Well here we go then, the first of that Hogwarts-focused batch of metas I promised...way back back in October. I do have a tendency to get distracted! But recent posts reminded me that this one in particular is sorely needed, so I finally got around to writing it.
To summarize, this series will be all about Hogwarts and the details of living in it, and this first post in particular concerns the size of the Hogwarts population - students and teachers alike. To be absolutely clear, I didn't find all these tidbits myself, older meta by others the kind of which I'm prone to digging out pointed them out for me. It's just far from convenient to try to link to five different posts every time I need to provide the receipts.
So without further ado, let's dig in.
The Quidditch Crowd
The earliest explicit reference to the size of the Hogwarts student population comes from Prisoner of Azkaban.
Three-quarters of the crowd was wearing scarlet rosettes, waving scarlet flags with the Gryffindor lion upon them […] Behind the Slytherin goal posts, however, two hundred people were wearing green.
(PoA ch15, The Quidditch Final)
As you can see, it's very clear and very concise. There are 200 Slytherins in the crowd, which is only one fourth of the total crowd, which means there are 800 students following that particular quidditch game.
Now, it could of course be that not the whole school actually turned out to watch - in fact, it's very likely since attending quidditch matches isn't actually mandatory as far as we know. But quidditch is undeniably very popular among wizardkind, so the number probably isn't far off. So Hogwarts population in PoA is confirmed at 800+ students.
The Thestral Stagecoaches
One of the few pieces of evidence I unearthed myself! I'm very proud of this one. You can read the whole thestrals meta here, but in summary:
Harry, Ron, and Hermione followed the rest of the school along the platform and out onto a rough mud track, where at least a hundred stagecoaches awaited the remaining students, each pulled, Harry could only assume, by an invisible horse.
(PoA ch5, The Dementor)
There are multiple other instances of these stagecoaches being described, most of which specify that there are just over a hundred of them - they're later references though, which could indicate that the Hogwarts population is bigger in GoF and beyond than it was in PoA. But regardless. If you know anything about what stagecoaches are actually like, you'd already know that the very early models seated six passengers, and the late models that Hogwarts has usually seated nine passengers or more. But if historical data isn't enough...
Here stood the hundred or so horseless stagecoaches that always took the students above first year up to the castle. […] A short distance away, Draco Malfoy, followed by a small gang of cronies including Crabbe, Goyle, and Pansy Parkinson, was pushing some timid-looking second years out of the way so that they could get a coach to themselves.
(OotP ch10, Luna Lovegood)
Here we have Draco and his 'cronies', a total of at least 5-6 people, all going into a single coach. A bit later on we also see Harry, Ron, Hermione, Luna, and Ginny all go into the same coach. So these are definitively seating at least six even according to the books themselves. That means that every year, Hogwarts is sending enough stagecoaches down to the Hogsmeade Station to seat at minimum 600+ but more likely 900+ students - and the first years don't even take the stagecoaches, they take the boats.
Doing the math (and presuming a similar number of students in every year, although that is more than likely not the case), when you add in the first years to the number of possible seats on the stagecoaches you end up with at least 700+ but up to 1050+ students. This starting all the way back in PoA.
We also have to factor in that the quidditch game already proved there to be more than 800 students at Hogwarts. This tells us that the stagecoaches likely are the updated model with nine seats each as their swaying motion indicates (only the later models sway), since the students at second year or higher out of 800+ students total wouldn't actually fit into just a hundred coaches that only seat six people each. Seats for nine per stagecoach, or total population of up to 1050+ students it is.
The Yule Ball Tables
An oft ignored tell about the Hogwarts population! Although to be fair, many people ignore all evidence we get otherwise and cling to their fanon instead. But regardless...
[…] everyone in the Great Hall applauded as they entered and started walking up toward a large round table at the top of the Hall, where the judges were sitting. […] The House tables had vanished; instead, there were about a hundred smaller, lantern-lit ones, each seating about a dozen people.
(GoF ch23, The Yule Ball)
Another instance where we have to do a bit of minor math. A hundred tables, each seating about a dozen (=12), that means there are seats for 1200 people in the Great Hall during the Yule Ball. But who actually is present at the Yule Ball? We know there are the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang students there!
Harry, whose attention had been focused completely upon Madame Maxime, now noticed that about a dozen boys and girls, all, by the look of them, in their late teens, had emerged from the carriage [...] The Great Hall seemed somehow much more crowded than usual, even though there were barely twenty additional students there.
(GoF ch15, Beauxbatons and Durmstrang)
So there are 'about a dozen' Beauxbatons students, but together with the Durmstrang students they are 'barely twenty'. That's okay, we don't need the exact numbers. That description is just enough to know that the foreign students take up two of the tables max, so about 98 tables are still unaccounted for. But what about the teachers?
Harry looked around the Hall. Hagrid was sitting at one of the other staff tables.
(GoF ch23, The Yule Ball)
We know that Harry is sitting at the judges' table (which seats a total of 13 people when we add up all the champions, their dates, and the judges themselves). For there to be 'other staff tableS', explicitly plural, there has to be at least two of them (enough for 24 staff aside from Dumbledore who's sitting at the judges' table), although could be more. But let's say for the sake of the argument that there's only two other staff tables. That still leaves 95 tables for Hogwarts students, or enough to seat 1140 students.
We also have to remember that the ball is only open to fourth years and above, with younger students only there if invited as a date by an older one. Even if we presume that, say, every single third year student got an invite, that'd still mean the first and second years are not included in that count. Add them back in, again presuming an equal number of students in every year no matter how unlikely, and we get a total of almost 1600 students.
....what. This is certainly some kind of a joke. Even should we, say, presume that despite the availability of seats there are only eight students per table, we'd still end up at 95x8=760 Hogwarts student seats at the Yule Ball, so 1064 students total.
Remember that this 1064 number is presuming that every single third year managed to get an older date and that each table only actually seats an average of eight students despite there being room for up to twelve. From this, it becomes abundantly clear that the graduating class in PoA was just plain small compared to slightly younger years like (what was then) third and fourth. But regardless, combined with the student population data we get in PoA it is also very, exceedingly clear that Hogwarts is not a particularly small school at all. Even if we presume around 900 students in PoA, there has to be well over a thousand in GoF canon.
We'll return to the Yule Ball numbers later.
The Gryffindor Tryouts
We have one more scene that tells us something about the Hogwarts student population size, and that comes in HBP.
As Harry had expected, the trials took most of the morning. Half of Gryffindor House seemed to have turned up […] Harry decided to start with a basic test, asking all applicants for the team to divide into groups of ten.
(HBP ch11, Hermione's Helping Hand)
That by itself doesn't tell us much I suppose. But reading on, we find out that when Harry actually went ahead with the tryouts, the first group turned out to be all first years. The second was all giggly girls with no intention whatsoever to join the quidditch team. Third and fourth group to try out were also failures. And there was another group's worth of Hufflepuffs as well as several Ravenclaws, and there were still people left waiting to try out for the team after all the above were eliminated. Enough of them that with the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws mixed in the remainder, there was enough people there that Harry couldn't tell the crowd contained Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws... But let's say Harry was being particularly dim about recognizing people again, and there were less than 20 Gryffindors in that remainder, meaning the total amount of students who showed up for the tryouts was 'only' around 70.
Here we come back to the quote above. A throwaway line like 'half of Gryffindor House' is always an exaggeration, but even if we take that literally there would be 70x2=140 Gryffindors in HBP. Assume a similar number in other houses and the total student population would be 560. We already know from other references to the number of students that it's considerably more than that, but that's where the 'half of Gryffindor' being a comical exaggeration comes in! So we know that even in HBP, there are drastically more than 560 students at Hogwarts. If the other, more accurate numbers didn't already convince you!
The Hundreds
At this point, I'd like to add a brief note - we do get consistent references to 'hundreds' of students thundering in the halls and speaking in the Great Hall, as well as multiple and more references to 'a hundred' owls flying in to the Great Hall at morning post time. The latter is slightly more indicative of the actual numbers since we hardly ever see our main trio get mail, indicating that for a hundred owls to fly in every morning the number of people at breakfast must be considerably higher than a hundred, but it's hardly conclusive evidence of anything by itself. There is one additional quote however, that should probably be noted.
The Owlery was a circular stone room […]. Hundreds upon hundreds of owls of every breed imaginable were nestled here on perches that rose right up to the top of the tower.
(GoF ch15, Beauxbatons and Durmstrang)
As we see, there are 'hundreds upon hundreds' of owls in the Hogwarts Owlery. Not everyone's going to have an owl as their pet, so there are quite a few more students than 'hundreds upon hundreds'. But since we don't know the exact ratio of students who bring owls as pets, not to mention the number of school owls, we can't make any more concrete conclusions from it.
