Snape and the Longbottoms

[msbeadsley]

No: HPFGUIDX 140437

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, juli17 at a... wrote:
> I don't think we know from canon that Neville was supposed to be
> dead also, do we? I seem to recall Dumbledore only said Voldemort
<snip>

I guess I didn't make it clear that I was speaking from Snape's
ostensible point of view: Voldemort "should" have decided that Neville
was the Prophecy baby and killed *him* instead of Harry, which would
mean Lily would be alive and there wouldn't be anything very much
special about Harry.
  
> In any case, it doesn't appear to me that Snape treats Neville 
> and Harry the same way. Every time he goes off on Neville it's
> because of yet another potion he's bumbled. I'm sure that he's 
<snip>

Which is exactly my point. Neville could have been "the one with the
power to vanquish the Dark Lord," but he was spared, by Voldemort or
fate or whatever. Not the best of results, in Snape's view, with the
alternative being a snarl of a doubled lifedebt to James, Lily dead,
and Harry the WW's hero. Every time Snape looks at Neville he sees a
real waste of space; if only Voldemort had killed him, he thinks
wistfully. So every time Neville bungles something, it really
rankles...the kid is (in the vernacular of my Kentucky upbringing)
"hardly worth the powder and lead it'd take to shoot him."

I'm not very attached to this; it was just musings.

Sandy aka msbeadsley