Was Harry cheating to use Snape's old potions book?, Or what was Hermione doing wrong? |
 Mar 21 2008, 11:57 PM
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Madame Pince's House Elf  Posts: 4,716 Joined: 5:46pm January 28, 2005 Location: In HP Book Club 5, awaiting Deathly Hallow's release.  |
THE HALF BLOOD PRINCE POTIONS BOOK  Harry was pleased he did so well in his OWLs potions result. But the E for Exceeds expectations he received was not really up to the O for Outstanding that he knew Snape expected. Therefore in his first Potions lesson Slughorn issued old copies of Libatius Borage's Advanced Potion Making to Harry and Ron, who also had not expected to pass. Harry's copy had a lot of extra added information. Not only were there a bunch of new spells but much of these writings consisted of handy tips which clarified their set text as bought fresh from the shop. Following these tips enabled Harry to surpass Hermione in Potions for the first time in living memory. Harry's side of things: Harry's class is set the job of making the Draught of Living Death. Faced with directions in addition to those in Libatius Borage's book (still in its 1948 first edition) Harry decides to try them and gets fantastic results, thus winning the prize of a bottle of Felix Felicis. Hermione and Ron might have been less than impressed at Harry's suddenly becoming good at potions, but Harry was the one prepared to try the hints out, risking that the instructions might have been disastrous. And he did offer to help Hermione and Ron, not trying to keep his good fortune to himself. But Ron couldn't read the writing and Hermione refused point-blank to use anything but her own brand-new copy of Advanced Potions. Again and again, the extra hints in this potions book assist Harry to top the class. And when Harry's brand-new book eventually arrives, Harry prefers to do some creative book mending so as to keep this updated version of the book. What is more, he actually reads and enjoys this book, learning not only more about potions but also the intriguing spells dotted around the book. It is like Harry was benefitting from extra input provided by an actual version of the Remedial Potions he allegedly was ordered to take during his previous OWLs year. The extra coaching Severus Snape alleged Harry needed, being hopeless at Potions. If Harry's use of this book is cheating, then isn't undertaking any sort of extra coaching or taking the trouble to read more about a subject also a form of cheating? Hermione really begrudged Harry's success. Again and again she would obey her textbook only to find out that she wasn't doing as well as Harry. Shouldn't she have admitted that the mysterious Half-blood Prince's version was an improvement on the textbook and tried to find out why Harry's version worked better? Shouldn't she have at least discussed what she was doing wrong? Instead of quoting word perfect textbook definitions, couldn't Hermione have taken the extra step to start asking questions and using reasoning, rather than rote -learning to figure out the answer? After all, this is why Snape, in his DADA class, was so rude to Hermione. Or was Hermione too used to hogging the limelight as dux of the class, when she was irritated by the praise Slughorn gave Harry, comparing him to his brilliant mother, Lily Evans? This was misplaced praise to be sure since Harry was getting the added information from the Half-blood Prince book, and not from some mysterious genetic gift. But was Slughorn so far wrong in attributing Harry's success to genetics, when we discover in the end that the Half-blood Prince was none other than a young Severus Snape, whose best friend until the end of the OWLs examinations was none other than Harry's own mother, Lily Evans? Surely Lily had at least some input into those handy potions hints such as the use of peppermint in an Euphoria potion or just using a bezoar. Severus Snape did say he was under the impression that he never taught Harry anything, when Horace Slughorn praised his teaching Harry. But though the Half-blood Prince suggested using a bezoar as an antidote to poison, Harry did remember it was Severus Snape who had already told his class about bezoars in Harry's very first potions lesson. Perhaps Severus Snape taught Harry a good deal more than he knew. After all, Harry did get an E for Exceeds Expectations in his Potions OWLs. By then Harry had discovered that when Severus Snape stopped belittling him and left him alone, he did quite well in Potions. And when Harry used the stop-gap bezoar cure on Ron, who had been poisoned, then Harry showed the sort of presence of mind that was more important than where he