The Departments and Classrooms
Next we run up against the problem that if Harry's teachers are all there is at Hogwarts, it's nowhere near enough to teach all the students. There are no teachers mentioned by name that don't teach Harry, but that's okay. The references to there being multiple classrooms, entire departments for each (or at minimum some) subjects, as well as quite a few more teachers than what we are given the names for...which is, in fact, much like we only get the names of 40 students in Harry's year even though there are in fact at the barest minimum 800/7=114 students in his year, and more than likely upwards of 1000/7=143 students. So let's take a look!
Justin was carried up to the hospital wing by Professor Flitwick and Professor Sinistra of the Astronomy department.
(CoS ch11, The Dueling Club)
This is the earliest reference to there being departments for subjects. There are others in the books referring to the Astronomy department in particular, but I'll only quote this one since it's the earliest - and note that it's from Chamber of Secrets. Very, very early on in the series. The books have indeed been written around the basis that there is much more to Hogwarts than Harry ever explicitly describes to us.
"I’ll tell her Peeves is smashing up the Transfiguration department or something, it's miles away from her office."
(OotP ch32, Out of the Fire, as said by Ron)
This may be the only reference to the Transfiguration department in the books themselves, but there are more outside of them. In particular, in the book Short Stories from Hogwarts Part I (and also on Pottermore in shorter form), we can find the backstory of a handful of people including McGonagall. This backstory explicitly states that she started as a Transfiguration teacher under the Head of the Transfiguration Department Albus Dumbledore, who was still a Professor of Transfiguration at Hogwarts and not the Headmaster yet.
He ran down staircases and along corridors and met nobody either alive or dead. […] Outside his Charms classroom he came to a halt.
(OotP ch38, The Second War Begins)
This obscure little reference explicitly says 'his' classroom, as in the one Charms classroom in which Harry had his Charms lessons. Meaning there are indeed others and not just that one.
"Filch isn’t in a good mood — he’s got the flu and some third years accidentally plastered frog brains all over the ceiling in dungeon five."
(CoS ch8, The Deathday Party, as said by Nearly-Headless Nick)
Another very early reference to there being multiple classrooms - enough that they're actually numbered. We might not know explicitly what number dungeon Harry had his Potions lessons in, but for them to be numbered (five!!) there have to be multiple ones.
When he and Hermione arrived at Snape’s dungeon after lunch, they found the Slytherins waiting outside.
(GoF ch18, The Weighing of the Wands)
And this is how Harry refers to the classroom he takes Potions in, in GoF and after. This is used multiple times in both GoF and OotP, and early on in HBP too. Just in case the numbering in the above reference threw anyone off, here's proof that Harry explicitly refers to the classroom as Snape's to differentiate it from the others in the dungeons.
The Teachers
The above, of course, dealt explicitly in the number of classrooms instead of teachers. The exact number of teachers is much harder to pin down, and in the end we have to rely on logic and estimate ourselves how many there are - but that will be done in later installments of this series! The evidence is scant as mentioned, but there's a couple things to point out even here.
First there is the Yule Ball. If you remember from that section above, we calculated a huge number of Hogwarts students based off of the number of tables, with the estimate of there being two staff tables aside from just the judges' one, giving us a possible max of 24-26 staff. Since there's seven basic subjects, plus Flying, plus five elective subjects, that makes for a total of 13 teachers - enough to fill one staff table when there are explicitly more than one. There are of course, also staff like Filch, Pince, and Pomfrey (and before Hagrid was inexplicably made a CoMC Professor the Groundskeeper/Gamekeeper was also separate, but we're counting staff in 1994-95 so that isn't of much relevance here), for a total of 16 - barely enough to fill two tables with plenty of seats empty. But the point here is, since it's conclusively and explicitly canon that there are closer to a thousand students at Hogwarts, there must be more teachers as well - and those teachers would have also needed tables at the Yule Ball, which brings the sky-high number of students required to justify a hundred tables down quite nicely. Should we estimate four tables worth of staff, for example (or up to 50 of them), there'd 'only' be 93 tables for Hogwarts students. Subsequently applying the same calculation on these tables as the one used in the Yule Ball section above, we'd get 744 Hogwarts students at the Yule Ball, or 1041 students total - still a lot, but starting to get more in line with the other numbers.
We also get one other instance referring to the total number of teachers, although it doesn't tell us all that much by itself.
Moreover, the crowd in the mysterious room at the bottom of the basin was comprised of adults, and Harry knew there were not nearly that many teachers at Hogwarts. […] Not one of the witches and wizards in the room (and there were at least two hundred of them) was looking at him.
(GoF ch30, The Pensieve)
So 'not nearly as many' teachers as 200+. It really doesn't tell us much at all at this point, but it'll become slightly more useful later on when we start looking at the number of teachers actually required to keep a thousand students in class with the division of students into lessons as we see in the books.
Conclusion
The number of Hogwarts students we see in the books is very consistent and completely unwavering. Even a conservative estimate numbers them at more than 900 in PoA, with more than a thousand being more likely in GoF and onwards.
As for the tired fan theory that the named 40 students in Harry's year are all there is and Hogwarts has a total of 40x7=280 students? Have some words from the Beast herself:
While I imagined that there would be considerably more than forty students in each year at Hogwarts, I thought that it would be useful to know a proportion of Harry’s classmates, and to have names at my fingertips when action was taking place around the school.
(Pottermore article, The Original Forty)
Yeah, it is indeed complete fanon. The books flawlessly agree with what the Beast herself has always said, whether it be on Pottermore or in all those old interviews. 900-1000+ students it is.
draco really does spend all of book 2 suffering from a severe case of 'can't shut up about harry potter' disease. the first time we see him lucius is on the brink of a public breakdown because he cannot cope with hearing one more harry potter fact. and then when ron and harry disguise themselves as draco's friends and break into the slytherin common room draco instantly launches into a monologue about harry potter - entirely unprompted. not to mention that dobby clearly knows a lot about harry, including who his friends are and how much he cares about them, and he definitely didn't learn that from lucius. draco's housemates must have suffered so much that year.
also absolutely wild that jkr wrote this in the same book where she was like 'yeah ginny spent all summer talking about harry because she fancies him' just. wow.
#yeah it’s that last bit in particular for me#lmfao#like. the comparison is SO CLEAR#and to get it all in the space of a couple of chapters???#like. first of all dobby turns up#and is all like ‘dobby has heard of harry potter’s greatness’ FROM WHO DOBBY???#then the weasleys rescue harry and are like ‘ginny hasn’t shut up about you all summer because she’s got a big fat crush on you’#then bam. right after that they’re going to diagon#and draco is being told by his father to shut the fuck up about harry potter. for god’s sake!!! i am sick of hearing about him draco!!!!#AND THEN#in the bookshop#draco is like ‘oh look you’ve got yourself a girlfriend potter’ THESE ARE THE WORDS OF THE MOST JEALOUS BOY ON EARTH#like nobody else mocks harry over ginny’s crush????#nobody even notices or points it out??? throughout the whole series????????#AND THEN ON TOP OF ALL THAT#harry gets the valentine’s note#referring to the ‘dark lord’#and insulting him#and draco practically screams at ginny that harry didn’t like ‘her’ poem#draco. draco draco draco. it’s very clear you were the one that stayed up half the night and ordered dobby to help proofread your love poem
Wizarding Population of the UK and Ireland in Harry Potter
In regular society, people between the ages of eleven and seventeen make up about 8% of the population in the UK, where the average life expectancy is 80.8. Wizard life expectancy is 138, which means wizards live on average 1.7x longer, which means that the percentage of people eleven to seventeen in the wizarding world is more like 4.7. There are forty kids in Harry’s year. If there are roughly the same number of students in each year, that would mean there are 280 students (which makes sense considering they only have one teacher per subject). This means that 4.7% of the population adds up to 280, which would make 100% of the population 5957, give or take. In conclusion, the wizarding population in the UK should be around 6000.
TL;DR: 6000
I calculated this last year. However, I was pretty sleep deprived and failing my math class. So I did it again! Correctly, this time. What I did wrong the first time was not converting the 8% to 4.7%, so I ended up with something closer to 3000.
Unfortunately, there are multiple points against the wizarding population being this small. It wouldn't support what we see of shops (heck, Slughorn mentions a chain of apothecaries; 6k would never run to that many!), multiple professional quidditch teams - and to quote directly from gof, "The trouble is, about a hundred thousand wizards turn up at the World Cup".
Even if the entire 6k of British wizards turned up (not actually possible), that would still need 94k of foreign wizards. I can certainly allow for a higher percentage of wizards attending than you'd get for real world sports events, especially since there is no tv option. But still, 6k is simply an unreasonably small number for the British wizarding population in the context of what is shown on page.
The only logical solution is that there are other wizarding schools and most wizard kids don't get to go to Hogwarts. And there are a couple of teeny hints that other schools exist, whereas it is simply not possible make 6k fit what else is shown on page.
