#snape and neville
really starting to wonder if people who go “well neville’s PARENTS were TORTURED but SNAPE is his BIGGEST FEAR” just like don’t remember how boggarts are supposed to work or don’t understand how fear works.
because i could do the same thing you know? “well harry’s PARENTS were KILLED but DEMENTORS are his BIGGEST FEAR” or talk about how hermione’s biggest fear is mcgonagall, another teacher. or how lupin’s friends were all murdered by another friend and his biggest fear is still the moon. or like how ron probably knows his uncles were murdered by death eaters but his biggest fear is still spiders.
fear is weird, man. that’s part of what the boggart lesson is meant to show us. do they get so focused on the half-page of neville’s boggart they entirely forget the whole conversation lupin and harry have where lupin admits he thought harry’s greatest fear would be voldemort and harry’s surprised about that? it doesn’t matter that voldemort killed harry’s parents or that he’s tried to kill harry twice by now - for harry, the more immediate thing that freaks him out are the dementors.
neville being scared of snape isn’t because he’s oh-so-traumatized. neville’s clumsy and sensitive and snape is a mean teacher - of course neville’s frightened of him. it’s not great but it’s also not a sign that snape’s an irredeemable abuser either. (if he was, wouldn’t all the children have boggarts of him? wouldn’t lupin have reacted with something other than mild surprise about neville’s admission? if a teacher being a boggart makes them an irredeemable abuser, why are these same accusations not flung at mcgonagall, hermione’s boggart?) neville being frightened of snape over bellatrix - a woman he hasn’t met, doesn’t know, and, at 13 years old, has likely only heard largely censored stories about - doesn’t mean snape is somehow more terrifying to him in general than bellatrix. bellatrix is a far-off boogeyman neville never interacts with; snape’s in his everyday life. if i was going to choose between a terrorist i’d never met - no matter how much they’d personally ruined my life - and the mean teacher i have to deal with every day, i’d choose the mean teacher too.
and boggarts. do not. show you. the single thing you’re most frightened of!!!!! they don’t!!!!!! they show A Fear. and our fears develop as we grow older and our fears change based on what we’re feeling at the moment. there’s a REASON harry’s fear is so different from the other kids (which is, to be frank, the entire point of that fucking scene and the reason why i have to roll my eyes at people making it into Some Huge Neville Thing. neville is background flavor in that scene. he exists to color in harry’s experience omfg like i know we all like minor characters but can we PLEASE remember this is a book).
it’s wild to me that we get this exact example with harry in the same book (and like… the same general portion of the book!!!!) and people still fucking failed to get the message.
