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"If I'm having lessons with you, I won't have to do Occlumency lessons with Snape, will I." ''Professor Snape, Harry — and no, you will not." "Good," said Harry in relief, "because they were a —" He stopped, careful not to say what he really thought.

"I think the word 'fiasco' would be a good one here," said Dumbledore, nodding.

In that excerpt, Dumbledore replaces a word Harry has not said with 'fiasco'. Not being a native speaker myself, however, I've been wondering: what's the word that Harry would have said, had he not considered it inappropriate?

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+1 for fun, original question –  dmr Oct 24 '11 at 15:52

2 Answers 2

up vote 6 down vote accepted

There's no way to know the correct answer. However, it would probably be a similar word to fiasco, only more negative and derogatory towards Snape. Perhaps "waste of time," "awful," or "catastrophe." But again, there's no way to know.

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Thanks! In that case, however, I wonder: why not say any of these, these words/expressions don't seem that terrible to me, especially since Dumbledore always knew how much Harry loathed Snape. I always thought it's a swear word :D –  arik-so Oct 24 '11 at 13:48
It might even have been 'fiasco'. –  TimLymington Oct 24 '11 at 14:55
@cindi: I'm not sure about your 'hesitate to disrespect' since immediately before Harry didn't use Snape's title and was corrected for the disrespect (even though leaving the title is a pretty automatic, unconscious thing). –  Mitch Nov 22 '11 at 14:16

Considering that Harry was impolitely leaving out Snape's "professor"-title, he probably wanted to finish the sentence with a rude word or even a swear word.

The only way to know what Harry really wanted to say is to ask the author, I suppose.

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