(and yes, ultimately the fault comes from jkr not running the numbers, considering what they mean and being consistent with her world building. But still, what is on the page is what is on the page.)
Rather, it’s the fault of that persistent and completely unfounded fan theory that Hogwarts only has 280 students, or 40 per year. When in fact there are 40 named students in Harry’s year, the actual number is much higher and when looking at the text itself, the books were very consistently written with 800+ students at Harry’s time there. (I really should get around to writing that summary post about this issue soon, I have like five meta posts about this that I’d need to link separately to cover all of the evidence).
And no, Harry’s teachers aren’t the only teachers at Hogwarts either. Hogwarts has departments for each subject. Yes, even in the books, even though they’re not mentioned often. And from her background story we even know that McGonagall started as a secondary Transfiguration teacher when Dumbledore was still the head of the Transfiguration Department.
If you run the actual known figures with the supposition that Hogwarts students are 4.7% of the population you end up with over 17,000 population total, which is a more reasonable figure and in line with Hogsmeade requiring a population of at least 3000+ to function and Diagon Alley reportedly being bigger than that if I remember my facts right. Although that number is still unreliable since Hogwarts population according to the Beast in interviews can go as high as 1000 students (so either the population fluctuates wildly or the generations around Harry’s time were particularly small so the 4.7% figure doesn’t hold up), not to mention all the homeschoolers and those minor schools that canonically exist.
Yeah, prime example of how you need to use actual reliable (and moreover canon) data to get even halfway accurate numbers. The Beast may be bad with numbers but she’s not nearly as bad at it as doing the numbers off of fanon makes it look.
Interestingly Sirius only refers to Grimmauld as his house once.
He often speaks about it as his parent’s former house:
“Hasn’t anyone told you? This was my parents’ house,” said Sirius”
“Come on, Harry, haven’t you seen enough of this house to tell what kind of wizards my family were?” said Sirius testily.”
” Sirius gave a short, barklike laugh. “If my parents could see the use it was being put to now ... well, my mother’s portrait should give you some idea...”
He doesn’t even weaponise it when Molly is saying out of pocket things to him (for example: don’t speak to me like that in my house). The only time he does leverage the house is towards Snape ordering Harry around:
“Sit down, Potter.”
“You know,” said Sirius loudly, leaning back on his rear chair legs and speaking to the ceiling, “I think I’d prefer it if you didn’t give orders here, Snape. It’s my house, you see.”
An ugly flush suffused Snape’s pallid face. Harry sat down in a chair beside Sirius, facing Snape across the table.
I get such Dad energy from this- don’t speak to my child like that under my roof.
At the end of HBP, Harry takes quite a few creative licenses with the truth when he tells of Dumbledore's death and everything he learned atop the astronomy tower, and I think it's very interesting:
here he just leaves out everything's Draco admitted to and quickly puts all the Dumbledore-murdering blame on Snape. Like, it wouldn't take long to say "I was right and Malfoy was up to something" or "Malfoy was supposed to murder Dumbledore but couldn't do it in the end" but instead Draco's role in the whole fiasco gets minimised to an extreme degree, like here:
the matter of who imperiused Rosmerta is carefully left up in the air (though tbh I don't think Draco did it) and even the incidents with the cursed necklace and the poisoned mead are not tied to Draco. Adding "and the deatheaters" makes it seem like any one of them could be behind those plots when we know for sure they were both Draco originals; it feels like Harry uses deliberately vague language, especially since "Malfoy imperiused Rosmerta" or "that's how Malfoy got the mead into Hogwarts" would do just as well.
We know from DH that Harry specifically implicated Snape but the public doesn't seem to know of Draco's role in the whole thing
which, again, tells me that Harry did a fair bit of editing when relaying what he heard and saw that night, even to authorities. Is Harry acting intentionally in favor of Draco? in DH Harry is feeling more charitable towards Draco in general, has witnessing his uncertainty and desperation on the astronomy tower given Harry a new view of Draco?
there’s a dispute after an order meeting over whose cloak is whose and Remus just picks up one and smells it without thinking and goes ‘this belongs to Sirius’. the entire room stares at him in silence
Harry sniffs it too and is like "oh yeah that's definitely Sirius's" and everyone stares at him too.
What’s up with the Hogwarts dormitories? Do students stay in the same room all 7 years or do they switch rooms every year? And does each room have its own bathroom or are there just community boy and girl bathrooms for each house?
Okay, this is actually an interesting question so I wanted to check what I can find about this in the books.
At the end of the year they clearly pack all their belongings from their dormitories. They don't leave stuff at school over the summer:
And suddenly, their wardrobes were empty, their trunks were packed, Neville’s toad was found lurking in a corner of the toilets; notes were handed out to all students, warning them not to use magic over the holidays
(PS, Ch16)
But in CoS we are straight up given the answer for a change:
They hurried up it, right to the top, and at last reached the door of their old dormitory, which now had a sign on it saying SECOND YEARS. They entered the familiar, circular room, with its five four-posters hung with red velvet and its high, narrow windows.
(CoS, Ch5)
So, yeah, canonically it's the same dorm room they return to every year and the sign outside just changes. But they are expected to take all their belongings at the end of the year and not leave personal belongings in the dormitory.
As for bathrooms/showers, I talked about this a little here. And there isn't as straightforward of an answer, but I tried.
It appears they have showers in the Quidditch changing rooms:
“Where is Wood?” said Harry, suddenly realizing he wasn’t there.
“Still in the showers,” said Fred. “We think he’s trying to drown himself.”
(PoA, Ch9)
And baths somewhere in the common rooms:
“Yes, it was,” said Ginny. “It was appalling. Angelina was nearly in tears by the end of it.” Ron and Ginny went off for baths after dinner; Harry and Hermione returned to the busy Gryffindor common room and their usual pile of homework.
(OotP, Ch26)
We also see all students seem to have bathrobes/dressing gowns (depending on edition and book, I assume. In the American PS version I have uses "tartan bathrobe" to refer to McGonagall's tartan dressing gown):
They pulled on their bathrobes, picked up their wands, and crept across the tower room, down the spiral staircase, and into the Gryffindor common room.
(PS, Ch9)
“I believe you, Potter,” said Professor McGonagall curtly. “Put on your dressing-gown — we’re going to see the headmaster.”
(OotP, Ch21)
The fact all students are expected and known to have dressing gowns/bathrobes can imply the bathrooms are located in the common rooms and not in each dorm. My assumption would be where the dormitories are, so they won't need to go back to the common room itself.
But I decided to check how Harry gets ready for bed/in the morning and if it's ever mentioned he leaves his dorm to brush his teeth or otherwise hint at the existence of a bathroom inside or outside the dorm. Unfortunately, Harry doesn't seem to shower/bath or brush his teeth before bed. Just goes straight to his dorm, pulls on pajamas and goes into bed:
Their trunks had already been brought up. Too tired to talk much, they pulled on their pajamas and fell into bed.
(PS, Ch7)
It was so late that the Gryffindor common room was almost empty. Harry went straight up to the dormitory. Ron wasn’t back yet. Harry pulled on his pajamas, got into bed, and waited.
(CoS, Ch7)
He threw his wand down onto his bedside table, pulled off his robes, stuffed them angrily into his trunk, and pulled on his pajamas.
(OotP, Ch11)
They pulled off their robes and put on pajamas in silence; Dean, Seamus, and Neville were already asleep. Harry put his glasses on his bedside table and got into bed but did not pull the hangings closed around his four-poster;
(OotP, Ch21)
And i couldn't track down any morning routine either (since we only really see Harry wake up and get up when something is happening, so...)
So we can't really count on Harry (or Dean, Seamus, Neville, and Ron all act the same way). I considered Harry and the others may just be showering/bathing and brushing their teeth earlier, but:
Half an hour later, Ron arrived, nursing his right arm and bringing a strong smell of polish into the darkened room.
“My muscles have all seized up,” he groaned, sinking on his bed.
(CoS, Ch7)
Ron clearly didn't shower/bath in any way that would dampen the smell of the polish he used in detention before heading to the dorms.
At this point, I considered the ramifications of the smell in the Gryffindor boys dorm. Technically though, the fact they don't use the baths much doesn't mean they aren't there. It just means their dorm probably stinks.
“Right,” said Harry, and feeling happier than he had in ages, he
and the rest of the team led the way, still in their scarlet robes, out
of the stadium and back up to the castle.
[...]
It felt as though they had already won the Quidditch Cup; the
party went on all day and well into the night.
[...]
The Gryffindor party ended only when Professor McGonagall turned up in her tartan dressing gown and hair net at one in the morning, to insist that they all go to bed. Harry and Ron climbed the stairs to their dormitory, still discussing the match. At last, exhausted, Harry climbed into bed, twitched the hangings of his four-poster shut to block out a ray of moonlight, lay back, and felt himself almost instantly drifting off to sleep. . . .
