Why did JKR make Harry learn so much about potions in book 6? Is Harry going to have to use a lot of potions in book 7 or was it just for Snape being the HBP?

Good find! I have absolutely no clue. I have a feeling it has to do with the remaining horcruxes. I have a feeling the horcruxes are all submerged in some time of liquid/potion....a "brewed death"....

I think its because there has been a theme throughout each of the books that matches certain subjects at Hogwarts. Also, they emphasized or foreshadowed what happened at the end of the book with Dumbledore's death.

Harry wants to be an auror. Potions is one of the subjects he has to have in order to be one. Besides, we wouldn't have known about the Half Blood Prince, if he hadn't taken potions.

I would also say so he could become an Auror but now i just dont see him becoming an Auror even if he becomes qualified. After all that has happened between Harry and the ministry it is a no go on Auror.
JKR wouldnt have made Harry learn all that potions for nothing though and it wasnt just for us to discover Snape was the HBP. She could have used another subjects old book.

OMG! I completely forgot about his career aspirations. That would make sense, but shouldn't there also be an emphasis on things like transfiguration?

I dont think harry realy "learned" alot in potions i mean he was just following the HBP's instructions it s just featured heavily inthe book because of the HBP and Slughorn. However i do think potions could be guarding the horcruxses maybe snape is the only death eater who knows and voldemort recruited him to help protect the horcuxes.

I think Snape brewed the potions. And yeah Harry really does suck at potions. But with Snape's help, he was "great." I've never even heard of another wizard with the same capabilities as Snape. That would also account for him being able to salvage what was left of Dumbledore's hand.

Hmmm....it would be interesting if the potions come into play in 7. Harry never was that great at it, but he did learn quite a bit from Snape's book. And in Harry's defense, it must not have been easy to be a good at a subject when the teacher positively hated you based on your very existance. Perhaps it will be important to the plot.

Yeah....I can't imagine going through potions with Snape myself. And then the Occlumency lessons....that's alot. But potions must be important in book 7. Even if he did announce that he wanted to be an auror, there would need to be a stronger emphasis on other classes as well.

I dont believe Harry is as bad at potions as we think. After all he did pull of an Exceeds Expectations on his OWL. And in OoTP he said he was suprised at how good he was without Snape breathing down his neck.

Wasn't it because you have to use potions a lot if you want ot be an auror. He was also quite good at potions (when Snape isn't there of course!) He got an Exceeds Expectations in his O.W.L. so without Snape reaching he's good at it, like his mother I suppose. It might alos have been so we could meet Professor Slughorn and get to know him a little bit better.

We mustn't forget that the fake horcrux in the cave was immersed in a potion. How many of the other horcruxes are hidden the same way? And don't forget, when Dumbledore injured his hand , he went to Snape first, and wanted Snape when he and Harry came back from the cave. So, I would say potions are a very important subject for Harry to learn.

Very good point, Former Death Eater. It seems that potions are very important in healing. Madam Pomfrey had Hermione taking 10 different potions a day after she was hit by that curse in OotP. Perhaps Harry needs to learn what poisons CANNOT be helped by a bezoar and work on those antidotes, eh?

Somehow i dont think that all of the Horcruxes are protected in the exact same way. In book 7 Harry had trouble as did the entire class with antidotes so i believe also that the trio will need to become skilled at finding and making antidotes so they dont have to run to the hospital everytime they get a Horcrux.

I think potter will ask himself the same questions and snape will come up with a perfect answer. But harry will deny him all because of who he is. After harry defeats voldemort i think that he would have seen enough trying to destroy dark wizards for a lifetime.

Harry probably learned so much because he is going to be an auror!! He also learned so much because JK made it so!! There is probably another reason that we will figure out in the seventh book!!!

perhaps it was because the new teacher was slughorn, and she wanted to show the difference between him and snape, or because the HBP was involved in the book, there are many studies associated with being an auror, so i dont think it was that.

