Blog #2 - The Timid, Brave Neville Longbottom

I started reading the novels after I had seen the first seven movies, so my interpretation of each character coincides with the opinion that I had developed of each of them at the conclusion of the seventh movie. With this said, movies also tend to alter character development so as to make the film more interesting (or some other reason that is not obvious), so I also developed new opinions as well.

One of my favorite characters is Neville, and since he isn't really shown too tremendously in the movies, I really got to develop my own opinion of him and experience for the first time why he is so special in the books. He fits perfectly into the themes of empathy and friendship and growing up, and yet no one immediately considers him when it comes to talking about friendship in the books. In the beginning, he seemed so unlikely to be a hero compared to the likes of Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger and Harry "The Chosen One" Potter. The likelihood of him being valuable in Harry's story at all is especially minimized when it is joked that he is practically a squib. I think in some ways, he can be the most valuable out of all of Harry's friends, however, because he is the one person who is consistently there for Harry, even when it seems like no one else is. When Ron and Hermione are at such great odds that Harry can hardly tolerate being in their presence, Neville is the one that gives Harry a shoulder to lean on. When nobody else believes Harry's story that You-Know-Who has returned, Neville is the first person (aside from the Weasleys and Hermione) who insists that Harry is telling the truth. When Harry goes to the Department of Mysteries, Neville wants to go too, insisting that he was not about to leave Harry to face danger alone. While in the Department of Mysteries, Neville actually becomes quite useful, accidentally breaking the very thing that Voldemort was out to get, actually helping Harry tremendously. Timid Neville showed exceptional bravery, which I never expected from him.

I started reading the series thinking Neville was a waste of a character--just one more person in there to be the necessary dumb, nerdy character who doesn't seem to really belong in the magical world. I didn't really think he served much purpose at all, but as I started reading the series, I realized that I found myself really empathizing for Neville. He is someone who has a life that is almost just as bad as Harry's. Yes, he lives with his grandmother who cares for him (instead of an awful aunt, uncle, and cousin who would much rather act like he doesn't exist at all), and yes he does still have his parents, but his parents were so affected by an awful curse that he can barely communicate with them properly, if at all, which seems to really affect Neville in the saddest of ways (which we see when Harry, Hermione, and Ron run into him at St. Mungo's). He also is the brunt of quite a few jokes amongst all of the students in his year, even with Malfoy's love of taunting Harry. Neville and Harry develop this really special bond because they both have experienced devastating events in their lives, and it is quite possible that what happened to Harry might have happened to Neville (though it is unclear whether or not Neville would have survived the death curse). He becomes tremendously likable, and tremendously brave, and shows how even the most unsuspecting of characters can become the most wonderful of characters, and can have powers inside them that extend beyond summoning charms and transfigurations.