(PoA, Ch13)
Now, why does this chapter help us? well, if we're willing to reach a little, this paragraph can imply each dorm room has a bathroom of it's own. Because, the Quidditch team heads back to school in their Quidditch robes — they aren't taking a shower in the changing rooms. And we know they do usually shower after Quidditch. Hence, there is a bathroom in the dorm that Harry can take a bath in before "at last" falling into bed. Potentially. Hopefully.
Then, in CoS, Ron could've gone to that same bathroom after his detention after he talked to Harry. And I found another quote that implies this further:
Hermione cast the merrily dancing flames a dark look, and Harry distinctly heard her mutter “Slave labor,” before bidding them good night and disappearing through the doorway to the girls’ dormitory
(GoF, Ch12)
They are sitting in the common room in front of the fireplace, and Harry can see Hermione disappearing through the door to her dormitory, which is upstairs. Which means, there is a balcony of sorts, looking down on the common room from where the girls' dorms are. Which, then, implies, private bathrooms in each dorm is more likely than a joint one you'd have to walk past a balcony all the common room could see to get to. It would also help explain why Harry and the others always go straight to their dorms and not stop at any bathroom first.
It also helps with the whole "student out of bed" thing. They aren't allowed to leave their dormitories during the night, so it makes more sense they would have a bathroom in the dormitory.
As you can see, I couldn't track down any easy answer for the bathrooms like with the dormitories unfortunately, but I now believe each dorm room does have an abjoint bathroom. At least, I think it's more likely.
“Snape’s Head of Slytherin House. They say he always favors them — we’ll be able to see if it’s true”
The Changing Framing of Snape as a Teacher (Part 2 - Book 5)
Part 1 - Books 1-4
In part one, we saw a pretty villain coded, bully Snape. Now that Voldemort is back, do things get better for Snape in Book 5? (surprisingly, yes)
Class # 10 - Draught of Peace
For the first time, we get a clear picture of what a typical class with Snape actually looks like.
In the first four books, it's descriptions of students weighing and crushing ingredients, and Snape coming in with criticism when someone messes up. But when it comes to his actual teaching style - the most helpful line is from Book 2: “Snape prowled through the fumes, making waspish remarks about the Gryffindors’ work.” I’m picturing a hands-on, results-focused class with students getting instructions out of a book (the way Hermione can do with Polyjuice), while Snape walks around and corrects errors. This fits with the way he teaches Lupin’s DADA class -
They sat and made notes on werewolves from the textbook, while Snape prowled up and down the rows of desks, examining the work they had done with Professor Lupin.
Also, Snape seems to like putting students on the spot with questions. He does that on the first day of potions, and again in Lupin’s class.
However, in Book 5 he’s not a textbook guy, he’s a write-instructions-on-the-board guy. (Makes sense, gotta set up that Snape has… problems with the specific textbook Advanced Potion Making.)
"The ingredients and method” — Snape flicked his wand — “are on the blackboard” — (they appeared there) — “you will find everything you need” — he flicked his wand again — “in the store cupboard” — (the door of the said cupboard sprang open) — “you have an hour and a half. . . . Start."
I’m picturing something that looks very like the technical challenge from the Great British Bake off - right down to calling out timing cues (“A light silver vapor should now be rising from your potion,” called Snape, with ten minutes left to go.”) I go a little more into Snape’s classroom performance here, but basically - his presence/vibe/teaching style makes Harry and Neville actively worse, and they both start doing much better when he leaves them alone. But on the *other* hand, Hermione seems fine with the way he does things: she’s autism spectrum coded, good at learning things out of books, and definitely seems to likes a more structured class (does not do well in Care of Magical Creatures or Divination.) Snape spends the entire fall semester of fourth year going over how to synthesize antidotes, and when Slughorn takes over Hermione remembers how to do this… while Harry has nO idea.
We also learn that apparently Snape is a GOOD teacher, which is completely new information. He talks about “maintaining the high-pass level I have come to expect from my O.W.L. students,” which squares with Umbridge’s comment later on that “the class seems fairly advanced for their level.”
We also see a little more of Harry being an unreliable narrator:
“Potter, what is this supposed to be?” The Slytherins at the front of the class all looked up eagerly; they loved hearing Snape taunt Harry.
“The Draught of Peace,” said Harry tensely.
“Tell me, Potter,” said Snape softly, “can you read?”
Draco Malfoy laughed.
“Yes, I can,” said Harry, his fingers clenched tightly around his wand.
“Read the third line of the instructions for me, Potter.”
Like… is that a taunt? Draco’s being an ass, but I wouldn't say that Snape necessarily is? Harry's Going Through It in Book 5, and is just a raw nerve sitting there clutching his wand - a pretty aggressive little detail. I think this passage is meant to introduce the idea that Harry might be possibly be taking Snape in bad faith - instead of just the other way round. Their relationship is becoming more equal, which will become important in occlumency lessons later.
“Did you do everything on the third line, Potter?”
“No,” said Harry very quietly.
“I beg your pardon?”
“No,” said Harry, more loudly. “I forgot the hellebore . . .”
“I know you did, Potter, which means that this mess is utterly worthless. Evanesco.”
His potion had been no worse than Ron’s (...) or Neville’s (...), yet it was he, Harry, who would be receiving zero marks for the day’s work.
“Your potion wasn’t nearly as bad as Goyle’s, when he put it in his flagon the whole thing shattered and set his robes on fire.” [said Hermione.]
“Yeah, well,” said Harry, glowering at his plate, “since when has Snape ever been fair to me?”
So - here we have Snape being an unfair grader, being a little easy on Goyle, and coming down hard on Harry. But… the potion also doesn't seem like it was that good. “Not as bad as Goyle’s” is kind of damning with faint praise, when Hermione could have compared it to Ron's the way Harry does, or made a general statement about it's quality.
Also, it’s possible that Snape’s zero was meant as a motivational tactic, especially because it... works? Up until now, none of the ‘threaten extreme consequences’ tactics we’ve seen Snape use have ever actually worked.
Class # 11 - Strengthening Solution
Snape gives Harry a D (Dreadful) on his homework, and for one it seems like they're on the same page: Harry also “knew he had done a poor job.” Snape also just seems to have been a tough grader across the board - Hermione only got a “passing” grade, which I assume is an A (Acceptable.)
“The general standard of this homework was abysmal. Most of you would have failed had this been your examination. I expect to see a great deal more effort for this week’s essay on the various varieties of venom antidotes, or I shall have to start handing out detentions to those dunces who get D’s.”
He smirked as Malfoy sniggered and said in a carrying whisper, “Some people got D’s? Ha!”
Malfoy is over here being a little hype man… and also doing some of the structural work connecting the word “dunce” to Harry. Like that is absolutely an insult… but I don’t think it’s fair to say that Snape is insulting specifically Harry. Or at least not JUST Harry. And if he IS insulting Harry… only Harry knows it. Especially because the only people Snape ACTUALLY puts in detention for being “dunces” are… Crabbe and Goyle.
“I would’ve had Crabbe and Goyle with me if you hadn’t put them in detention!” “Keep your voice down!” spat Snape, for Malfoy’s voice had risen excitedly. “If your friends Crabbe and Goyle intend to pass their Defense Against the Dark Arts O.W.L. this time around, they will need to work a little harder than they are doing at pres —”
Which is the FIRST time we see Snape discipline a Slytherin!!! (Also gives us the interesting bit of info that if you fail your OWLs the first time around, you’re apparently allowed to retake them).
Harry actually does quite well this lesson:
Determined not to give Snape an excuse to fail him this lesson, Harry read and reread every line of the instructions on the blackboard at least three times before acting on them. His Strengthening Solution was not precisely the clear turquoise shade of Hermione’s but it was at least blue rather than pink, like Neville’s, and he delivered a flask of it to Snape’s desk at the end of the lesson with a feeling of mingled defiance and relief.
It seems like Snape's method worked.
STUDENTS INSULTED: Vague? I’ll give him half a point for Harry, Crabbe, and Goyle, because it was a generalized insult. 1.5 (TOTAL - 1, 11.5)
(“dunce”)
DETENTIONS GIVEN: 2 (TOTAL - 2, 4)
Disciplinary Action #8: The Draco Malfoy Special
Draco’s here to cause problems. First he’s “waving around an official-looking piece of parchment and talking much louder than was necessary” about how Umbridge is letting him re-form the Slytherin Quidditch team. This doesn’t get a rise out of Harry, so Malfoy tries going after Arthur Weasley… and then in a last-ditch attempt (losing your touch there) he goes after people with curse damage - and accidentally triggers Neville.
Neville struggled frantically, his fists flailing, trying desperately to get at Malfoy who looked, for a moment, extremely shocked.
