Neville's family

[Berit Jakobsen]

No: HPFGUIDX 87649

Meri wrote:
My question  is this: why would the Longbottoms think that Neville 
was all Muggle? Was his mother from a Muggle family? Or are the 
Longbottoms  not all wizards and witches as I thought? 

Berit replies:

I think it's quite clear from the context why the Longbottoms thought 
Neville didn't have any magical abilities: Simply because he hadn't 
shown any. That's why they were always trying to "force" him to 
reveal some :-) His Uncle tried to, quote: "to catch me off my guard 
and force some magic out of me... but nothing happened until I was 
eight." (PS p. 93 UK Ed.) It seems that usually magical children 
reveal their abilities much earlier in life. Just look at the 
campsite scene at the Quidditch World Cup; Harry spotted two and 
three-year-olds brandishing mini-wands and flying on toy 
broomsticks :-) Neville couldn't do that sort of thing when he was a 
toddler; in PS, even as an eleven year old, he tells Harry he had 
never ridden a broom before. And even after Neville, at the age of 
eight, had "proven" he was magical after all, his family "thought I 
might not be magic enough to come (to Hogwarts]" (PS p. 93 UK Ed). 
Poor Neville just didn't show much talent for magic :-) Opposed to 
for instance Harry, who wasn't even brought up by wizards, but made 
strange things happen around him from an early age.

Berit