Trevor, the toad

[honeycakehorse03]

No: HPFGUIDX 58520

Okay, I just started rereading the first four books in preparation 
for OoP and I once again came across Trevor, Neville's toad. If this 
has been discussed before, I humbly beg your forgiveness but I'm new 
and decided to throw out a few theories about what could be up with 
him.

At the moment I'm only in chapter 6 of book 1 and Trevor was 
mentioned 6 times in that chapter alone. (The Journey from Platform 
Nine and Three-Quarters.). Now, at that point no other animal (and 
so far we know the Boa Constrictor, Hedwig and Scabbers) has been 
referred to as often as Trevor. (actually Scabbers comes close but 
when we take into account that Harry is talking to Ron the whole 
time but barely exchanges two sentences with Neville, Trevor still 
has overproportional "screentime". 

The first sentence we hear after Harry enters the platform is "Gran 
I've lost my toad again." (p. 94, SSpb)
And when Neville is searching for him again on the train, it is made 
sure that we know he is lost, not once, but twice ("We've already 
told him we haven't seen it,", p. 105, SSpb)
Later Neville and his lost toad are mentioned again when they go to 
the boats ("Neville, the boy who kept losing his toad." p. 111, 
SSpb) and even Hagrid who just met Neville already picked up that 
Neville is the one with the toad ("Is this your toad? [...] You 
there, still got your toad?", p. 112, SSpb). 

Now, IMO that just screams "Important"
(or it could be a very clever manoeuvre to get us on the wrong 
track, but I'll get to that later) and when I decided to find a 
possible solution I came up with a few possibilities:

1.  Trevor is a toad
 Well, obviously he is a toad, as we have been told again and again 
and again. What I want to say is that he is only a toad, no other 
meanings or hidden clues, he is just a toad who probably wants to 
get away from Neville because he wants to return to where he came 
from as toads usually do. Nothing special about him at all.
 
2.  Trevor is Neville's pet
 Again, we are told this again and again and one can even go so far 
as to say that Neville is defined by his toad. JKR writes "the boy 
with the toad" and we know she is talking about Neville. Especially 
on pages 111f (s.a.) we can see that people who have just met 
Neville (Hagrid) only remember the toad abut him. 
 In chapter 5 we have heard about toads before ("Not a toad, toads 
went outta fashion years ago, yeh'd be laughed at...", p. 81, SSpb) 
and with comment we know directly in which category we can put 
Neville (especially in addition to him constantly losing Trevor). He 
is the kid everybody makes fun of. 
 This is only added by the fact that Neville seems to be genuinely 
worried about his toad (""Trevor!" cried Neville blissfully.", p. 
112, SSpb) and not ashamed of him at all. (In contrast to Ron who 
would "lose it as quick as" (p. 104, SSpb) he could. Hereby he is 
not only the kid they make fun of, but it is shown a different side 
of him, where he doesn't care about what other people think and 
therefore has more self-confidence than Ron, for example.
 In this case Trevor is a tool to explore Neville's character and 
has no real meaning himself.
 
3.  Trevor is somebody else's pet
 Or the familiar of a Dark Wizard/Witch (or his grandmother) that 
reports back to his master and seems "lost" on these occasions. 
About the reason why Neville would be spied on, well that depends 
somewhat on how long he has had Trevor. I don't think it is 
mentioned in the book, so I'm going to run through different 
possibilities.
a)  He got Trevor just before Hogwarts
 That could mean Trevor is supposed to spy on Harry or Dumbledore or 
even Snape (although, if I were a toad I wouldn't go near him *g*) 
We don't know who he got it from (I know it sounds wrong, but please 
bear with me, English is my second language) but as toads are seen 
as Old-fashioned as pets, I'd bet on his grandmother. Now is 
grandmother could either have been fooled from wherever she got 
Trevor from or she wants to keep an eye on Neville or others (s.a.) 
herself.
b)  He get Trevor before Hogwarts
 Okay, I have the problem, I don't really know how old toads get, 
but assuming that he could have lived with Neville before Hogwarts 
would mean that somebody wanted to spy on Neville, or perhaps 
controlling that his parents where really as bad off as everybody 
thinks?
 
4. Trevor is a wizard
 Just thought, I'd mention it but I really think the Animagus excuse 
has been used often enough (reasons for being with Neville s.a.) 
 
5.  Trevor is stupid
He is a toad without any sense of location and always has to be 
found by Neville.



Personally, I like 1 and 2 the best, because JKR leads us on the 
totally wrong track with mentioning him the whole time and in 
reality he is just a totally normal toad. Or with 2, I think it 
could show that Neville will definitely have a more important role 
later on because Trevor enables us to get a more in depth 
characterisation of him.

Sabrina