Blog EC: Whats Up With Neville?

Like usual, I was thumbing through Tumblr the other morning while I was waiting for my train and I came across this picture.

Reading articles from before the final books were published, I can tell that there was a large debate around whether Harry Potter was the true Chosen One or if it could possibly Neville Longbottom. This never crossed my mind, and maybe that’s because I ended up watching the movies before I read the series. I also did not watch the movies in any particular order. I watched 1 and 2 a million times throughout my life. Then I watched six soon after it came out and I saw both parts of movie seven in the theatre. I don’t really know why I never watched the rest of them but I just got around to it this semester. Anyways, I never doubted that Harry was the Chosen One.

After reading the series I can see how this would’ve been a mystery. At the end of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore and his pensieve showed Harry the Lost Prophecy: 

"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches... Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies... and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives... the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies..." (Order of the Phoenix pg741)

I guess for the reason of just dramatic purposes in her book, J.K. Rowling pens Dumbledore to mention to Harry that the prophecy could in fact not be about him. He tells Harry about their similar birthdays, their parentage and other coinciding details about their lives.

As we read on we find that Neville’s Gran is the one who raised him. I can’t help thinking that she may have placed a sort of long term spell on Neville to forget something. His stories about her can raise a few eyebrows. She never encouraged magic out of him. This could be because after what happened to his parents, she was pretty well through with magic. This could have also been to protect him from something or to even silence him from speaking out about something. But that something, I don’t know. One thing that may support my theory, is the Remembrall that Neville received in The Sorcerer’s Stone. He said, “Gran knows I forget things…” And then the remembrall promptly turned red. Is this from a normal, petty, thing that Neville has forgotten like to maybe lock his trunk or is it an unfortunate side-effect from a memory charm that Gran has set on him?

I really don’t know. I was hoping that by going through this exercise I would be closer to understanding but I’m really not. Are any of us?