Harry, Snape and Dementors WAS: Re: CHAPTER Chamber of Secrets Chapter 18:

[dumbledore11214]

No: HPFGUIDX 189367


Pippin:
>> It is also not true to say that canon never discusses other methods.

Alla:

I remember some of your examples and forgot some, however I would not call ANY of your examples as method of fighting dementors. So we are working from different understanding of what fighting them means. Read on.

Pippin: 
> Some are not recommended: 
> 
> "Dementors are not to be fooled by tricks or disguises" says Dumbledore (POA ch 5). 
> 
> But a few desperate individuals succeed against the odds. Sirius uses his animagus form and its simpler thoughts both to protect his sanity and to escape Azkaban. 

Alla:

Okay, Dumbledore speaks so generally that it never entered my mind to call it the method of fighting Dementors. It was to me more like, going to Frobidden forest is stupid kind of thing. Sure, I agree that Sirius was RESISTING Dementors, he was protecting his sanity. In mind fighting them means driving them away, as in war fighting, enemy soliders even if they are not killed would retreat even temporarily, right? In Sirius' case Dementors were right there. Sirius was protecting himself but not fighting them IMO.


Pippin: 
> The Crouch family succeeds  with a daring substitution. "The dementors are blind. They sensed one healthy, one dying person entering Azkaban. They sensed one healthy, one dying person leaving it." -GoF ch 35. <SNIP>

Alla:

I guess  for me it counts as protecting themselves too, fighting anything in this one would be even a bigger stretch to me. IMO of course.

Pippin:
<SNIP other two canon examples>
> We see there are thoughts are so powerful that they can protect a person from dementors, even without a wand. I can certainly imagine that would appeal to Snape, who disdains foolish wand-waving. If that was the method that Snape recommended, it was unwise of Harry to disdain it, and if he got a low grade then perhaps it was deserved. Especially as he had seen it demonstrated by Bella, who seems completely unaffected by the dementors who surround her at her trial.

Alla:

Ah, but now you are characterizing it as protecting person from Dementors as well. I doubt that Harry would have disdained too, a) because as you say he uses it in DH and he knows that Sirius used it as well. But I doubt that Snape offered it because to me it is not fighting, Dementors do not go away. I mean you stay sane, sure, which is a good thing.

> Pippin:
> I don't think Harry wrote only to annoy Snape. I think he undertook a "viciously difficult" assignment with enthusiasm because he was passionate about the subject. But he knew that Snape would view any disagreement from him as cheek and he chose to do it even so. 

Alla:

So? If he was passionate about the subject and wrote about it despite knowing that Snape may get annoyed to me that means that he was standing up for what's right with intellectual honesty and passion. Let me give you a real life analogy. Before I graduated from law school I majored in history in college. If my history teacher would have told me to write an essay about how Holocaust did not exist, or any other less loaded but undoubtedly wrong facts in history, you bet I will write an essay about Holocaust and what really happened. Yeah, even knowing that my antisemitic teacher would be really really annoyed. And yes, I would consider myself taking a stand, not writing it with the purpose to annoy the teacher, or at least that purpose would be very secondary. 

Pippin:
> Note that Harry is not at all worried about what a bad grade will do to his reputation as a DADA expert, in contrast to his fears that messing up the antidote assignment will be the end of his reputation as a potions genius. So I don't think his grade mattered to him all that much, and he probably forgot it about it as soon as he'd handed the thing in. 

Alla:

If the grade did not matter to him he would not have talked about it all, IMO. But we have to agree to disagree on that.