Chapdisc Cos 12

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 189073

Catlady wrote:
> Presumably she would have sought Minerva's help if she couldn't fix the problem on  her own.

Carol responds:
Didn't we read in OoP that Healers need the same set of NEWTs as Aurors, including all five core subjects (Potions, Herbology, Transfiguration, Charms, and DADA)? Although Madam P. seems to rely on the teachers of those subjects to some degree (Professor Sprout grows the mandrakes and Snape prepares the potion, for example), she would have to be highly competent in those subjects herself to (for example) know which potions she needed or to cause teeth to shrink or antlers to disappear (no questions asked most of the time). The only times she's not competent to deal with the patient herself involve Dark magic (in which case, she requires the services of Professor Snape).
> 
> Carol wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/189063>:
> 
> << (Of course, Harry's reluctance to confide in anyone, sometimes even including Ron and Hermione, is a personality trait that works nicely as a motif or plot device--if only Harry had confided such and such, matters would have turned out differently (but then again, the plot would have been ruined). >>
> 
> In this case, Dumbledore got all the information by Legilimency, so it doesn't make any difference that Harry didn't confide in him. I imagine he also got all the information he needed from Riddle's mind, altho' perhaps Riddle was already a great Occlumens and blocked him.

Carol responds:
I'm not so sure that DD used Occlumency on Harry though he often gives Harry the sense that he's being X-rayed and certainly subjects both Harry and Tom Riddle to a searching glance (which could as easily be a means of detecting through facial expressions and other signs whether a student is lying). Harry doesn't feel the thing he's thinking about rising up before DD's eyes as he does when Snape forces him to think of the Potions book, nor is his mind invaded as poor Gregorovitch's is by Voldemort in DH (and Snape's probably is when he uses his sophisticated and undetectable Occlumency against the invasion). I don't think that either Legilimency or Occlumency is involved in the incident with younger DD and Teen!Riddle, either. All that's necessary is mutual understanding. DD knows what Tom is capable of, knows that he's behind all the other mysterious happenings at the school, and Tom knows that DD suspects him. Diary!Riddle says as much to Harry. What's important, IMO, is the secrecy motif--Harry has the chance to confide in DD and doesn't. The same thing happens with Lupin in PoA--both Harry and Lupin are concealing information from each other (and DD). How much simpler it would all be if everyone knew who could be trusted and told the full truth--to those people only, of course.

I snipped the part on WPP accidentally slipping up when they were becoming Animagi and going to Madam Pomfrey, but I suppose you're right. She'd probably assume that they were attempting magic that was too advanced for them and accidentally gave "poor little Peter Pettigrew" a rat's paws. Of she'd treat the incident as she did the spells that gave Quidditch rivals antlers in (I think) OoP--or Hermione's cat transformation in CoS. And yet, I can't imagine James or Sirius going to her for help. They'd be too arrogant on the one hand and too afraid of being caught on the other. 

At any rate, I suspect that Madam Pomfrey wouldn't ask questions unless she was faced with magic she couldn't undo (such as Hermione's hex on Marietta of Dark magic), but I also suspect that the Marauders knew that they'd gone well beyond breaking school rules in becoming Animagi and probably would not have sought her help.

Carol, deciding that it won't do to think too deeply about details that JKR herself probably didn't consider