SPOILERS For Books 1-6.

Contains content from books 1-6.

It will not be updated with content from Book 7 (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows). If/when I create a blog that contains content on the seventh book I will create a new blog and will link from here.

This will forever be frozen as "Pre-Deathly Hallows." There are no Book 7 spoilers here (except for the guesses and predictions developed from these tables of earlier content).

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Handwriting in the Potions Book

I thought this table was really going to demonstrate that there were several different sets of handwriting in the Potions book but I was wrong:

QuoteSource
Scribbled

It was really very irritating, having to try and decipher the directions under all the stupid scribbles of the previous owner, who for some reason had taken issue with the order to cut up the sopophorous bean and had written in the alternativer instructions:

Crush with flat side of silver dagger,
releases juice better than cutting.

Book 6, Page 189

Half-Blood Prince, Chapter 9, "The Half-Blood Prince"
The more Harry pored over the book, the more he realized how much was in there, not only the handy hints and shortcuts on potions that were earning him such a glowing reputation wiht Slughorn, but also the imaginative little jinxes and hexes scribbled in the margins, which Harry was sure, judging by the crossings-out and revisions, that the Prince had invented himself.Book 6, Page 238

Half-Blood Prince, Chapter 12, "Silver and Opals"

Sitting up in bed, Harry turned the book sideways so as to examine more closely the scribbled instructions for a spell that seemed to have caused the Prince some trouble. There were many crossings-out and alterations, but finally, crammed into a corner of the page, the scribble:

Levicorpus (nvbl)

Book 6, Page 238

Half-Blood Prince, Chapter 12, "Silver and Opals"
Scrawled

And there it was, scrawled right across a long list of antidotes:

Just shove a bezoar down their throats.

Book 6, Page 377

Half-Blood Prince, Chapter 18, "Birthday Surprises"
He had just found an incantation ("Sectumsempra!") scrawled in a margin above the intriguing words "For Enemies," ...Book 6, Pages 447-448

Half-Blood Prince, Chapter 21, "The Unknowable Room"
Cramped
He groped for the potion book and riffled through it in a panic, trying to find the right page; at last he located it and deciphered one cramped word underneath the spell: Praying that this was the counter-jinx, Harry thought Liberacorpus! with all his might.Book 6, Page 239

Half-Blood Prince, Chapter 12, "Silver and Opals"
Scribbled and Cramped

Harry bent low to retrieve the book, and as he did so, he saw something scribbled along the bottom of the back cover in the same small, cramped handwriting as the instructions that had won him his bottle of Felix Felicis, now safely hidden inside a pair of socks in his trunk upstairs.

This Book is the Property of the Half-Blood Prince.

Book 6, Page 0

Half-Blood Prince, Chapter 1, "Chapter One"
Ponder This
So Snape had to be fifteen or sixteen, around Harry's own age. His hand was flying across the parchment; he had written at least a foot more than his closest neighbors, and yet his writing was minuscule and cramped.Book 5, Page 641

Order of the Phoenix, Chapter 28, "Snape's Worst Memory"

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