I think it has to do with Harry wanting to become a Auror.Maybe he will become one if he lives.I guess we will have to wait and see.

i like the thought that all the horcruxes are submerged or have something to do with potions. did anyone ever think that maybe dumbledore wasnt thinking to right after the journey for the ring and maybe just stuck his hand in a liquid surrounding the ring? that might be why his hand was burned all black. i dunno, just a thought!

No, it's really all just about the language. Herbology, Potions, and Care of Magical creatures get more mention than, say, Charms and Transfiguration, because there are more interesting things to describe in those classes.

In Potions there are colors, tastes, textures (Polyjuice potion is almost solid, muddy sludge) and vapors to be described, and there are both real herbs and animal ingredients with legendary magical properties, like Valerian, and made up items like Gillyweed.

Similarly, Herbology has a lot of color, texture, smells and souds to be described, most of which feeds into Potions (like Mandrake root). The same goes for Care of Magical Creatures, where Unicorn hair and blood, Dragons heartstrings and blood, and Acromantula venom are all Potions or Wand ingredients, and the list of interesting and dangerous critters to meet in the forest is all but endless.


What do we read about Charms and Transfiguration? Wand-waving stunts like moving pillows across the room, and turning turnips into teacups (or whatever). And also, "Harry struggled to wrap his mind around difficult new concepts and abstract spell models..." (That's a rough and probably not very accurate quote, from somewhere in book 5 or 6.)

There's a lot of powerful magic in Charms and Transfiguration, but it is not much fun to describe, because it is not as colorful, and it gets rather repetitive describing new charms and special wand movements, over and over.


Now that Olivanders is defunct, Hogwarts might have to start teaching classes in Wand Construction and Theory, to fill future needs. It would be rather like a music school teaching classes in instrument construction and theory, a little odd, but necessary in the long run.

I had a deal more to say about why only Hermione takes Arithmancy and Ancient Runes (They both would turn off readers, they don't promote the plot much, and I suppose they would provide no chances for conversation that cannot be filled in the History class instead.) Also why they take Astronomy and History (At least one critical plot point was hidden from us in a History lecture, missed when Harry, Ron, and Hermione were talking in the back of the class, and Astronomy is there mainly to get them out in the open, to see Hagrid and McGonagal attacked in Book 5.)

But I digress from the topic here, which is not Hogwarts classes in general, but just Poitions. So goodbye.

Harry wants to be an auror, and potions is one of the things that is needed to become one. In Potions, he just followed the instructions from the HBP. Also, Slughorn came into the picture, and he knows about horcruxes and he had the memory that Harry and Dumbledore needed in their lessons. So with Slughorn there, Harry learns what Voldemort did in order to become immortal, and that he has to search for all of the remaining horcruxes to destroy them.

i completely agree with you. it doesn't seem as though harry realy learned much about potions, but he definately learned more about snape (who i think will be a central charecter in book 7). i always just assumed that voldemort brewed the potion that weakened dumbledore, but now that you metnion it, snape makes perfect sence. maybe he found out about the horocruxes even before dumbledore did. that could be why dumbledore tursted snape so much...snape probably told dumbledore about the horocruxes.

Well I think he might have to use some potions in book 7, because come on, the horcuxs arent going to be that easy to obtain. Also, I think that he will go back to Hogwarts to retrive the book and use it a lot more to help healing people and to make anidoats sp? and all that stuff and then if snape turns out to be good, he might even help Harry with the potions to make them better and more stronger.

anidoats (sp?) = antidotes


Yes I think Harry's persistent inept abilities in Potions will be vital to the plot in the Seventh Book. I think Harry will have to come up with some antidote or potion that will earn the respect of previous Potions Master Severus Snape. ( Since Snape is Still Good!)other than that I think, as all magical studies so far, will be highly prevalent to the plot, showing that education and preperation do payoff in the end


-~*Albus*~-

I agree with u hp6. I think JKR wanted to show us what a different teacher can do. If you look back Harry didn't do to good in DADA when snape took over.

i think it was because slughorn was a different teacher, he was new and harry needed to think the hbp was a good guy, so she showed him helping harry alot, so at the end it was a real shocker knowing that the person who helped harry, could kill dumbledore.

