Hufflepuff!Neville (was Re: Neville's problems)

[lupinlore]

No: HPFGUIDX 152896

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "ericoppen" <oppen at ...> wrote:
>
<SNIP>
> In a lot of ways, I believe that Neville would have been better-
off 
> as a Hufflepuff or a Ravenclaw.  He seems to get along splendidly 
> with Professor Sprout, and Professor Flitwick doesn't come across 
> as...shall we say, _forbidding?_...a character as Professor 
> McGonagall.  > 

Good points -- and ones that JKR herself might agree with, or at 
least might have agreed with at one time.  As I recall when she 
showed examples of her early notebooks, Neville was listed as being 
in Hufflepuff.

I suspect what we have here is an example of different layers of 
development.  Neville-that-was, i.e. Hufflepuff!Neville, was 
probably an early attempt to create characters who embodied 
stereotypes of the various houses as Harry does Gryffindor and Draco 
does Slytherin.  Neville would have been the stereotypical 
Hufflepuff and another character (perhaps the very earliest 
incarnation of Hermione) would have been a stereotypical Ravenclaw.

I suspect that as time went on, various things happened.  For one 
thing, as she thought about some of the characters, Neville in this 
instance, they evolved beyond original stereotypes to an extent.  
For another, JKR was probably faced with problems of keeping the 
narrative tight and focused.  In order to do that, she may well have 
decided that Gryffindor and Slytherin were the most important houses 
for the story, and therefore any major characters in the first few 
books would have to be in one of those two houses.  Therefore 
Hufflepuff!Neville switched houses, grew something of a backbone, 
and became the Neville-who-is.

But I think most of Neville's personality was evolved when he was 
still very much Hufflepuff!Neville, and that comes through again and 
again.  Neville really DOESN'T fit all that well into Gryffindor 
because he originally wasn't meant to BE a Gryffindor, and most of 
his personality and behavior is representative of that stereotypical 
Hufflepuff who now only exists in JKR's notebooks.  Neville really 
DOESN'T fit well with McGonagall because he wasn't originally 
supposed to BE one of McGonagall's charges.  He was supposed to be 
Professor Sprout's charge -- and as you say he would have fitted 
there much better.  But, for the sake of the narrative, JKR needed 
to put all of her heroes in one house, and hence do many of Neville's 
problems arise.


Lupinlore