Snape! Snape! Snape! Snape! Loverly Snape! Wonderful Snape! (long)

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 148235

> Ceridwen:
> I love you.  You've just explained my score on my math test.  *g*  
> But, this is very true.  Neville doesn't do well in Potions because 
> he's nervous anyway.  His entire life he's been identified as nearly 
> a squib.  His grandmother is overbearing.  Now here's another WW 
soul 
> who is just as overbearing, and this person has a direct effect on 
> Neville's future.  Neville doesn't think he's good enough, so he 
> messes up under scrutiny.  He's good at Herbology, but that isn't 
> like Potions.  Will he ever need Potions for his life goal?  Or 
would 
> it just be easier to give up and pretend to be a Squib?

Magpie:

This gets to something that I've always thought played into the 
Snape/Neville dynamic as well.  I want to be careful not to give the 
impression this is a "Snape is really helping Neville according to a 
secret plan" thing because it isn't, but if you look at Neville's 
response to life, he often gets out of things by accepting the 
judgment that he's just no good at anything.  That's a defense.  You 
can see why he does this with his grandmother.  It must be impossible 
to argue with her unless you're more Sirius Black than Neville 
Longbottom.  His grandmother not only holds him up to the impossible 
standard of a father who's dead, but she pushes him to excel in things 
that he's not good in (like Transfig) and puts down things that he's 
better in (Charms is a soft subject).  Neville seems to have decided 
on a passive approach to this--he accepts that he's inadequate and 
lives with it, doing his own thing under the radar.

Unfortunately with Snape this doesn't do.  I think a lot of the 
anxiety Neville feels about Snape's class comes from the fact that 
there's no escape.  He's *admitted* that he's crap at Potions, but 
Snape still expects him to produce results.  He takes away Neville's 
natural defense in situations like this.  McGonagall, ironically, may 
be easier on him because she sort of shakes her head and just tells 
him to do better.  Snape gets angry at his failure and forces him to 
do it again until he gets it right.  

I don't think Snape ever thinks about it this way, of course.  I think 
he's literally just angered by Neville sitting there being all clumsy 
and helpless (and weak) about it, so when he messes up Snape's just 
going to make him do it again.  This is where I'm wary of making it 
sound like Snape is good for Neville because he's getting around 
defenses that aren't always good for Neville.  I wouldn't go that far, 
but perhaps learning to deal with Snape has had some good effects on 
Neville. It took guts for Neville to put himself in the DA, I suspect, 
knowing he was the poorest student.  He may have worried about 
annoying Harry or just being a nuisance.  I don't give Snape credit 
for giving him courage to do that--I think he was mostly pushed by an 
internal decision that this was important and he had to try.  But had 
he never had to deal with Snape he might have gotten more discouraged 
in the DA and just thought he couldn't do it.  (Heh--now I'm imagining 
Neville mentally kicking himself in a Snape-ish way if he was tempted 
to quit.)

Nrenka:
Rowling's opinions of her characters may well come even more solidly
to the forefront in the conclusions to the novels, depending on what
kind of ending or even just endgame plot she feels like writing.  And
one thing she could easily do is destroy a large number of currently
viable alternative interpretations.  Any work is open to a number of
interpretations, or it usually wouldn't be worth reading--but there
comes a point where, if you value the ability to support your
argument with citations and don't want to have to work too hard to
explain away concrete facts you don't like, some interpretations fall
away.

Magpie:
That's definitely true, though with characters like Snape I don't 
trust our ability to really get where she's going based on comments 
about his general character.  I had one idea of what Rowling was 
saying about characters in the past and then subsequent canon put a 
whole different spin on it.  It wasn't that she was lying at all, just 
that the general conclusions fandom drew from her statements weren't 
really right.  I think once the last book is out all her statements 
about Snape will be consistent with his character, but maybe not in 
ways we think they must be now.

-m