neville's raw power

[dicentra63 <dicentra@xmission.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 52564

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Jonathan Pessin"
<jrpessin at m...> wrote:
 Elkins says,
 
"Everyone believes that Neville is magically weak, even though all of
the evidence actually points to him having quite a bit of raw magical
power."
 
Paddywaack:
What evidence is this?  I'm new to the group, but all the evidence
I've seen points to Neville lacking much raw abiliby in magic (except
in herbology, which doesn't seem to require too much real magic, and
more merely human skills such as remembering what type of soil to use). 

 

With apologies to Elkins, I'll quote the relevant passages from "Still
Life with Memory Charm" post 36772:

I don't see much evidence at all that Neville has any problem
manifesting spontaneous magic when under adverse situations. In fact,
I see his problem as lying in just the opposite direction. It seems to
me that throughout the books, Neville has been shown to respond to
stress with unusually *strong* -- if also wild, unharnessed, and
uncontrolled -- manifestations of magical power, and that it is really
this tendency, rather than any true magical weakness, that accounts
for most of his difficulties.

Just look at what happened during his first flying lesson in PS/SS.
The poor kid is terrified of flying, and so what happens? Does his
broom refuse to take off at all? No. At first he can't get it to come
to his hand, true, but when he finally does, then he loses control of
it completely: it sends him soaring straight up into the air,
seemingly utterly on its own accord, until he finally falls off.
Harry's interpretation of the event at the time is that Neville must
have been so nervous that he "kicked off" too early, but I don't
believe for a moment that that's what really happened -- unless one is
willing to accept a rather broad definition of "kicking off." I tend
to read that scene as just another example of Neville's magic getting
away from him again. 

....

Neville sometimes gives the impression of being simply incapable of
performing magically. Far more often, though, his blunders in canon
are portrayed as powerful but unfocussed, rather than as weak and
ineffective. In GoF, for example, his difficulties with the banishing
charm are described as: "Neville's aim was so poor that he kept
accidentally sending much heavier things flying across the room - -
Professor Flitwick, for instance." In Transfiguration lessons, he
sometimes simply fails to perform, but he also does things like
"accidentally" transplanting his own ears onto a cactus. And his
Potions blunders tend towards the spectacular as well: is melting
right through the bottom of a metal cauldron really an *expected*
result of failing to follow a potions recipe properly?

....

Neville's adrenaline surges in Potions Class most certainly *do* cause
him to exhibit strong surges of magical power. Surely that's why he
melts so many of those cauldron bottoms! I've always read that
particular manifestation of Neville's potions ineptitude as indicative
of an uncontrolled and wild release of magical force. He's also
incompetent in the more standard ways, of course -- he gets his
measurements wrong, and so forth -- but I've always assumed that the
cauldron-melting incidents are meant to represent surges of strong
unfocused magic, rather than an inability to follow instructions
properly, or to remember ingredients, or anything of that sort.

....

...a *lack* of power isn't the kid's problem at all.

Even if he does want very badly for everyone to believe that it is.

No. I'm not joking. I really do think that Neville can be very sneaky
when it comes to this subject. He certainly does try to *encourage*
people to view him as magically-weak, doesn't he? He tells that story
of his late magical blooming to everyone at the table during his very
first dinner at Hogwarts, he expresses his concern that Salazar
Slytherin's monster might be coming after him next, because of his
"near-Squib" status...

Except that he doesn't. Not really. If you look at what he actually
*says* there in CoS, I think that it's quite suggestive. Neville never
once says that he is "almost a Squib." What he actually *says* is:
"everyone knows I'm almost a Squib" -- which isn't at all the same thing.

Certainly the student body as a whole seems to have accepted as Common
Wisdom the notion that Neville lacks magical talent. But really, who
was it who gave them that idea in the first place?

Yeah. Well, I'm not falling for it.

And neither is Snape.

Chapter Eleven, _CoS_:

"'A bad idea, Professor Lockhart,' said Snape, gliding over like a
large and malevolent bat. 'Longbottom causes devestation with the
simplest spells. We'll be sending what's left of Finch-Fletchley up to
the hospital wing in a matchbox.'"

As is usual with Snape, the snide tone somewhat masks the real message
(as well as the genuine concern for the safety of the students under
his care). Snape's concern here is not that Neville is magically
*weak* at all. It is that Neville is magically *strong,* but that he
lacks control, is particularly prone to losing control when under
stress, and is therefore more than likely to really hurt his opponent
if forced to duel while under the pressure of being put on the spot in
front of a large group of spectators.