remembered the hint from. Harry's using the Half-blood Prince book was a legitimate and useful ploy to do his best in class. Hermione's point of view - Harry was cheating: When Harry got his new potions book he should have used it, and not the old tattered book which he should have handed back to Slughorn. The extra information the old version contained could have been wrong. And when that information succeeded, Hermione felt that Harry was taking an unfair advantage of the rest of the class. After all, she wasn't the only one who was annoyed that Harry, who had often been the bottom of the Potions class suddenly doing well. The rest of the class, including Draco Malfoy, should have benefitted if there was anything in the book that was worthwhile. Perhaps a new, updated version of the textbook was needed; shouldn't the whole class have access to that new version, not just Harry? Yes, when Hermione's work wasn't as good as Harry's, she could have debated with him why there was a difference in their work. But would Harry have appreciated this debate? Was Harry just as inclined to follow the Half-blood Prince version by rote as Hermione slavishly followed the set-text version? And did Harry really think about the implications of what he was reading in the book? When he tried different spells without first finding out what they did or what the antidote was, was he really learning anything, or was he saving himself the trouble of thinking about his work? Surely Hermione was right to think Harry was cheating when Harry tried the Sectumsempra spell on Draco, saying he didn't know what the spell did. Snape then knew exactly what Harry had been up to. After all, it was he who invented the Sectumsempra spell for use on enemies. Even Horace Slughorn should have suspected Harry had been cheating when he had to take Ron to the Potions master to find an antidote for the love potion Romilda Vane had put into chocolate cauldron cakes. When Harry hid the incriminating Half-blood Prince potions book in the Room of Hidden things, its place marked by the Diademcrux, it was telling that it joined all the other graffitied, damaged, forgotten or lost items, marking where students had failed to make their schoolwork easier. And it was even more telling that Harry's work in Potions deteriorated afterwards, due to the extra hints not being due to Harry's own experimentation and findings. Hermione had every right to resent the attention Harry got in class and to query his use of the book. By not confessing to Slughorn what was making his work better, Harry was showing himself the cheat and liar, Snape accused him of being. It was only the need to soften up Slughorn to get that memory for Dumbledore that stopped Hermione from going to Slughorn, herself, as she had gone to McGonagall about the Firebolt Sirius gave Harry some three years previously. When Snape put him on detention every Saturday, forcing Harry to miss the last Quidditch game between Ravenclaw and Gryffindor, Harry deserved everything he got, including having to persevere at boring, meaningless, and distasteful work, a fitting penalty for laziness at school. And Harry's tendency to laziness showed in this year. Failing to get Ron to pay attention to what he was doing in Quidditch practice, Harry pretended to give him Felix Felicis to get him to try better. And then it was only a smart remark which saved the game against Slytherin from his own inattentiveness. Harry's own captaincy of the Gryffindor team was shown poorly when he put McLaggan on the team to replace Ron, still recovering from the poison. Harry had not wanted to conduct trials again to get a better replacement. Even the job Harry was given to retrieve Slughorn's untampered with memory of how many Horcruxes there might be would be performed with less than proper diligence. In line with his lazy attitude, Harry's using the Half-blood Prince book was cheating, giving him a false reputation What is your opinion of Harry's using the Half-blood Prince Potions book? Was it an asset that enabled Harry to catch up with Potions and do well? Or was it cheating as Hermione insisted? Was Hermione greedy or justified to begrudge Harry the accolades Slughorn was showering on him? Why do you think that Harry learned more from the Half-blood Potions book than he ever learned from Snape? And was Snape right to say that he was under the impression that Harry never learned anything from him? This is a good place to air your views about the Half-blood Prince book. 
This post has been edited by WaggaWaggaWerewolf: Mar 23 2008, 11:01 PM --------------------  Check out Book Number 5 POA edition. |
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