Neville and stuff (Was: In Defense of Snape)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 123794


Carol earlier:
> > If I were Neville, my boggart would be the DEs who Crucio'd my> >
parents. Maybe as of PoA, he hasn't allowed that fear to take shape in
his conscious mind yet.... I think that maybe he transferred his fear
of his formidable (but nevertheless DD-supporting) grandmother onto
Snape, making a minor fear into a major one because the major one
(Bellatrix and friends) is incomprehensibly terrifying?
> >
> 
Magda responded:
> Well, it's a pretty traumatic thing to admit that you're afraid of
> your Gran.  Snape makes a suitable substitute, and has the added
> bonus, if you will, of not being a relative or having done nice
> things for him as a small child.
> 
> Also I suspect that young Neville doesn't know what a DE looks/ed
> like and that in his young mind a DE looks rather like scary Snape. 
> So it all kind of comes together in one image for him.


Carol again:
I was thinking of a masked and hooded Death Eater, possibly female if
he knows about Bellatrix. Surely he's seen old photos or sketches or
someone has given him a sufficiently accurate description that he'd be
able to picture a Death Eater, just as we can. It's even possible that
the boggart would know what a DE looks like, just as it knows how to
look like a Dementor.

Carol, who today began tutoring fourteen- to seventeen-year-old boys
in a yeshiva high school and felt like she was in Hogwarts but with
rabbis instead of wizards (I was the only person who wasn't male and
Jewish!)