Harry and Ron hold him back, which is when Snape shows up.
“Fighting, Potter, Weasley, Longbottom?” Snape said in his cold, sneering voice. “Ten points from Gryffindor. Release Longbottom, Potter, or it will be detention. Inside, all of you.”
And Snape doesn’t know Draco was involved, so… fair.
POINTS TAKEN: - 10 (TOTAL: - 10, -10, - 157)
Class # 12: Umbridge’s Observation
So Umbridge is here, and we get an absolutely classic Snape moment:
“You applied first for the Defense Against the Dark Arts post, I believe?” Professor Umbridge asked Snape.
“Yes,” said Snape quietly.
“But you were unsuccessful?”
Snape’s lip curled. “Obviously.”
And Harry is definitely engaged… but not in the class…
Harry was very interested in hearing her question Snape, so interested, that he was becoming careless with his potion again.
“Salamander blood, Harry!” Hermione moaned, grabbing his wrist to prevent him adding the wrong ingredient for the third time. “Not pomegranate juice!”
“Right,” said Harry vaguely, putting down the bottle and continuing to watch the corner.
Unsurprisingly, Harry’s potion does not turn out particularly well. It’s “congealing foully and giving off a strong smell of burned rubber.”
“No marks again, then, Potter,” said Snape maliciously, emptying Harry’s cauldron with a wave of his wand. “You will write me an essay on the correct composition of this potion, indicating how and why you went wrong, to be handed in next lesson, do you understand?”
“Yes,” said Harry furiously. Snape had already given them homework, and he had Quidditch practice this evening; this would mean another couple of sleepless nights.
And like… I don’t know about MALICIOUS as an adjective there, Harry. He’s giving you extra homework to make sure you understand the lesson. It’s tough, but you know. Understandable.
Disciplinary Action #9: Gryffindor vs Slytherin Pre-Game Shenanigans
Snape was no less obviously partisan [than McGonagall]: He had booked the Quidditch pitch for Slytherin practice so often that the Gryffindors had difficulty getting on it to play. He was also turning a deaf ear to the many reports of Slytherin attempts to hex Gryffindor players in the corridors. When Alicia Spinnet turned up in the hospital wing with her eyebrows growing so thick and fast that they obscured her vision and obstructed her mouth, Snape insisted that she must have attempted a Hair-Thickening Charm on herself and refused to listen to the fourteen eyewitnesses who insisted that they had seen the Slytherin Keeper, Miles Bletchley, hit her from behind with a jinx while she worked in the library.
This is interesting. On one hand… Snape is overbooking the Quidditch pitch (very annoying), ignoring the eyewitnesses who saw a Slytherin jinx a Gryffindor by insisting that the eyebrow thing was self-inflicted, and ignoring “attempts” to curse Gryffindors (which is interesting word choice. "Attempts?" very vague.) And McGonagall’s getting in on the fun by not assigning homework (to only the Gryffindors? Unclear.) Also - Alicia got embarrassed sure, but she’s good to play in the match. Snape ISN’T doing what we see Umbridge do, which is deliberately scheduling detentions at the same time as games. He isn’t even punishing anyone. He’s being sort of annoying, in a way that favors Slytherin. But all in all, he's being framed as - slightly worse than McGongall (who is also getting a bit of a call-out for being "partisan") and much better than Umbridge.
(Alicia's eyebrow-growing incident is treated very differently than Hermione's very similar teeth-growing incident in Book 4, that's all I'll say)
Class # 13: “Remedial Potions” (Occlumency)
This is a very interesting class because Snape *can’t* do his usual ‘work in silence from the book/blackboard’ thing. He and Harry are are also now at a MUCH more equal power level.
We start with a reminder of Snape’s reasonable-ness, which (as far as the framing is concerned) puts the reader in Snape’s court a little.
In a corner stood the cupboard full of ingredients that Snape had once accused Harry — not without reason — of robbing.
Harry has to be reminded (twice) to call Snape ‘sir,’ and Snape snipes at him:
“I can only hope that you prove more adept [occlumency] than Potions.”
“You have no subtlety, Potter,” said Snape, his dark eyes glittering. “You do not understand fine distinctions. It is one of the shortcomings that makes you such a lamentable potion-maker.”
BUT - this is also a great example of Unreliable Narrator Harry. He asks about Voldemort’s legilimancy abilities, and Snape pauses. Harry interprets this pause as something he does “apparently to savor the pleasure of insulting Harry.” Before Snape says this:
“Only Muggles talk of ‘mind reading.’ The mind is not a book, to be opened at will and examined at leisure. Thoughts are not etched on the inside of skulls, to be perused by any invader. The mind is a complex and many-layered thing, Potter . . . or at least, most minds are . . .” He smirked. “It is true, however, that those who have mastered Legilimency are able, under certain conditions, to delve into the minds of their victims and to interpret their findings correctly. The Dark Lord, for instance, almost always knows when somebody is lying to him. Only those skilled at Occlumency are able to shut down those feelings and memories that contradict the lie, and so utter falsehoods in his presence without detection.”
Whatever Snape said, Legilimency sounded like mind reading to Harry.
Snape has this big long explanation and Harry is just like. “So, it’s mind-reading. Like I said.” Fantastic.
And yes, Snape absolutely gets an insult in, but he’s not really focused on “the pleasure of insulting Harry” during this segment. He’s not really focused on Harry at all (probably why he’s missing that his explanation isn’t landing.) Snape is talking about - himself, basically. He’s talking about his own experience lying to Voldemort, which Harry does not realize. He's not picking up on the fact that Snape is actively afraid at this moment. It makes sense - he’s taking on a ton of risk in order to teach Harry this, and it makes sense that he’s thinking about how he’s going to lie to Voldemort the next time he sees him. This becomes even more explicit later in the scene, when Snape’s control on his own emotions starts slipping:
“Do not say the Dark Lord’s name!” spat Snape. There was a nasty silence. They glared at each other across the Pensieve.
“Professor Dumbledore says his name,” said Harry quietly.
“Dumbledore is an extremely powerful wizard,” Snape muttered. “While he may feel secure enough to use the name . . . the rest of us . . .”
He rubbed his left forearm, apparently unconsciously, on the spot where Harry knew the Dark Mark was burned into his skin.
But Harry is finally getting a lot of much-needed exposition about his psychic connection, and completely missing how uncomfortable Snape is.
His first attempt to block Snape actually goes pretty well. Snape recognizes that Harry let off some accidental magic, and says “Well, for a first attempt that was not as poor as it might have been.” Which is almost a compliment. Harry is still confused about what to do, and Snape does re-explain:
"Repel me with your brain and you will not need to resort to your wand.”
“I’m trying,” said Harry angrily, “but you’re not telling me how!”
“Clear your mind, Potter,” said Snape’s cold voice. “Let go of all emotion . . .”
But then Harry relives Cedric dying, which seems to trigger Snape (it’s the Voldemort of it all.) He looks “paler” and starts speaking with exclamation points.
“Get up!” said Snape sharply. “Get up! You are not trying, you are making no effort, you are allowing me access to memories you fear, handing me weapons!”
Honestly, I think he’s kind of projecting, and talking about himself here.
“Fools who wear their hearts proudly on their sleeves, who cannot control their emotions, who wallow in sad memories and allow themselves to be provoked this easily — weak people, in other words — they stand no chance against his powers!”
That “wallow in sad memories” part… see, I would definitely say that’s more of a Snape thing. I wouldn’t describe Harry as gloomy and wallowing, especially in Book 5. If anything he’s sort of avoidant, and could do with processing his grief a little more. And while he is on this hair-trigger, Harry is also getting more and more difficult to provoke - as we’ve been seeing with Draco. In THIS exact moment, it’s Snape that’s being “provoked.” Harry’s got himself under tight control.
“I am not weak,” said Harry in a low voice, fury now pumping through him so that he thought he might attack Snape in a moment.
“Then prove it! Master yourself!” spat Snape.
They try a third time, Harry connects the black hallway of his dreams with the Department of Mysteries, says “I KNOW! I KNOW!” - then Snape lifts the spell, which - responsible. Clearly something unusual is happening, and he needs to make sure nothing went wrong.
The lesson ends and Snape tells Harry to practice. He won’t.
“You are to rid your mind of all emotion every night before sleep — empty it, make it blank and calm, you understand?”
“Yes,” said Harry, who was barely listening.
Harry’s Voldemort experiences will start to get more frequent and worse, something which he (incorrectly) attributes to Snape’s lessons. What is actually happening is that Voldemort has become aware of their mental connection, and is looking for a way to get in.
