DH reread CH 13-14

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 186515

Pippin wrote:
> 
> Heh. But Snape's never tried to keep an injured student from going to the hospital wing. And he likes the attention of his class focused on him, not on a puking student. OTOH, antidotes are a specialty of his ... I wouldn't put it past him to take the opportunity to  demonstrate one which just happened to have  distressing side effects.
> 
> Come to think of it, do we ever hear of the snackboxes being used for their intended purpose? The *idea*  is funny, a riff on the way some kids  get psychosomatic symptoms. My brother used to develop a fever and upset stomach sufficient to keep him home and recover precisely at 3:15 PM when school let out. But a child deliberately poisoning herself to get out of class, even if the antidote is handy? 

Carol responds:
I doubt that any student was foolish enough to attempt it with Snape. It's probably not so much what he would really do (probably send them to the hospital wing or give them an effective antidote) as what they feared he would do that deters them, just as Harry would never have dared to present a Bezoar instead of an attempt at an antidote for multiple poisons if Snape were still Potions master in HBP.

However, I do recall an epidemic of "Umbridgitis" near the end of OoP:

"Meanwhile it became clear just how many Skiving Snackboxes Fred and George had managed to sell before leaving Hogwarts, Umbridge had only to enter her classroom for the students assembled there to faint, vomit, develop dangerous fevers, or else spout blood from both nostrils. Shrieking with rage and frustration she attempted to trace the mysterious symptoms to their source, but the students told her stubbornly they were suffering from 'Umbridge-itis'" (OoP am. ed. 677-78).

Of course, these students are inflicting these symptoms on themselves and they have the antidote at hand, so it's a completely different matter from handing an unsuspecting person a dangerous candy with no antidote at hand (and, in Hermione's case, insisting that they eat it).

To return to the kids using Skiving Snackboxes to get out of Umbridge's but not Snape's, in part they're following Fred and George's example, giving the unpopular tyrant and usurper of Dumbledore's rightful position as hard a time as possible and in part they're (intentionally or otherwise) demonstrating her powerlessness and incompetence. They also, presumably, resent her totally useless classes (as we know that the DA members do).

The fact that such tactics are never used against Snape, despite his unpopularity at least among the Gryffindors, indicates several things, IMO. He's not a Ministry outsider stepping in to "interfere at Hogwarts" but a legitimate member of the staff; he would never put up with or be flustered by such nonsense and the consequences for anyone who attempted it would probably be a most unpleasant detention (rather than an antidote with side effects); and Snape, much as some students may dislike his classes, never teaches useless rubbish. (Harry doesn't resume the DA after Snape takes over DADA; he may disagree with Snape about the best way to fight Dementors, but he never implies that Snape isn't doing his job.)

Carol, who got a bit sidetracked from Pippin's point here but thought that the contrast was interesting