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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)

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

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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. 

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 . . .”

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

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 thinking about Lupin! Very cute

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