CHAPTER DISCUSSION: Chapter 23: Christmas On The Closed Ward

[Erica Sadun]

No: HPFGUIDX 107316

>  > ariston finally decides to plunk down two knuts:
>>  <snip>
>>
>>  I guess I'm kind of raining on the parade here, but I actually don't
>>  think this takes away from Alice's gifts to Neville being deeply
>>  touching.  In the limited way that she's still capable of, Alice is
>>  expressing love.  But when I pause to think just *how* limited that
>>  is -- that Alice has been reduced to THIS -- that there might not be
>>  any significance to the gum wrappers at all, that perhaps for all
>>  Alice knows she's giving Neville pocket fluff or something deadly or
>>  a million galleons -- then I feel the pathos of the situation, and
>>  the utter horror of what the DEs did to her and Frank, much more
>>  strongly.  Azkaban was better, really, than those four DEs deserved.
>>  -ariston
>

This is one of my favorite scenes of the whole series.
As Ariston states, the significance of the gum wrappers is
their insignificance. In OotP, Neville grows so much as a character.
Between his clumsy successes in the DA, the assault on the MoM,
the revelation of the details of prophecy, and the St Mungo's
scene, Neville grows in ways that Harry does not. By the end
of OotP, Neville has become a hero; not a Harry Potter deus-ex-
machina-always-on-call hero, but a very flawed, very human hero
whose actions rise above his situation.

-- Erica, fond of OotP's new Luna and Umbridge characters