Well, I think you've all got good reasons, but I'm here to say something different cause I'm special like that. They change the Potions Master after sixteen years, and for some strange odd reason I can't figure out why, after all these years, Dumbledore allowed Snape to have his desired Defense Against the Dark Arts post, but I'll talk about that later. Slughorn was new, and yet he had a past that was extremely important, which makes me think that Dumbledore sought him out for that exact reason, which birngs up another question. What did Dumbledore know about the Dark Lord's intentions and how? Again, I'll search through the Forum to post that later. When Harry just happens to find Snape's old potions book in the classroom, this creates a connections with the two characters, which just makes the sixth book so much cooler. I think she spent such an effort on the potions, because of how important these Potions Masters now all of a sudden were on the story. Snape's potions book is almost a form of foreshadowing, a penseive if you will into his head. I mean, there wasn't so much of an importance suddenly, but the book, that's what's the most important. Harry learnd more from that book than he ever had from Snape, though I'm still not all that sure how Harry couldn't recognize the handwritting, though I guess it could have changed, but still, that much? Another later theory. I think that Potions was only empasized because of the book, and because of Snape, who was a Potions genius, was such an important character, though we really didn't notice it until the end of the book, or at least, I didn't until now. Now, the more that I think about it, the more I see how all those clues led up, and why didn't I notice anything before? Later forym topic, I do believe.

~La MaitressedeMort

I agree that focusing on potions was only to help us find out more about slughorn and snape. Also isnt Harry planning to not come back to school, which means that he wont take NEWTS which means he wont become an auror anyway. so potions wouldnt be needed for his job although i think that harry will need more skill in potions in #7 if he is gonna take on snape and voldemort

my question is, what potions did JKR mention them learning in the 6th book??? that might be the important thing. first day, draught of living death(very powerful sleeping potion), and i don't have my book handy, but if anyone has the time, you might want to look up the potions that they learned.

yer i thought about this and i thought about bein a auror and he would need potions. i also thought it was a strange book to put all those spells in a potions and why not in a DADA book, because snape has always had interest in the dark arts and why not do a hole book of dark spells?but.... i duno does any one else think im on the right tracks???

Thats a good point betsy, snape was always obsessed with the dark arts. why a potions book? maybe simply because being good at potions made slughorn like harry even more, which is vital to the plot of harry getting the horcrux memory. thats the only reason i can think of other than plothole. ha ha.

Harry was not very good at potions before. He was good enough. The potions book should help Harry become great. I expect Harry will use something from the book in his search for the horcruxes.

Yea. maybe he will use it lots. Or maybe he'll have to figure out about the potion DD drank. Or maybe half blood prince comes into it heaps.

thats very interesting

the emphasis on potions is important i think, especially since in the other 5 books harry has always focused on DADA. i think that potions will be important to him in the final book, also maybe JKR felt he didnt know enough so to give in a better understanding of what potions can do, however he did get an EE in his OWL so he is good at potions and hermione can always help him if he needs it.

i think it was also another way to introduce slughorn more into the book because he was important to the horcruxes and also his interst in harry and his likeing of lily could also be important

also the HBP book probably needed to be potions because it would be more useful to harry, also it is a way for harry to get the old book because snape wouldnt leave any other school books lying around in classes he didnt teach also it needed to be a subject harry didnt intend to take so he could borrow a copy

now i know there would be other ways to introduce the book however JKR probably just chose this way to do it

I too believe that it has something to do with the next book. I have no idea what and could not think of any ideas as to why but someone made a good point about the horcruxes and it having something to do with finding them all and destroying them.

