[HPFGU-Catalogue] JKR's FAQ answer about Neville

[Ginger]

Ginger, sore and stiff from a weekend of painting, wallpapering, cleaning and other unpleasant tasks, (which had nice results) re-enters the office.  True to her word, she intends to devote the entire weekend to this noble cause.  
 
But wait:  A diversion.  JKR answered her FAQ.  As Ginger settles in her chair she hears Carolyn remark:

How dull can you get? 

Apart from hinting that Frank & Alice were too cowardly to die for 
Neville (who can blame them?) and that there is nothing special about 
Harry after all apart from a unique ability to be in the wrong place at 
the wrong time, this is a yawnsville answer to end all yawnsville 
answers.

Ginger ponders this.  Then speaks:
 
Um, you know, there were really only 3 options.  1) It was Harry all along and Neville was just a roly-poly red herring.  2) It could have been either, and it was LV's bad luck that he marked Harry.  3) It could have been another child of whom we know nothing at all.)
 
I would have been disappointed in #3, unless there were clues that we totally missed over which we could now slap our foreheads in self-disgust.
 
I would have considered #1 a waste of pagetime.  Why go to all the trouble to have a second option and develop him as a character if it was all for nothing?  I would also have been disappointed in the whole "chosen from before birth" thing.  Harry has been protrayed as a normal kid.  For him to have had some great destiny and hidden powers (aside from being a wizard to begin with) where only he could defeat LV would be unsatifactory in my book.  Kind of "oh, here's a wizard no one can defeat, so we'll have someone extra special born with some sort of power no one else has in order to defeat him."  That would be the yawner.  
 
At least this way, LV had a sporting chance.  Had he not tried to kill a baby, neither would have been marked, and he would have been free to persue evil at will.  But he blew it himself.  Ha Ha.  That'll teach you to go around killing babies, you big bully.
 
Much more satisfactory than the scripted deux et machina (sp) of having one kid just happening to be born with the powers to defeat him at the time that he just happened to be in power.  What are the odds of that?  No, better that he is just born a normal kid, and then marked by evil.  
 
I also like the whole circular thinking of the prophesy.  No prophesy, no attempted killing.  No attempted killing, no marking.  No marking, no powers.  No powers, no prophesy.  
 
Self-fulfilling fate rather than an author having to stick in a kid with the power to win so the series can reach a conclusion.
 
Ginger, off to read her assigned posts.   

		
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