[HPforGrownups] Re: Neville: was re: Authority and rule-breaking

[Amanda Lewanski]

No: HPFGUIDX 16593

catherine at cator-manor.demon.co.uk wrote:

> --- In HPforGrownups at y..., Amanda Lewanski <editor at t...> wrote:
> > I think there's *way* more to Neville than we've seen so far. I
> still
> > think he's had his memory damaged by well-meaning relatives. Maybe
> when
> > they learn charm-breaking or hex-removing or something, Neville's
> memory
> > charm will accidentally be broken? Hmmmm.
> > --Amanda
>
> I find this theory very interesting, and quite plausible, given
> Neville's general forgetfulness.  That is, apart from one thing. What
> possible reason could there be for Neville having his memory
> moderated?  He knows what happened to his parents, as was revealed in
> GoF, he spends sleepless nights thinking about it, as we find out when
> Harry has entered Dumbledore's pensieve.  What else could there be for
> him to know?

Well, it had been postulated that Neville might have been a witness to
it, and needed the memory of the actual event removed. He's Harry's age,
so he would have been at minimum about 15 months old, and since this
took place after Voldemort's downfall, he was probably older--old enough
for horrific images to stay. Knowing what happened, and having seen it,
are two way different things.

--Amanda

> As for your comments about Snape's frustration about Neville just
> being a hopeless pupil...Don't get me wrong, my attitude towards Snape
> has changed a great deal since GoF, if not earlier, and I don't see
> him in the black and white terms with which I feel he is often
> depicted.  However, in Neville's case, he is definitely an extremely
> bad, cruel and bullying teacher.  I come from a long line of
> schoolteachers (I am not one myself, but used to do private tutoring)
> and one thing I can say without equivocation is that the best a
> teacher can do is encourage and be positive about a pupil's
> achievements, NOT to bully, and scare them so much that they are
> always going to do badly in your class because you have turned them
> into a nervous wreck.  Snape may well be trying to get Neville to show
> his mettle, but IMO he is not succeeding, and is really getting a
> sadistic pleasure out of treating Neville badly.

No, I agree, Snape's behavior is beyond the pale where Neville is
concerned. I was trying to define "teacher" in terms of how Snape
probably sees it, as opposed to what we think a teacher should be.
Neville aside, Snape has been shown to be able to keep a class
attentive, he walks around and pays attention to individuals (albeit
nasty attention), and he gets results. So he's fulfilling the function,
and I didn't think the blanket label "bad teacher" covered it
adequately. It's sort of a yes-and-no thing.

--Amanda (hoping you all realized that "mollycoddle" and "idiot" stuff
in the original post was put in for Snape flavor! I forgot to use
parentheses or single quotes!)


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