Hannah

I think it was to highlight the absense of Snape, Harry's ability in the subject without Snape, the potions book, and etc. I don't think there was that much potions in the book, but it was enough that it was more than every other class, and we noticed it. Also, there was something going on involving the potions class, which affected the rest of the book, and that needed to be in there, only under those circumstances. I'm not sure how important it is going to be, since I didn't think that it highlighted or foreshadowed anything in the next book, it was just something important for that specific book. I still think that the Defense Against the Dark Arts will be the most important in the next book, but this isn't really the time to talk about this. Why am I watching something I've already seen? It's insane. Oh well. I think it wasn't a foreshadowing thing, cause generally her foreshadowing thing highlights things that were minor, not something so major. I think it was a one time deal, but that's just me. I should go watch Farscape! I have an entire season, and only one week to watch it. Scary!

~La MaitressedeMort

Could be the book was one of those 'fortunate accidents' that Harry stumbles into so much in the books, which serve as really engrossing narrative points of excitement. The book is a mechanical device that serves, as noted above, to put Harry into a good light with Slughorn, and to remind Slughorn of Lily, whom he winds up talking about alot as a result and who becomes Harry's tool for getting the info/memory out of Slughorn.

So it's possible the book is a narrative device and no more.

But it is, after all, SNAPE's book. So it seems to be MORE.

It is full of things that go counter to the "approved methods" that the ministry would approve of (as Hermoine keeps reminding us). Harry needs more flexible magic than ministry magic to do what he has to do.

And a potion is the thing that sets up Dumbledore for death.

Too much.....

Good question! Perhaps Harry will have a closer relationship with Snape (if Snape really ends up being good). Maybe the horcruxes will be guarded by potions like in the cave?

His annotated, mysterious Potions book is the first book Harry ever really gets into. He even reads it for leisure/obsession. The book is teaching him, in addition to Potions tricks that Snape knew, that learning something can be an exciting interaction with a book rather than a chore. Maybe this respect for books will lead him to respect and need Hermoine all the more, she who dwells amidst old library dust.

Interestingly, his Potions book functions for him the way the Harry Potter books have been functioning for JKR's fans--he pores over them looking for clues he might have missed.

Finally, I think the focus on Potions was to set up his coming to terms, at last, with Snape.

That one book because of of how it was personalised, made Harry so interested in its contents, that he found he was reading it for liesure.

Which leads me to wonder this. Will Harry find more answers to help him, inside the pages of Snapes old potions book? By that I mean, Snape was a majorly expert potion maker. Remember he was one of only a handful capable of making the Wolfsbane potion, he could have helped LV make the potion to protect the Locket (and since we know that he's a double agent he told DD how to get past it lol).By this I don't necessarily mean that the other Horcruxes are protected by potions in the same way but there are spells in that book that don't happen to appear in any 'normal' spell book. Ofcourse the spell I'm thinking of is the one to make Horcruxes...could Snape have found out how LV did it and wrote everything down in the book?

Or is Harry going to learn more from the book just to help him with his aspirations of becoming an Auror?

If Harry can get past the fact that he now knows it's Snape's book, I think so. Maybe the book itself will help him process his Snape issues somehow, like the series is helping people process so many things about good, evil, friendship, loyalty, etc. And on the subject of loyalty, I wonder if the way Snape labelled the Sectum Sempra (sp?) curse tells us how Harry might find out who Snape is loyal to--if it is "for enemies", if Harry were to find out who it has been used on, he could tell who Snape considered his enemy.

But I really really like thinking about your suggestion regarding the possibility that the horcrux spell might be written in that book, or at least something related to it. I'm guessing Harry hasnt found every little thing yet, and that many of the things he's looked at he simply didn't understand.

That might open up the narrative-simplifying possibility that Harry could undo the spells somehow rather than having to destroy the horcruxes per se. If a horcrux were to be released from its housing, what then? Would it, like the diary, find a way to manifest itself and thereby interact with Harry? This would be one of the ways JKR gives LV the face-time she says she will. Just a thought.