STUDENTS INSULTED: Again, vague. I’m not sure whether to include “fools” and “weak people” because I think Snape is actually insulting himself in those moments. HOWEVER, Harry definitely interprets “Weak” as an insult, so in that respect it counts. And something like “I can only hope that you prove more adept [occlumency] than Potions” - is true, but definitely said in an insulting way. There’s enough subtle asides like that, that I think half a point is fair. 3.5
(TOTAL - 1, 15)
(“lamentable potion-maker”)
(“or at least, most minds are”)
(“weak”)
(“I can only hope that you prove more adept [occlumency] than Potions”)
Class # 14: Occlumency, Again
Things are reaching a breaking point. Snape pulls a lot of memories of Dudley’s bullying out of Harry’s head, but the one he focuses on is one of Harry’s Voldemort-memories. (Looking through Voldemort’s eyes at Rookwood kneeling at his feet.) Harry says that this image is just “a dream” - and Snape uses some legilimancy to confirm that Harry is lying. At which point Harry lies again, about how many Voldemort dreams he’s been having.
This is where the two of them have a pretty substantial misunderstanding. Harry is frustrated with his lack of progress in Occumency - and yes he’s not doing the independent work, but also Snape doesn’t know that he’s a horcrux, and that’s the reason he and Voldemort have this intense mental connection. At the end of Book 5 Harry will essentially invent his own way to kick Voldemort out of his head (using grief and love.) I’m not sure Snape’s “clear your mind” method is something Harry can do.
Harry is also frustrated that no one is telling him anything, which is why he does his detective thing and picks over the Voldemort dreams with Ron and Hermione. Snape misinterprets his motives:
“perhaps you actually enjoy having these visions and dreams, Potter. Maybe they make you feel special — important?”
He's projecting James’ motives onto Harry (Snape does this a lot) and never seems to quite put together that Harry actively dislikes being the center of attention. He’s a little more on-the-money with his second guess, however:
“You are neither special nor important, and it is not up to you to find out what the Dark Lord is saying to his Death Eaters.”
“No — that’s your job, isn’t it?” Harry shot at him. He had not meant to say it; it had burst out of him in temper. For a long moment they stared at each other, Harry convinced he had gone too far. But there was a curious, almost satisfied expression on Snape’s face when he answered. “Yes, Potter,” he said, his eyes glinting. “That is my job.”
Harry seems to mean “that’s your job” as more of an insult - (ie “I don’t trust you”) - which is why he feels like he might have gone too far. But Snape is “satisfied” - so he’s taking this as validation, maybe a one-up on Sirius. Maybe he’s pleased that Harry is finally thinking about things from other people’s perspective. Maybe there's even a little “he’s finally getting it" here. Because on the next attempt, Harry actually does really well. He breaks into Snape’s mind, and sees some memories from when Snape was a little boy.
Snape was shaking slightly, very white in the face. The back of Harry’s robes were damp. One of the jars behind him had broken when he fell against it. (...) “Reparo!” hissed Snape, and the jar sealed itself once more. “Well, Potter . . . that was certainly an improvement . . .”
Panting slightly, Snape straightened the Pensieve in which he had again stored some of his thoughts before starting the lesson, almost as though checking that they were still there. “I don’t remember telling you to use a Shield Charm . . . but there is no doubt that it was effective . . .”
Like - for the first time (maybe ever) Snape is pleased with Harry. That’s two compliments. We later learn that the reason the Pensive is here is because Snape is using it to store all the memories he doesn’t want Harry to see. But he's apparently fine with Harry seeing:
Tobias Snape yelling at Eileen Snape while a very young Severus cries
Severus bored in his bedroom sniping flies with his wand.
Severus not doing great on a broomstick.
If their places were reversed, these are all memories Harry would have problems with Snape seeing. Harry hates listening to people fight, he has a lot of trauma surrounding being bored in his room, and has a lot of self-worth attached to riding a broomstick. But while Snape absolutely does have triggers, they just aren’t any of these things. He’s not upset right now, which is confirmed later on when he IS upset by Harry’s voldemort-memory.
For some reason, Snape seemed even angrier than he had done two minutes before, when Harry had seen into his own memories.
But… Harry doesn’t know that.
Harry felt a thrill of dread: He was about to pay for what had just happened, he was sure of it.
Harry has another Voldemort memory, and actually makes it into the Department of Mysteries this time.
“Explain yourself!” said Snape, who was standing over him, looking furious.
“I . . . dunno what happened,” said Harry truthfully, standing up. There was a lump on the back of his head from where he had hit the ground and he felt feverish. “I’ve never seen that before. I mean, I told you, I’ve dreamed about the door . . . but it’s never opened before . . .”
“You are not working hard enough!” (...) “You are lazy and sloppy, Potter, it is small wonder that the Dark Lord —”
“Can you tell me something, sir?” said Harry, firing up again. “Why do you call Voldemort the Dark Lord, I’ve only ever heard Death Eaters call him that —”
I think the answer to that question is that Snape calls him “The Dark Lord” because he’s afraid of him, and he respects him, and maybe thinking of him that way makes keeping his cover easier. But Harry is responding to Snape’s insult with one of his own: “You can’t be trusted.”
But this whole interaction is Harry legitimately feeling kind of vulnerable, which Snape doesn’t pick up on. And then Snape feeling a little vulnerable (again, scared of Voldemort.) Which Harry doesn’t pick up on.
Luckily, class is cut short by Trelawney’s firing.
STUDENTS INSULTED: 2 (TOTAL - 1, 17)
("dim though you may be")
("You are lazy and sloppy")
Class # 15: Snape’s Worst Memory
Harry shows up late, fuming about Marietta’s betrayal and lying about having practiced occlumency. Luckily, Draco comes in with an emergency - Montague has reappeared after having been stuck in the Vanishing Cabinet. This sets up Draco’s Vanishing Cabinet plot in Book 6, and also that Draco and Snape have some kind of relationship outside of class. (Snape calls Draco by his first name, which is the kind of thing we see with Harry and Hagrid + Harry and Dumbledore, not Harry and McGonagall.)
Snape leaves, and Detective Harry wants to investigate “information about the Department of Mysteries that Snape was determined to keep from him.” Interestingly, even though he’s in heavy Anti-Snape Mode, Harry thinks he’s going to have enough time to do this because Snape is a conscientious head of house who cares about his Slytherins:
Would he come straight back to his office afterward, or accompany Montague to the hospital wing? Surely the latter . . . Montague was Captain of the Slytherin Quidditch team, Snape would want to make sure he was all right. . . .
Or - at very least cares about the Slytherin Quidditch team getting its captain back in one piece.
Harry witnesses the James Potter pantsing incident, and Snape comes back, and absolutely loses it.
“So,” said Snape, gripping Harry’s arm so tightly Harry’s hand was starting to feel numb. “So . . . been enjoying yourself, Potter?”
“N-no . . .” said Harry, trying to free his arm. It was scary: Snape’s lips were shaking, his face was white, his teeth were bared.
“Amusing man, your father, wasn’t he?” said Snape, shaking Harry so hard that his glasses slipped down his nose. “I — didn’t —” Snape threw Harry from him with all his might. Harry fell hard onto the dungeon floor. “You will not tell anybody what you saw!” Snape bellowed.
“No,” said Harry, getting to his feet as far from Snape as he could. “No, of course I w —”
"Get out, get out, I don’t want to see you in this office ever again!” And as Harry hurtled toward the door, a jar of dead cockroaches exploded over his head.
(the exploding jar is presumably Snape doing accidental magic.)
The last time Snape lost control like this was at the end of Book 3, when he is positive that Harry helped Sirius escape, and Dumbledore is gaslighting him. I want to compare these two segments:
[Dumbledore] looked as though he was quite enjoying himself. Fudge appeared angry. But Snape was beside himself
“OUT WITH IT, POTTER!” he bellowed. “WHAT DID YOU DO?”
“See here, Snape, be reasonable,” said Fudge. “This door’s been locked, we just saw —”
“THEY HELPED HIM ESCAPE, I KNOW IT!” Snape howled, pointing at Harry and Hermione. His face was twisted; spit was flying from his mouth.
“Calm down, man!” Fudge barked. “You’re talking nonsense!”
“YOU DON’T KNOW POTTER!” shrieked Snape. “HE DID IT, I KNOW HE DID IT —”
“That will do, Severus,” said Dumbledore (...) “Unless you are suggesting that Harry and Hermione are able to be in two places at once, I’m afraid I don’t see any point in troubling them further.”(..) [His] eyes were twinkling behind his glasses. Snape whirled about, robes swishing behind him, and stormed out of the ward.
“Fellow seems quite unbalanced,” said Fudge, staring after him.
