OOP: Neville's Gran

[zenchela]

No: HPFGUIDX 64961

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Cohen, Meg" <MCohen at u...> 
wrote:
> Plain, ordinary, non-spoiler containing first line....
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> Lot's of people have been posting about Neville's Grandmother being
> deliberately mean to him, and hypothesizing that as a reason why 
he's not
> been particularly successful at magic up till this point.
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> I think y'all are being a little hard on the poor woman.  

(beautifully-put discursion snipped purely for brevity)


I quite agree -- Gran Longbottom isn't being malicious.  My belief is 
that she's doing her best to protect Neville, very much in the same 
way Dumbledore is trying to protect Harry . . . by keeping him in the 
dark (so to speak).

Gran is no fool -- she knows that Voldemort wants (1) pureblood 
wizards and witches and (2) powerful wizards and witches as Death 
Eaters.  *And* Voldemort can tell when someone's lying.  Everyone 
knows that the Longbottoms are purebloods, and as a child of two 
Aurors (who by definition *have* to be powerful), Neville will very 
likely be powerful as well.   Gran can't hide the family background, 
but she *might* be able to hide Neville's power to save him from 
Voldemort.  How?  by convincing *Neville* that he's not powerful.  
Tell him all his life that he's not as good as his father, give him 
his father's wand as an honor, not one of his own suited specifically 
to him, and play up the fact that he might be a squib.

Just my own thoughts.

Zen