I just read the first page of answers but i couldn't see anyone with with the explanation I think is the most accurate but i can bee wrong as anyone... i think that Harry had to use his (HbP) potions knowledge to bee able to retrieve Slughorns memory, without the book he wouldn't have gained the Felix Felicis in the first place and without it i don't think he would have got the memory...

Okay I think that the book will come into play in DH... some how... But I don't think that it will have any horcrux stuff in it...
I think that it will help Harry with antidotes to potions protecting the Horcruxes... and maybe help him understand Snape more to and find who his loyalty belongs to...

If the potions book is used in the DH, I don't think it will be of any help in finding the horcurxes, because the book was Snape's when he was in school. I don't think that he or anyone had any knowledge of the horcurxes at that point in time. But I could be wrong.

I am re-reading the HBP, and I found myself wondering what the signficance of having Harry take Potions would be. It seems to me that nothing happens by accident, and there had to be a reason why Jo, through Dumbledore, would have Snape finally shift over to DADA after all these years, just in time so Harry could take Potions with Slughorn. It was too coincidental to be a true coincidence.

We're nearly to the end of the book (my son and I) and we just got to the point where Ron asks Harry if there was any way they could brew Felix Felicis themselves, to keep a stock on hand. Harry looks in his handy dandy potions book, and talks about how complicated the potion is, and the fact that you've got to let it stew for six months.

So here's the rub - Slughorn didn't have time to make a fresh batch of Felix Felicis, from the point that he agreed to teach at Hogwarts, and it seems entirely unlikely that he would have been brewing it just for kicks before DD and Harry showed up. After all, he'd been on the move for the previous year, never staying in one place longer than a week or two. It would have been kinda hard for Slughorn to keep brewing it the whole time he was on the run.

This leads me to a rather intriguing possibility - could Slughorn have a time turner, or some other mechanism to go back in time and give him the necessary time to have that fresh batch of Felix in time for his first lesson at Hogwarts?

That can't be true as one why would the ministry have given him a time turner in the first place and two in ootp they smashed all the time turners so he would not have been able to get one for that reason. On the point he also had polyjuice potion which takes a month to brew so he must have had to start before the lesson as well, he could have started straight after dd and harry came to see him as he would have had time for that one but i think it is unlikely that he just made some felix felices just for the class i think he had it for another reason already like to make sure the death eaters couldn't find him and take him.

i think the reason harry took potions in book six and got good was to be able to devolope Slughorn keep snape mean and make harry hate snape more.

In Book six HBP harry's best subject is the one he used to be bad at because of snape and snape took harry's best class DADA. Also this allows harry to feel betrayed by snape the HBP. THis also shows that it is snape that holds harry back not his ability. This is provedc by his E on the OWL.


In resonpns to sullivanbkeene why did snape have Veritiserum? i think that 1) Slughorn could habve used the school's batch or that Snape had already made the Felixis for his potions class if he was continuing since snape probally tought using that potion

Well, all the potions that Slughorn displayed to the six years could have actually been made by Snape. At that point he'd been at Hogwarts for 15 years. He lied to Umbridge telling her she had used all his stock of Veritaserum. He keeps his private storage locked, his class storage has just the basics for class use, right? He's in his private storage when Karkaroff is freaking out about how visible the Dark Mark is becoming.

Snape was the Potions teacher for 15 years before he fled with Draco; Snape was also the brewer of Wolfsbane for Lupin, despite how difficult it is to make and he made it perfectly every time as per Lupin; Snape also provided all the medical assistance necessary to Dumbledore himself, preferring Snape over Madam Pomfrey.

Snape is a wiz at potions and I bet they were all his own private stores.

On the note of Snape being the HBP and the Potions' teacher, why didn't Snape turn Harry in for attacking Draco using Septemsemptra? That was a huge violation and Harry might have actually been in deep trouble for it had Snape reported him, so why didn't he?