly to contend that JKR wouldn't
know where Kappas are actually said to live, since she went to the
trouble of researching them in the first place. 
> 
> She could have invented an explanation that would make Snape look
good, simply by using FB to establish that in her world, there *are*
Kappas in Mongolia. (BTW, the Kappa legend could have orginated in
mainland Asia. So maybe Snape was right! 
> http://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/kappa.shtml))
> 
>  But having scorched Harry for being unprepared on *his* first day
of class, and having further twitted Lupin for his lack of
organization, it was inevitable that Snape would reveal some similar
inadequacy of his own. That's JKR's style all over.

Carol responds:

So you think that she deliberately had Snape make an error in PoA,
unnoticed at the time, unnecessary to the story, and never mentioned
in the HP books proper, only so that she could have Harry and Ron
laugh at him when she wrote Fantastic Beasts a few years later? You
think that she planned it all along?

If that explanation satisfies you, I can't argue you out of it. I like
my cover-up explanation better, with Leah's "kappa-no-kawa-nagare" a
close second. My contention may be "a bit silly," but JKR has been
known to make mistakes in math, history, geography, and genetics, so
why not Asian mythological creatures, hardly her forte. And she
doesn't check the facts in her own books, by her own confession, so I
can easily imagine her "remembering" that "Kappas are more commonly
found in Mongolia" (which, to my American ears, doesn't sound much
like "St. Mungo's"), only to be corrected by a better-informed reader.
(We're talking about the woman who's not even sure that twenty-four
hours are missing in chapter 1 of SS/PS.)

It may well be JKR's "style" to have characters make mistakes similar
to those they've twitted others about. It's also her "style," as we
see with Marcus Flint, to blame the character for her [JKR's] mistake,
or to invent excuses (Harry couldn't see the Thestrals even though he
witnessed Cedric's death because the death hadn't sunk in yet) to
cover inconsistencies in her books. If Snape has trouble admitting
that he's wrong, it's a trait he shares with his creator.

Carol, who really doubts that JKR thought, "I'll have Snape make a
mistake in Lupin's DADA class in PoA and have Harry correct him in
Fantastic Beasts! Cool!"