Day in the Life of an Idiot

Wait, you're not on my flist for HP fandom...I'm disoriented!

The first thing we learn about Harry in the first book, pretty much, is that he does well in school. He gets pretty good marks at Hogwarts, too. Potions is a great exception--he doesn't do the homework, he doesn't pay good attention in class, and he has a lot of trouble mastering the theory. When he finally cheats at Potions and does well, I understood this to mean that his personality clash with Snape was the big obstacle to learning from him. Because he learns so well from Snape's old book, we realize as readers that he and Snape could have been best pals. There's something exceptional about Potions because there's something exceptional about Snape's relationship with Harry. In Charms and Defense, Harry excels, and he also does OK in Transfiguration.

I think when JKR started the series, she made the house-personality connection a lot looser. You get Neville, who is loyal and likes the Hufflepuff advisor, Hermione, who is a bookworm, and Cho Chang, who is a Ravenclaw who is great at sports. JKR's lazy (IMHO) decision in the last book to have all the Slytherins support Voldemort kind of ruined that. Though Snape and Regulus Black were both in Slytherin, so maybe it's meant to stay a little complicated.