So, a similar level of emotion (although Snape is talking in CAPSLOCK in PoA and not in OotP.) We get the same word (“bellowed”) But… the episode in Book 3… like it’s framed as kind of funny/satisfying right? Dumbledore certainly thinks it’s funny, with all that eye twinkling and “quite enjoying himself.” The comedic set up is that Snape, who has spent the end of Book 3 being a problem for Harry, is getting told off by two authority figures who normally tell Harry off. Fudge is an over-dramatic character, so it’s funny to see him call Snape over-dramatic. And Dumbledore knows that Snape is correct… but is still taking Harry’s side. This is supposed to feel like comeuppance for all the “Be quiet you stupid girl” and “Maybe the dementors will have a kiss for him too” that we get near the end of Book 3.
But Snape’s emotional outburst after Harry sees his memories is handled differently. Snape is scary, Harry is scared. Physical violence and the threat of physical violence is very much there, and when talking about it later on Harry says “he’d kill me! (...) You didn’t see him when we got out of the Pensieve —”
This is just generally something I’ve noticed about Book 5. The narrative voice wants us to take Snape seriously, understand where he’s coming from, maybe even kind of side with him over Harry sometimes. He’s very different from the comic villain of books 1-4, who exists to a problem for Harry, and a useful red herring.
Class # 16: Invigoration Draughts
Snape… I mean he obviously ends Occlumency classes, but he doesn’t react as badly as he could've, to be honest.
Meanwhile [Snape] seemed to have decided to act as though Harry were invisible. Harry was, of course, well used to this tactic, as it was one of Uncle Vernon’s favorites, and on the whole was grateful he had to suffer nothing worse. In fact, compared to what he usually had to endure from Snape in the way of taunts and snide remarks, he found the new approach something of an improvement and was pleased to find that when left well alone, he was able to concoct an Invigoration Draught quite easily.
At the end of the lesson he scooped some of the potion into a flask, corked it, and took it up to Snape’s desk for marking, feeling that he might at last have scraped an E.
He had just turned away when he heard a smashing noise; Malfoy gave a gleeful yell of laughter. Harry whipped around again. His potion sample lay in pieces on the floor, and Snape was watching him with a look of gloating pleasure. “Whoops,” he said softly. “Another zero, then, Potter . . .”
I think it’s unclear who exactly did the housecat thing and swiped Harry’s potion off the desk. Might have been Snape, might have been Malfoy. Either way, Snape does seem to be enjoying himself.
Don’t know quite what to do with this one though. Don’t have a category for “uncategorized petty BS.”
Disciplinary Action #10: Harry vs Draco
The battle of the Department of Mysteries has just gone down, and Harry and Draco are not doing well.
“The dementors have left Azkaban,” said Malfoy quietly. “Dad and the others’ll be out in no time . . .”
“Yeah, I expect they will,” said Harry. “Still, at least everyone knows what scumbags they are now —”
Malfoy’s hand flew toward his wand, but Harry was too quick for him. He had drawn his own wand before Malfoy’s fingers had even entered the pocket of his robes.
“Potter!” The voice rang across the entrance hall; Snape had emerged from the staircase leading down to his office, and at the sight of him Harry felt a great rush of hatred beyond anything he felt toward Malfoy. . . . Whatever Dumbledore said, he would never forgive Snape [for not helping]. . . never . . . “What are you doing, Potter?” said Snape coldly as ever, as he strode over to the four of them.
“I’m trying to decide what curse to use on Malfoy, sir,” said Harry fiercely. Snape stared at him. “Put that wand away at once,” he said curtly. “Ten points from Gryff —” Snape looked toward the giant hourglasses on the walls and gave a sneering smile. “Ah. I see there are no longer any points left in the Gryffindor hourglass to take away.
McGonagall reappears, gives Harry points for fighting Voldemort, and Snape takes away his ten. But this is absolute prime Little Shit Harry - he doesn’t care that he’s giving Snape “cheek,” and he's actively threatening Draco. Actually, the way the scene’s staged - Draco and Harry don’t even both have wands out. We have Harry pulling a wand on Draco (who didn’t even insult him this time.) Draco has also been written unusually sympathetically, calling Lucius the warmer “Dad” instead of the more typical “Father.” So, I think the framing is actually putting us on Snape's side here, or at least making the encounter balanced.
POINTS TAKEN: -10 (TOTAL: - 10, -10, - 167)
STUDENTS INSULTED: (TOTAL - 1, 17)
DETENTIONS GIVEN: (TOTAL - 2, 4)
CRYING STUDENTS - TOTAL - 3)
Snape is very important to this book, and of course to the next one (it is named after him.) The way he’s written reflects this. The main way I would describe Book 5 Snape is that he’s much less cartoonish than Book 1-4 Snape. He’s still a petty bastard... but he’s more complicated now, there’s subtext to his actions, there’s clearly a lot more going on under the hood.
I don’t think I can attribute this to Harry getting more emotionally mature, because the place where he’s the least emotionally mature is with Snape. The text has a lot of fun telegraphing how Harry is actively missing things during interactions, and misinterpreting things Snape will say or do. It plays with the framing in a lot of subtle ways to get us on Snape’s side. He’s more reasonable now than he was during the early books. He’s got more in the way of excuses and plausible deniability when he favors Malfoy and the other Slytherins. He’s no longer making people cry or bullying Neville. When he insults Harry, Harry insults him right back. Snape has also been given some positive traits (his students do well on their OWLs, he’s a conscientious head of house, he makes jokes that are actually funny...) Snape’s just been made into an all-around more complex character. Let's see if this trend continues.
This is really interesting - the narrative framing becoming super sympathetic to Snape OoTP onwards has always been really obvious to me, but I mostly recognized it in how i.e. characters who are JKR’s mouthpieces like Hermione, Dumbledore, Remus, even Molly all start defending him - particularly egregious in how Hermione, the literal muggleborn, has zero negative reaction to finding out Snape was a Death Eater and instead immediately starts to defend him and gets mad when other people bring up his Death Eater past because “he’s on our side now that should be enough” (which is very much JKR’s attitude towards the whole thing lol). Similarly, Remus defends Snape outing him in HBP and says Harry's hatred of Snape is just prejudice...
So I like the detailed analysis of the framing surrounding his lessons, I hadn’t thought about that part much (partially due to the fact that I mostly avoid rereading those passages because Snape pisses me off too much lmao).
Some important notes though -
Re: Snape complimenting Harry - as Snape says, eye contact is central to Legilimency, which is perhaps why he is nicer to Harry during these lessons than he is anywhere else. Because Snape is looking Harry in the eye the whole time - looking into Lily’s eyes. (I also view Lily as a Legilimens and her and Snape often using Legilimency together to communicate, which there’s some textual evidence for and adds another layer to it). Lily’s presence is all over these lessons.
But then Harry relives Cedric dying, which seems to trigger Snape (it’s the Voldemort of it all.) He looks “paler” and starts speaking with exclamation points.
^ this isn’t because of Cedric, it’s because he just saw a memory of Lily in Harry’s head:
A great black dragon was rearing in front of him. . . . His father and mother were waving at him out of an enchanted mirror. . . . Cedric Diggory was lying on the ground with blank eyes staring at him . . .
[...] Snape looked paler than usual, and angrier, though not nearly as angry as Harry was.
This is one of the allusions that, just as Harry and Dumbledore are alike in seeing their dead family in the Mirror of Erised, Lily is what Snape would see in the Mirror of Erised, just like Harry.
Hence “giving me access to memories you fear” “wallow in sad memories” etc. etc. And “Fools who wear their hearts proudly on their sleeves” connects to Dumbledore saying “I acted exactly as Voldemort expects we fools who love to act”.
And then, the position is reversed - Harry sees a memory of Lily in Snape's head. The passage starts:
He raised his wand. “One — two — three — Legilimens!”
A hundred dementors were swooping toward Harry across the lake in the grounds. . . . He screwed up his face in concentration. . . . They were coming closer. . . . He could see the dark holes beneath their hoods . . . yet he could also see Snape standing in front of him, his eyes fixed upon Harry’s face, muttering under his breath. . . . And somehow, Snape was growing clearer, and the dementors were growing fainter . . .
Harry raised his own wand.
“Protego!”
The description and imagery here is really interesting because it foreshadows the doe Patronus - the wording evokes the idea that Snape is almost like a Patronus, driving the dementors away from Harry. And then Harry using the Shield Charm lets him into Snape’s head - the Shield Charm is also symbolic of Lily which I explain here, and the Patronus is first described as “a guardian that acts as a shield between you and the dementor”:
Snape staggered; his wand flew upward, away from Harry — and suddenly Harry’s mind was teeming with memories that were not his — a hook-nosed man was shouting at a cowering woman, while a small dark-haired boy cried in a corner. . . . A greasy-haired teenager sat alone in a dark bedroom, pointing his wand at the ceiling, shooting down flies. . . . A girl was laughing as a scrawny boy tried to mount a bucking broomstick —
“ENOUGH!”
Harry felt as though he had been pushed hard in the chest; he took several staggering steps backward, hit some of the shelves covering Snape’s walls and heard something crack. Snape was shaking slightly, very white in the face.
