On the trivial and the profound/Snape

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 165470

Alla wrote:
<snip>
> And in fact, we do not see Neville's boggart changed, no? <snip>

Carol responds:
True, we don't see any Boggarts except Molly Weasley's (and, briefly,
Lupin's) after PoA. But I think we do have an indication that
Neville's fears are taking a more realistic direction, relating to the
true terror in his past, the Crucioing of his parents into insanity.

Consider, first, his reaction to Fake!Moody, who Crucioed the spider
in front of him, knowing full well that Neville's parents had been
Crucioed into insanity because he had been partly responsible for that
terrible deed, along with Bellatrix, Rodolphus, and Rabastan Lestrange:

"Moody raised his wand again, pointed it at the spider, and mutteed,
'*Crucio*!'

"At once, the spider's legs bent in upon its body; it rolled over and
began to twitch horribly, rocking from side to side. . . . Moody did
not remove his wand, and the spider started to shudder and jerk more
violently--

"'Stop it!' Hermione said shrilly.

"Harry looked around at her. She was looking, not at the spider, but
at Neville, and Harry, following her gaze, saw that Neville's hands
were clenched upon the desk in front of him, his knuckles white, his
eyes wide and horrified" (GoF Am. ed. 215).

Nothing Snape has done to Neville has been anywhere near as cruel as
using this horrible Unforgiveable Curse, even on a spider, in front of
a boy whose parents were driven to insanity by that same curse, not to
mention needlessly prolonging that curse. (We're dealing with a
heartless death Eater here, not a mean teacher who's tired of melted
cauldrons and can't tolerate incompetence.)

Nor does Neville recover quickly from the horror and shock of this
experience. After class, HRH find Neville standing alone, staring at a
stone wall "with the same horrified, wide-eyed look he had worn when
Moody had demonstrated the Cruciatus Curse." Neville's voice is higher
pitched than usual, He can't even carry on a normal conversation
("Very interesting dinner--I mean lesson--What's for eating?") He
looks even more frightened when Fake!Moody invites him to tea (not for
any noble purpose, of course, though Neville doesn't know that).

No one else in the class reacts as Neville does. The others look
frightened after the Cruciatus Curse, but they talk excitedly about
the lesson "as though it had been some spectacular show" (218). Even
Harry, whose parents were killed by Avada Kedavra (also demonstrated
by Fake!Moody right in front of him) and who gives Ron an apparently
angry look when he thoughtlessly rambles on about the way the spider
died, gets over the horror fairly quickly. But Neville, who sees his
permanently incapacitated parents at least once a year (and hoards the
bubblegum wrappers that his mother gives him), is still remembering
the lesson that night, lying awake along with Harry, who, preoccupied
with Sirius Black, fails to realize from "the absence of Neville's
usual snores" (227) that Neville is also unable to sleep.

That this cruel lesson from Fake!Moody is a kind of wake-up call for
Neville, an indication of the true, underlying fears that he's been
suppressing beneath his forgetfulness and timidity (he was cowed by
his grandmother before he ever met Snape), is shown later when Harry
opens his golden egg:

"'What was that?' said Seamus Finnegan. "Sounded like a banshee. . . .'

"'It was someone being tortured!' said Neville, who had gone very
white and had spilled sausage rolls all over the floor. "You're going
to have to fight the Cruciatus Curse!'" (366).

Seamus's Boggart in PoA was a Banshee. Neville's was Snape in his role
as Potions Master, not the much more terrifying Death Eaters who
Crucioed his parents into insanity when he was one or two. Sounds to
me as if Neville's fears have taken a more realistic direction as of
GoF, one that makes him apply himself in Harry's DA lessons in the
next book.

And in OoP, he's actually Crucio'd by Bellatrix herself. If his
Boggart is still Professor Snape at that point, then Neville has some
serious problems with priorities.

Carol, expecting Neville to confront his true enemy, Bellatrix, at
some point in DH