Catching the snitch in a blizzard - the next thing to impossible/finding a needle in a haystack.

 

Now I'm wondering...snitches could have a totally different meaning that might really confuse muggleborns.

You call someone a snitch when...they're hard to pin down? Or when they're really important, either in general or to you?

"He was snitching all over the place in that fight" - he was dodging, ducking, diving etc.

"The lawyer was a proper snitch during the hearing" - he was verbally dextrous, hard to pin down, very verbally skilled.

"He's the snitch" said by the assassin of his target - he is the priority, the way to win.

"This is the snitch" - this is how we win/succeed.

I think any of these could work, but you'd have to make a decision in your fix about how you were going to use the word and stick with it, not having too many competing uses just to avoid confusion.

 

You could have it used in two ways, with a generational/regional divide.

As a real life example - "Lucking Out" is a contronym - English has this mean 'I ran out of luck';,whilst US English has this as 'I got lucky'. However, I've heard it used by my generation much more in the US English sense - maybe being due to more films/shows being made in the US, rather than in UK?

So for older people, 'being the snitch' could mean acting erraticly, or being hard to pin down. They're used to the days when catching the snitch was significantly harder. However, modern developments in broom manufacture have allowed seekers to catch the snitch much quicker, and it's now viewed as more of a priority, so the younger crowd would refer to 'going for the snitch' in a way similar to 'going for gold', or 'going for the heart of the matter'.

 

Oh, I like that, yes.

Just imagine the confusion when a muggleborn either hears that get used, or quips about snitches get stitches and confuses everyone else!

 

Make it a one-shot where Hermione chose "snitch" instead of "sneak" for the DA parchment curse, and the pure-bloods from the DA don't understand what she meant.

Neville, having been mainly around old people, is all like, "But why? She wasn't hard to catch, I don't get it." The others, especially the Quidditch players would go for the other explanation. "It's ugly, but she's a worthless traitor, why would you write a compliment?"

 

Isn't that at least semi-canonical? Hogwarts Schools of Witchcraft and Wizardry and all that.

Best thing since self-inking quills?