Snape and Neville

[Porphyria]

No: HPFGUIDX 41873

Richelle Votaw asked:

> I've just been pondering Snape's behavior toward Neville. He's even more 
> cruel to Neville than he is to Harry, and that's saying something! Harry 
> he despises because he hated his dad.  But why Neville?

Richelle, I *love* your suggestion that Snape might feel guilty over what 
happened to the Longbottoms, and I think indeed there might be a 
Snape/Longbottom backstory that will shed more light on this situation. 
But to my mind their relationship already makes a grim sort of 
psychological sense as it stands.

Annechan was thinking like this when she suggested:

> James and Sirius were good everywhere, and it seems to us that snape was 
> exceptionnally briliant in Potion, and maybe DADA, and a 'neville-like' 
> student in the other classes. that's the reason he wasn't the headboy...
>
> So if he hates Neville so much it's because Neville reminds his youth as 
> the poor student whom everyone laught at.

Could be, although Snape seems pretty adept at conjuring up stretchers 
even when he's waking up from being knocked out, so I'm still not 
convinced he had trouble in school. But I do have a theory that's kind of 
parallel to yours.

A while back during a thread on Nevillie and Memory, it was suggested that 
Snape constitutes Neville's greatest fear because Snape represents exactly 
the sort of powerful, vengeful Dark Wizard that Neville wants to avoid 
becoming himself. [Elkins's recap/reply to that long discussion is #38398.
] I was pondering this myself lately and I decided that if Snape is 
Neville's greatest fear because he represents a version of himself that 
terrifies him, then it probably works the other way around too: Neville is 
Snape's greatest fear because Neville represents the parts of Snape that 
he hates and fears most in himself.

In other words, I'd say the thing Snape fears most in the world is 
weakness and vulnerability -- his own. Consider his reaction when Harry 
finds him with his leg mangled from Fluffy:

<PS/SS quote>

"POTTER!"

Snape's face was twisted with fury as he dropped his robes quickly to hide 
his leg. Harry gulped.

"I just wondered if I could have my book back."

"GET OUT! OUT!"

</PS/SS quote>

Wow, ALLCAPS and everything! I'd say Snape's reaction isn't simply anger 
that a student might find out about Fluffy, it's more like a hysterical 
bordering on irrational loathing at being caught looking vulnerable. 
Similarly, note his self-disgust at being caught exhibiting a 
psychosomatic symptom in reaction to  "Moody's" remark about "Spots that 
never come off":

<GoF quote>

Snape suddenly did something very strange. He seized his left forearm 
convulsively with his right hand, as though something on it had hurt him.

Moody laughed. "Get back to bed, Snape."

"You don't have the authority to send me anywhere!" Snape hissed, letting 
go of his arm as though angry with himself.

</GoF quote>

His initial reaction can be read as shame and humiliation when the person 
he takes for an Auror rubs his past mistakes in his face, and his next 
reaction I read as shame and humiliation at his own display of shame and 
humiliation. So he's plagued by a compounding sense of his own weakness 
here. When you combine all this with his usual toughness and gravity, you 
can say he *really* hates being caught out looking vulnerable. So I think 
he has an overwhelming revulsion for Neville because when he looks at him 
he sees his nightmare version of himself -- weak, frightened, blubbering, 
paralyzed to use his own power. I'm not sure, but it's possible Snape 
might blame his own sense of weakness or cowardice for luring him to the 
DEs; he might look at Neville and think, unconsciously and perhaps a 
little irrationally, "It was because I was a terrified screw-up like that 
that I let myself make that mistake." He might have similar feelings about 
the Prank: the traumatic thing for him was not that he almost got bitten 
(it's implied that James rescued him before Lupin tried to attack), but 
that he looked humiliated, weak, and perhaps very frightened in front of 
his rivals. I doubt Snape *likes* needing to be rescued.

Back to his problem with Neville: Neville's cultivated weakness irritates 
Snape because it's such a reminder, even a taunting version of what he 
wants to never think about in himself. So as with all neurotic 
relationship dynamics, Snape can't stop goading Neville over and over 
because the terror and self-loathing that Neville represents to him isn't 
going anywhere either. If Neville gets more and more jittery and hopeless 
under Snape's tyranny, at least Snape can indulge in the fantasy that he 
is somehow dominant over this weakness, he's separate from it, he's in 
charge of it rather than it being in charge of him, which is the horror he 
desperately needs to ward off. And that's worth a few melted cauldron 
bottoms and some disruption in class. At least Snape can clean up that 
mess with the wave of a wand. He can't clean up the mess of whatever fears 
are haunting him.

I think it also could be true that Snape thinks he's helping Neville -- 
Snape tries to motivate everyone through fear, Neville included. I've 
considered many theories suggesting that Snape has a logical reason to 
think he's doing the kid a favor: adrenaline smokes out magical ability; 
torture undoes memory charms, all warriors for the Light Side need to be 
tough under pressure, etc. But even if none of these are true, Snape's 
message to Neville is along the lines of "Snap out of it!" the same 
reaction as slapping a hysterical person thinking it will bring them back 
to their senses. This might never work, but again, it's one of those 
self-perpetuating neurotic relationships: Snape can imagine he's 
motivating Neville to stop being a wimp when of course he's making the kid 
more jittery and frightened. So Neville keeps on getting worse and worse, 
taunting Snape with his own worst nightmares over and over, and Snape can 
keep attacking the thing that he loathes and fears in the name of 'helping'
  the kid. And so it continues.

Then again, I have long secretly suspected that one day Neville will 
finally get ticked off and transfigure Snape into a newt, thus humiliating 
him yet again. Poor Snape can't win! ;-)

~~Porphyria


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