Philosopher's Stone Chapter Eight

[urbanman1984.livejournal.com]

                                               

Harry meets Snape for the first time.

The Potions Master

*Ron is anonymous as far as anyone at Hogwarts is concerned.  He is just the kid standing next to Harry Potter.  Generous of Harry to confer that distinction on him.  Ron will come to appreciate it...

 

*Hogwarts, the building sounds like a real nightmare.  JKR over reached herself in the UK edition by stating there were 142 staircases there... leading to where I wonder?  How many classes does Hogwarts offer?  I thought it was only 12.  But then the number of students at Hogwarts is really inconsistent from moment to moment as well... oh dear maths.

 

*The ridiculous moving staircases give an impression of prevailing insanity.  If the place is magical why can’t there be teleporters to class rooms and common rooms?  But the “magic” is arranged to make everything harder.  I really would never have got by at Hogwarts, I still don’t have any sense of direction.

 

*And Harry ought, as a Gryffindor, to appreciate Peeves, Hogwarts' resident hazard.  He should love Fluffy even more.

 

*Filch gives little Harry some trouble... well Harry will eventually get his own back on the old squib by hexing him while his backs turned.  IOIAGDI!!

 

*Harry has worked out that the Weasley twins might just have the best knowledge of the building.  He doesn’t know about the Marauders Map yet of course.  In Order of the Phoenix he still hasn’t worked out that anyone who has the map definitely has a far better knowledge of Hogwarts than Filch does.  He still thinks that Filch has the best knowledge of Hogwarts “second only” to that of the Weasley Twins... Oh dear, maths continuity show a little sense Harry!

 

*We never actually see an astronomy lesson.

 

*JKR probably wasn’t a very apt pupil since history is such a boring subject in her view.  With Professor Binns’ methods it looks like we are getting a feel for how she remembers it - and it went right over her head.

 

*Professor Flitwick is a real Harry Potter fanatic.  Really all designated good characters should swoon with pleasure when they see Harry.

 

*McGonagall threatens to chuck out anyone messing around... there is a lot of talk of chucking people out of classes or out of Hogwarts in the very beginning but *comparatively* much less of it as the series goes on.  I suppose the Hogwarts rule must be that being new is no excuse for not already being used to the haphazard rules which relax once the kids are used to the place. 

 

*Please use the needle to gouge out Hermione’s eye someone...

 

*Zombies are zombies at the moment rather than Inferi.  Once again oh dear maths continuity

 

*The turban cannot possibly be a gift AND stuffed full of garlic :p oh dear maths continuity logic. 

 

*It’s interesting that for Harry’s year, those from magical households don’t have a significant head start.  Didn’t Snape know more curses when he started than half the kids in the seventh year?  I think Sirius would have definitely been right about that.

 

*A message from Hagrid.  Despite his celebrity, Hagrid is the only friend Harry has apart from Ron... sad really.  Where would Harry be with no glamour?

 

*The dungeons are colder than the main castle.  The Slytherin complex must be really uncomfortable unless the Malfoys, Lestranges etc. have paid for extra magical heating...

 

*Hagrid has warmth?  Ermm... get to know him better before jumping to conclusions Harry.

 

*I quite liked Snape’s little speech about Potions being both a science and an art - until the exposition is ruined by the bathos of the word “dunderheads.”

 

*Hermione’s suffering from the jerks.  Must be a grim spectacle.

 

*Harry did open a book before coming Snape!  And it’ll be the last time he ever does...

 

*Does Seamus want to be Harry’s friend here?  I suppose Harry’s insularity put the rest of the year group off him quite quickly, but it hasn’t had full effect yet.

 

*A potion for curing ordinary (not Hermione disease) boils indicates that Hogwarts follows a “sabretooth curriculum.”

 

*It is difficult to fathom Snape’s relationship to Malfoy now the series is over...

 

*Silly Neville :p  When I was 11 my chemistry teacher would probably have said sarcastically, “well you’ve been successful haven’t you?”

 

*Snape is the only teacher who has ever, as far as we see, deducted points in denominations of one point... but speculations on this are pointless given JKR’s level of numeracy.

