Neville and stuff (Was: In Defense of Snape)

[festuco]

No: HPFGUIDX 122494


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "dungrollin"
<spotthedungbeetle at h...> wrote:

>  Why does 
> someone with the courage to shout stupefy through a broken nose and 
> point a wand that isn't going to work at a group of adult DEs 
> (including one or more that tortured his parents mad) have a boggart 
> in the shape of the potions master?  

Gerry:
Actually I thought that quite easy to understand. Neville's parents
were tortured to insanity when he was a child, too young to understand
insanity, too young to understand torture. And then, what happens to
him. From a (presumably) warm and loving environment he comes to live
with his grandmother, who constantly belittles him and tells him he is
not as good as his father was in a rather acid way. Even worse, the
whole family apparently joins in this kind of treatment, with his
uncle forgetting that he is holding him upside down outside of the
window because he is offered something to eat. So Neville comes from
an environment where he is constantly verbally abused, and even
physically by accident (but then, it was in a good cause, wasn't it? )
And then, when he is safely away  from this kind of "nurturing"
environment there is somebody even worse than his grandmother!
Somebody even more sarcastic, who has it in for him big time. Somebody
with even a lower opinion of him than his grandmother, who though he
is a disappointment, at least cares for him. Meet professor Snape, the
potions master. No wonder he fears this man worse than anything else. 

The death eaters? What have they done to him? They may kill him, true,
but they cannot keep him in a class subject to horrid sarcasm, which
hurts and hurts and hurts for a couple of years. And at least, against
the DE's he can fight. Not against Snape. There he can only endure. 

Gerry