Nitwit? - Remus John Lupin

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 167991

Pippin wrote:
> But it wasn't good for Neville. Fun for the readers, a laugh for
three fourths of the school, but not for Neville. He ended up being
bullied worse than ever, meaning there wasn't any real boost in his
confidence. 
> 
> Anyway, why should Lupin be so interested in what's good for Neville
when he's not interested in what's good for Hermione, who never
learned to fight her boggart at all, or for Harry, who left the lesson
feeling  humiliated that he wasn't thought capable of facing a
boggart? Guilty conscience, maybe?

> [McGonagall's criticism of Trelawney] wasn't only subtle, it was
mild. Even Lavender and Parvati didn't find anything to complain
about. What could they say..."McGonagall is so mean, she refused to
say anything bad about Trelawney but you could just tell she really
can't stand her." Hardly something that would have "traveled through
the school like wildfire". And McGonagall also let  Harry know that
Trelawney's  scariness need not to be taken seriously, something Lupin
did *not* do with Neville. There was no hint that the real Snape need
not be feared so much. <snip>

Carol responds:
I don't know who to side with here. Certainly, I don't share Alla's
glee at Snape's humiliation, and I do think that it was wrong to
embarrass a colleague, and particularly to suggest dressing up
Boggart!Snape in Neville's grandmother's clothes. 

But I can see Alla's point, too. Neville had to learn to deal with his
Boggart (which happened to be Professor Snape), and the way to deal
with a Boggart is to make it ridiculous (which is different from
publicly criticizing a colleague as McGonagall did. I suppose that the
best way would have been to let Neville figure out a way to do that on
his own, and if he couldn't, to help him do it privately. After all,
Lupin chose not to terrify the whole class by having them see Harry's
Dementor (which he assumed would be Lord Voldemort) or to embarrass
Hermione by having them see her homework Boggart (though how he could
guess her Boggart so early in the year is beyond me).

Certainly, Pippin is right that learning how to deal with a Snape
Boggart is different from learning how to deal with Snape himself.
Neville can hardly cast a Ridikulus spell on the real Snape! Ideally,
Lupin should have taken Neville aside and explained to him that the
way to get over his fear of Snape was to build his self-confidence and
to understand that Snape was only a teacher. The worst he could do was
to give Neville detention or a zero for that day's potion. (We're not
dealing with DE Snape here.) Practical help, practical advice, not
humiliating Snape and increasing Snape'e frustration with him would
have been a more thoughtful and sensible course. And he should have
given Hermione some private help, as well.

I just wonder what Lupin would have done if Neville's Boggart had
turned out to be a Death Eater casting a Crucio. How do you make
*that* ridiculous? How do you deal with *that* fear and that level of
insecurity?

Carol, who wonders if that's what Snape had in mind, too, by calling
Lupin's attention to Neville's presence in the class