 

*I recall another member of DTCL posted that Professor Kettleburn might be like the Hagrid X-Treme.  I wonder if Ron would have wanted to visit Kettleburn in his leaf pile ;)

 

*Fang is a big dog with the personality of a puppy.  Hagrid is a monstrous man who often exhibits the mind of a little boy.  That’s how they’re similar.  Also Hagrid is like Dumblesnore’s dog.

 

*Hagrid has a real contempt for Filch and all squibs.  I suspect this must be Dumbledore’s opinion of squibs and Hagrid is parroting it.  We all know what a hypocrite Dumbledore really is.  Hagrid does view Dumbledore as a mixture of an all powerful adoptive grandfather and dog owner.  He would be unlikely to blurt out views that Dumbledore did not approve of.

 

*Hagrid liked Charlie a lot.  I wonder how much trouble he was able to get Charlie into?

 

*So the Prophet reckons it would take a dark wizard or dark witch to get into Gringotts?  Doesn’t seem likely.  Really, a little kid could have broken into the emptied vault.  Griphook later tells us that it had minimal protection even by Gringotts standards, after it was emptied.

 

*Harry has three thoughts from visiting Hagrid (and none from his lessons).  Well the rule of three is always advised by professionals who tell you how to make a presentation :) Perhaps only being able to deal with three thoughts at once is really a common syndrome and not something that is an indictment against Harry.

Comments

[oryx_leucoryx]

On Severus' knowledge of curses - I found whitehound's analysis. It is in But Snape is just nasty, right?. The relevant part is:

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Sirius says that "Snape knew more curses when he arrived at school than half the kids in seventh year". This is a profoundly traumatized man in his mid thirties, trying to remember an impression gained when he was eleven about somebody he is deeply prejudiced against. Nevertheless, let's assume it's true and see what it tells us.

The logical corollary is that Snape knew fewer curses than half the seventh years, or the same number. So Snape is being accused of precocity rather than monstrousness. And we know he was precocious, because he invented Levicorpus in the margin of a sixth-form text-book, and yet Remus tells us that Levicorpus enjoyed a vogue at Hogwarts for some months during their fifth year. Ergo, Snape was using a sixth year text as a note-book quite early in fifth year.

[We can assume Advanced Potion-Making was a NEWT text when Snape was at school, because even Umbridge admits that the fifth-year Potions class he later teaches is quite far ahead for their age, yet when they start Advanced Potion-Making in sixth year the recipes in it are new to them. Ergo, Advanced Potion-Making really is quite advanced.]

Knowing a lot of curses does suggest a penchant for combat spells, but several curses are either on the Hogwarts curriculum or readily available in the library. When Draco uses Locomotor mortis on Neville in first year he announces that he's been looking for somebody to practice it on and the Trio all recognise it at once, which suggests that they've been taught it, or at least taught about it, in class. Hermione already knows Petrificus totalus in first year, which she presumably got from a book, and in fourth year they learn Reductor from a book with McGonagall's blessing, and are taught about the Unforgivables. A student it seems may know several curses and yet not know anything which the school deems unacceptable. And how many curses is more curses than are known to half the new seventh years?

At the end of sixth year, Harry - who is such a Defence Against the Dark Arts expert that he's competent to teach it - knows Reductor, Locomotor mortis, Petrificus totalus and Furnunculus. He knows of the three Unforgivables but can't yet cast them effectively. And he knows Sectumsempra, which is also considered a curse.

[Harry also knows Impedimenta, but only once, in the US edition of GoF, is it called the Impediment Curse, and this seems to be an error. Everywhere else - including the same place in the UK edition - it's called the Impediment Jinx.]

So that's five curses he can perform, and three he knows of but can't really perform, most of them sanctioned by the school, for an Outstanding DADA student at the transition-point between sixth and seventh years. On this evidence, "knows more curses than half the seventh years" probably means "knows six curses". Indeed, we can assume fairly confidently that Severus didn't know any more than six or seven curses, because if even the most Outstanding DADA student starts seventh year knowing only eight curses, three of which he can't yet do, that means that if Severus had known more than six or seven he would have known more than almost all the seventh years, not just half of them, and Sirius would have said so.

Nor, of course, do we know whether he used those curses offensively, defensively or in a duelling club.
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