With later context, we know that this girl is Lily. Several hints point to this - it’s similar to Lily telling James “I’m surprised your broomstick can get off the ground with that fat head on it”, and in DH the photograph attached to Lily’s letter to Sirius has Lily laughing at Harry on a broomstick, directly paralleling this memory.
Snape goes ENOUGH and pushes Harry out of his head specifically when we reach the Lily memory, and the description of him as “shaking and very white in the face” echoes him being “paler than usual” after viewing Lily in Harry’s head. Then he does this:
Panting slightly, Snape straightened the Pensieve in which he had again stored some of his thoughts before starting the lesson, almost as though checking that they were still there.
Checking the Pensieve... which contained his memory of Lily.
(Harry doesn’t recognize her, but probably because it’s just a quick flash, too quick to make out that it’s her, and/or maybe Lily’s face is angled in a way that it’s obscured and not totally clear to Harry.)
And that description of him shaking and pale and white is also echoed in Snape’s reaction to Harry viewing Snape’s Worst Memory, also consisting of Lily:
It was scary: Snape’s lips were shaking, his face was white, his teeth were bared.
Which we know isn’t his worst memory because of James (that’s a red herring), it’s his worst memory because it’s the moment he betrayed Lily and lost her friendship for good.
The comparison to the PoA scene is interesting because that’s a very similar red herring - the main reason Snape hates Sirius at that point and is furious he escaped to that deranged level isn’t because of the Prank, it’s because he thinks Sirius was the spy who betrayed the Potters and therefore led to Lily’s death. Harry, of course, wants revenge on Sirius in that same scene and book for the same reason.
(Which I think is the entire reason for the Prank - JKR needed a reason for Snape to hate the Marauders/Sirius in particular that didn't give away the Lily twist, but also didn't give away the "James is a bully" twist. I... think she probably did not intend that to be read as a particularly violent act on Sirius’s part bc then SWM wouldn’t be such a surprise.)
For some reason, Snape seemed even angrier than he had done two minutes before, when Harry had seen into his own memories.
Snape’s anger here is interesting, because I think? the implication is that because he just viewed/relived a memory of Lily, Snape has just been reminded of his motivation, of why he’s doing all this. For Lily. He’s feeling more determined and more desperate to atone and work hard at it, and therefore he’s more angry that Harry isn’t “working hard enough”.
JKR, of course, completely negates this with Snape’s reaction to Harry viewing his worst memory of calling Lily a mudblood. He stops the Occlumency lessons, a literal life saving skill that’s crucial for the Order’s success, because he couldn’t stand to be reminded of his own mistakes.
Occlumency lessons were the perfect time to truly start a Snape redemption and slowly start to change his attitude towards Harry, but instead it just gets worse.
And as for this passage -
“Perhaps,” said Snape, his dark, cold eyes narrowing slightly, “perhaps you actually enjoy having these visions and dreams, Potter. Maybe they make you feel special — important?”
He is projecting James to an extent, but he is probably also projecting himself. He would’ve once felt special and important at this kind of close connection with Voldemort.
Which Dumbledore explains in HBP:
“You will hear many of his Death Eaters claiming that they are in his confidence, that they alone are close to him, even understand him.”
It is Voldemort’s fault that you were able to see into his thoughts, his ambitions, that you even understand the snakelike language in which he gives orders, and yet, Harry, despite your privileged insight into Voldemort’s world (which, incidentally, is a gift any Death Eater would kill to have) have never been seduced by the Dark Arts, never, even for a second, shown the slightest desire to become one of Voldemort’s followers!”
And then the next passage is equally interesting:
“That is just as well, Potter,” said Snape coldly, “because you are neither special nor important, and it is not up to you to find out what the Dark Lord is saying to his Death Eaters.”
“No — that’s your job, isn’t it?” Harry shot at him.
He had not meant to say it; it had burst out of him in temper. For a long moment they stared at each other, Harry convinced he had gone too far. But there was a curious, almost satisfied expression on Snape’s face when he answered.
“Yes, Potter,” he said, his eyes glinting. “That is my job. Now, if you are ready, we will start again . . .”
It is, as you said, validation - because his job as a spy makes him “special and important” to Dumbledore, who is a pseudo father figure to him that he craves validation and praise from in the same way he once sought it from Voldemort, and that parallels Harry’s own dynamic with Dumbledore (and Harry is very much not feeling Special And Important to Dumbledore in this book, who is ignoring him).
One of my favorite pieces of Harry Potter media outside the main book series is the Fantastic Beasts book annotated by Harry, Ron, & Hermione. I thought some people might like to see some of their notes w/o having to support JKR. I’m also pretty good at telling their handwriting apart, but feel free to correct me if it doesn’t look right!
Hermione:
Unfortunately this is the only page Hermione actually writes on. On a positive note, this page is also really good for comparing the trio’s handwriting!
Hermione clearly has pretty small, neat handwriting that appears to be a mix of cursive and print. Her words are also spaced out for clarity, but the letters in the words themselves are a little cramped.
Think about how long Hermione’s essays are repeatedly stated to be, and how small she writes…
Ron: (pt 1 due to picture limits)
Ron is said to have handwriting like an “untidy scrawl” but it’s very legible. It’s untidy mostly in the sense that his letters vary in size and placement. His handwriting is easy to tell apart from Harry’s because of this, ESPECIALLY the size, but Ron also uses less cursive than Harry & Hermione do.
Technically the one where “bum” is circled could be Harry because the handwriting doesn’t make it clear but. I think we all know
The X’s next to “acromantula” are also a guess but considering he hates spiders most, he added X’s to pixies, and the letters are bigger than Harry’s, I’m willing to say that’s Ron.
Oh my god? The puffskein thing? Fred LOVES terrorizing Ron, the poor guy
Love Ron’s doodles also. Very cute, very fun
Harry: (pt 1)
Harry’s writing is surprisingly small, really comparable to Hermione’s. He also partially uses cursive though I’d argue he uses more print than Hermione does. What stands out most to be is how “low” his letters are. Where he crosses them, or the round part of d’s and b’s, or just generally that the lowercase are significantly smaller than the uppercase.
Harry points out in DH that he and Lily make their g’s the same way— I’m assuming what he means is that they both curl their g’s (and y’s) also very low. I would say this is his biggest tell when you’re trying to figure out which character wrote something.
Harry and Ron both joke about Hagrid a lot here. Out of love, I’m sure, lol.
Is there more context to the Snape thing ?? I don’t remember if anything about Kappas come up in regard to Snape (although I’ll be the first to say I barely remember HBP— I go back to it the least). If anyone knows, feel free to let me know!
These come much earlier in the book but I wanted to save them for last because it’s both Harry & Ron and because it’s my favorite. Harry jokingly calling Ron “Weasley” is something I don’t remember him ever doing in the books, which is fun.
Harry’s word was almost definitely “acromantula.” I love his weird stick figure. Why does it look like that?? (My hc is he made the limbs super long to make it look like Ron LOL)
Weird fun fact, Ron is the only one here who writes all 3 trio members’ names in this. Not important, just interesting
“Please, sir,” said Hermione, whose hand was still in the air, “the werewolf differs from the true wolf in several small ways. The snout of the werewolf —” “That is the second time you have spoken out of turn, Miss Granger,” said Snape coolly. “Five more points from Gryffindor for being an insufferable know-it-all.” Hermione went very red, put down her hand, and stared at the floor with her eyes full of tears. It was a mark of how much the class loathed Snape that they were all glaring at him, because every one of them had called Hermione a know-it-all at least once, and Ron, who told Hermione she was a know-it-all at least twice a week, said loudly, “You asked us a question and she knows the answer! Why ask if you don’t want to be told?” The class knew instantly he’d gone too far. Snape advanced on Ron slowly, and the room held its breath. “Detention, Weasley,” Snape said silkily, his face very close to Ron’s. “And if I ever hear you criticize the way I teach a class again, you will be very sorry indeed.” No one made a sound throughout the rest of the lesson. They sat and made notes on werewolves from the textbook, while Snape prowled up and down the rows of desks, examining the work they had been doing with Professor Lupin. “Very poorly explained . . . That is incorrect, the kappa is more commonly found in Mongolia. . . . Professor Lupin gave this eight out of ten? I wouldn’t have given it three. . . .” When the bell rang at last, Snape held them back. “You will each write an essay, to be handed in to me, on the ways you recognize and kill werewolves. I want two rolls of parchment on the subject, and I want them by Monday morning. It is time somebody took this class in hand. Weasley, stay behind, we need to arrange your detention.”
Barty Crouch Jr speed running the seven stages of grief when he's ordered to impersonate the Hogwarts Defence Against the Dark Art Professor, only to find out that this year's Professor is fuckin Alastor "Mad Eye" Moody.
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