Neville's dumb mistake (was Why don't Ron and Ginny know?)

[Janet Anderson]

No: HPFGUIDX 113178

Dumbledad asked:

>Imagine that you are teaching a boy who is struggling with his
>education, and you know that he was brought up by his grandmother
>because his parents were tortured close to death and now reside in a
>mental home. Would you be able to treat him as McGonagall treats
>Neville?

I certainly would. "Abysmally foolish" doesn't even begin to describe it -- 
and Neville is not stupid.  (If it had been Crabbe or Goyle, no one would 
have been surprised.)

As far as everyone knew, there's a deranged murderer somewhere in the area, 
targeting one of Neville's roommates. (Yes, we know differently now, but 
*they didn't.*) This deranged murderer is a former Hogwarts student and 
therefore can be expected to know his way around, and in fact he has already 
gotten into Hogwarts once.  The password system is one of the chief 
obstacles to unauthorized personnel even when there isn't a crisis.  And 
Neville a) writes the passwords down and b) loses them and they c) fall into 
the murderer's hands!  Note that even if he'd written them down, if he'd 
kept them on his person, Crookshanks wouldn't have been able to get them.

I think McGonagall's punishment was no more than deserved, especially the 
part where he was no longer allowed to use the passwords since he'd been so 
irresponsible with them.

And as Neville becomes more of a force in Dumbledore's Army and in the fight 
against Voldemort, it will probably be just as well that he learns about 
proper security measures and to be more careful about what he writes down 
and leaves lying around.


Janet Anderson

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